in case you missed it:

Chapter 7: The Good News Is Better Than That

Here Rob Bell gives some insights into the story of the prodigal son (and his brother), and how God’s version of the story was better than either son’s self-deceived versions of either “his badness is his problem” or “his goodness is to his credit.” Good stuff.

Bell also goes back to the popular but questionable notions of the afterlife where “God would have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell.” As I’ve mentioned already, I agree that those notions are wrong, and I think they are misrepresentations even of traditional theology.

But Bell continues to sound not-so-untraditional: “We are free to accept or reject the invitation to new life that God extends to us. Our choice.” So what happened to all the questions at the beginning about people in specific circumstances who maybe don’t get what seems like a fair chance to accept or reject?

Chapter 8: The End Is Here

Bell never really goes back to address those kinds of questions. With two pages to go he concedes that he hasn’t really forgotten about all the judgment sounding passages in the Bible, from the guy who misuses his treasure and is “thrown outside into the darkness” to the wedding guests who are told “I don’t know you” to the weeds that are harvested and “tied in bundles to be burned.” Yes, Bell emphasizes God’s love and grace and corrects many corrupted culturalized views of Christian theology, but even as he suggests that hell might not be a real place, that “all” will be saved, that people might be able to change their minds after death, that Jesus might save people who don’t him… Bell still suggests that people will reject God and choose the judgment of hell.

So where was the controversy again?

in case you missed it:

Chapter 5: Dying to Live

Bell describes Jesus’ death and resurrection. He critiques certain descriptions of the sacrifice as being overused, and I really like the multiple angles he gives to the most important event in history, summarized as:

What happened on the cross is like…

a defendant going free,
a relationship being reconciled,
something lost being redeemed,
a battle being won,
a final sacrifice being offered…
an enemy being loved.

If your cultural background is such that the battle metaphor of the conquest over death doesn’t resonate with you, try the “redemption” metaphor from the “world of business and finance and economics,” or the “justification” from the “world of courtrooms and judges and prosecutors and guilt and punishment.” (Maybe the Life of Pi narrator who thought it “didn’t make any sense” just needed to hear it from another angle.) The cross is so “massive and universe-changing” that it can be understood through a variety of perspectives. Beautiful and inspiring stuff.

Then Bell talks about all the symbolism of death leading to life. Good stuff. Almost traditional stuff, even. In fact, the whole chapter is so non-controversial it almost feels like the bookends about Eminem wearing a cross (“Did Eminem stumble upon this truth?) are stuck there to keep things a little edgy.

Chapter 6: There Are Rocks Everywhere

OK, now that Jesus’ death and resurrection are firmly established, Bell is ready to step on some traditional toes and suggest that through this Jesus might save some people who don’t look like traditional Christians. He references the story of Moses striking the rock to give water to the Israelites, and Paul’s interesting statement in 1 Corinthians 10 that “that rock was Christ.”

Christ is mentioned nowhere in the story. Moses strikes the rock, it provides water, and the people have something to drink…

Paul, however, reads another story in the story, insisting that Christ was present in that moment…

Jesus was there. Without anybody using his name. Without anybody saying that it was him…

Bell extrapolates from this story that Jesus can be involved without people knowing he’s involved, which is how he explains the verse I’ve always thought was the toughest hurdle for non-traditionalist salvation doctrine: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14) Bell cleverly explains that Jesus doesn’t say that “those coming to the Father through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him,” so that’s how people can only be saved through Jesus but it still be possible for people from other religions to get into heaven. And let’s not forget Jesus’ cryptic words from John 10: “I have other sheep, which are not of this pen.”

Hmm.

It reminds me again of C. S. Lewis – this time in The Last Battle, of a passage that confused me as a child for its un-traditional vibe:

The Glorious One [Aslan] bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me…. Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him…

Hmm.

In general, I’m with Bell on a lot of it: Christians focusing too much and too narrowly on whether or not people are “getting in,” the idea that we might be surprised at who is there and who isn’t (“I never knew you!”), the idea that only God knows who is truly saved, etc, etc. And while I would never rule it out as a logical or theological impossibility, I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of… Jesus as a secret agent.

Can you really go from Christ being present in a rock (could it just have been a metaphor?) to arguing that Christ saves people who don’t know him? Sure, “Father, forgive them” even though they didn’t ask for it… but can you really follow Christ without knowing you’re following him? I don’t know.

next up:
Chapters 7-8

I’d heard a lot of this stuff before but it was nice to get a refresher and to see where a lot of the science has gone in even just the last few years. There’s a conception that we haven’t done much in space since landing on the moon over forty years ago, and while it’s true that human exploration hasn’t really progressed, our exploration and understanding of the universe has increased a whole lot, thanks both to probes we’ve sent to other planets and fancier telescopes we’ve built on earth and put in orbit. (For example, the book says black holes weren’t even confirmed to exist until the 80′s!)

I’m also fascinated by how much we still don’t know about the universe. It seems like each planet in our solar system has some unique quirk (rotating the wrong way, for example) that confounds scientific theories of how the whole system came to be. And I love the whole concepts of dark matter and dark energy – our gravity equation doesn’t seem to work within some galaxies, where things that don’t seem to have enough mass to stick together are sticking together anyway, or between galaxies, where things that should be sticking together are flying apart, so, hey, there must be a whole bunch of invisible mass and energy out there that’s 19 times greater than all the stuff we can actually observe! That’s actually not too far from theology. If you like being awed by the wondrous detail of the universe, this book is a good place to start.

in case you missed it:

OK, now we’re getting to the good stuff! In Chapter 3 Bell offers his Biblical interpretation of hell. A summary of (my interpretation of) his main points:

1. Whenever Jesus uses the word “hell,” he uses a word referring to the town garbage pile. The “gnashing of teeth” was the wild animals fighting over scraps of food. (This is interesting, though Bell curiously does not explain the “weeping”.)

2. The other references to “eternal” punishment use a word that could be translated as something more temporary.

3. The references to such punishment are also always in the context of redemption and correction – for example, in 1 Timothy when Paul hands people “over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.”

In conclusion, “When we read ‘eternal punishment’ … Jesus isn’t talking about forever as we think of foreer. Jesus may be talking about something else, which has all sorts of implications for our understandings of what happens after we die…”

Enter Chapter 4, where Bell rattles off a bunch of Scriptures about how “all people will come” to God (Psalm 65), “all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God” (Isaiah 52), etc, etc.  (This is also interesting, though I can’t help but notice that while Bell spent pages in ch.3 to assure us that “eternal” doesn’t mean “eternal” when it comes to hell, he doesn’t spend any time in ch.4 investigating whether or not “all” means “all” when it comes to heaven.)

Combined with passages about how “God wants all people to be saved” and the parables of searching for the lost coin or sheep until it is found, and the reference to the gates in that new city at the end of Revelation always being open, Bell suggests that perhaps God somehow continues to pursue people even after death until they are won over by his love. He also clarifies that this is not a new idea, referencing a few ancient church fathers who are said to have believed something similar.

However, Bell also agrees that “love demands freedom,” and that “if we want nothing to do with light, hope, love, grace, and peace, God respects that desire… we are given a reality free from love.” That reminds me a little of C. S. Lewis in The Great Divorce, thought I’m not sure if Bell is saying that “all” people don’t get reconciled after all if some don’t want to, or if they will eventually want to.

I suppose the apparent contradiction can be resolved in Bell’s actual willingness to not arrive at black-and-white answers on everything (that’s what I get for complaining about things in some chapters before reading later ones): “Those are questions, or more accurately, those are tensions we are free to leave fully intact. We don’t need to resolve them or answer them because we can’t, and so we simply respect them, creating space for the freedom that love requires.”

So. The passages about “all people” coming to God are certainly interesting. Though I think I don’t really like Bell’s framing of the issue: since God “wants” all people to be saved, and he’s so loving and all, “Does God get what God wants” or does he “fail”? It feels a little too much like trying to box God into behaving like our limited understanding would expect him to behave. Surely you could use similar logic to say that surely God doesn’t “want” people to get raped in this life, but it still happens, so isn’t he failing now? And couldn’t any response involving the differences between the “perfect will” and “permissive will” of God, or whatever the theologians call it, also be used to explain what God allows for salvation?

It also feels like trying to circumvent Jesus’ death and resurrection, cuz, hey, man, even if Jesus hadn’t come, God is so loving that of course he would just save us all anyway somehow. But I peeked ahead to chapter 5 and it looks like it has something to do with that so maybe I’m right where Bell wants me and I should wait before commenting about that.

My only comment remaining is in ch. 3 when Bell was claiming to mention all the references to hell in the Bible and claiming to interpret them as not being as bad as we think they are. I noticed he completely glossed over the whole “lake of fire” thing in Revelation. In ch. 4 he briefly mentions it as being part of that weird Revelation book, but I noticed he completely avoided what the book actually says about it:

Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. (Revelation 21:7-8)

OK, that doesn’t exactly sound like “all” people eventually turning to God… does “all” not really mean “all,” or is there a way to explain it? Again, in Revelation 22:14-15:

Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

next up:
Chapters 5-6
Chapters 7-8

in case you missed it:

Chapter 2: Here Is The New There (Heaven)

In Chapter 2 Bell seeks to dispense with many of the popular notions of heaven that have crept into modern American Christianity, which is often hard to fully separate from the pop culture images of pearly gates and clouds and harps and whatnot. We read things like Revelation to remind ourselves that heaven is less about things like that and more about things like God’s throne and angels and not crying and yeah there’s some sort of feast in there somewhere but it’s still generally thought of as this vaguely fuzzy dream-like “other” place in some sort of alternate dimension that we get to by leaving Earth forever.

Does Heaven Come To Earth?

Bell challenges this view with Scriptures that talk about heaven coming to earth, both in “this age” and the “age to come.” He says the age to come sounds very “earthy,” from Isaiah’s “earth” being “filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” to Amos’s promises that “everything will be repaired and restored and rebuilt” and so on and so forth, and how it all suggests active participation by us. Bell says we should be concerned about bringing God’s kingdom to the earth now almost as a sort of preparation for the age to come:

Honest business,
redemptive art,
honorable law,
sustainable living,
medicine,
education,
making a home,
tending a garden -
they’re all sacred tasks to be done in partnership with God now, because they will all go on in the age to come.

(Wait.. medicine will go on in the age to come? OK, OK, I know what you mean.)

He says there’s confusion about heaven that “we will automatically become totally different people who ‘know’ everything. But our heart, our character, our desires, our longing – those things take time,” so we need to “be growing progressively in generosity, forgiveness, honesty… so that as these take over our lives we are taking part more and more and more in life in the age to come, now.”

I could play Bell’s black-and-white-questions game from Chapter 1 with this idea… what if someone dies before they have time to “grow progressively” and they don’t have much “character” developed for the age to come? Is that fair to them? But now I’m being unfair.

Eventually either we make the earth enough like heaven that God comes, or we don’t make the earth enough like heaven, and “God acts. Decisively. On behalf of everybody who’s ever been stepped on by the machine, exploited, abused, forgotten, or mistreated. God puts an end to it. God says, ‘Enough.’” Tada, heaven fully comes to earth in the age to come.

Or Do We Leave Earth?

I do like Bell’s perspective on this. There is clearly an “earthy” part to the Biblical heaven that Christians tend to ignore, both in the future and in the “kingdom of heaven” that “is at hand.” This focus on making the Earth a better, happier, more just (a.k.a. more heavenly or more Christlike) place is also a much more attractive “gospel” to the sorts of “progressive” people who don’t often tend to associate with modern Christianity. I suspect they are closer to part of the Truth than many Christians think.

But what about the traditional Christians with the escapist eschatology, who believe, as Bell notes, “that you’re going to leave and evacuate to somewhere else,” so “why do anything about this world?” I don’t think that’s a Christlike conclusion even if the premise is true, but where did that premise come from, anyway? The idea that we all leave Earth to go to heaven somewhere didn’t come out of nowhere, or even from pop culture.

The end of Revelation talks about a new heaven and a new earth. 2 Peter 3 talks about the heavens passing away, the elements being destroyed by fire, and the earth being laid bare on the “day of the Lord.” Bell even talks about a similar fiery passage in 1 Corinthians 3 to test each man’s work on this “day of the Lord” that transitions us to the age to come, but Peter’s description sounds even more, uh, “earthy.” And of course you have the 1 Thessalonians 4 “rapture” passage about rising and being “caught up in the air” with Christ.

Put that all together with all the other stuff in Revelation and all the passages about being “not of this world” and “setting your mind on things above” and it’s not hard to see how Christians might come up with the idea that God takes us away from this earth and all of its sin and principalities to burn it all up and make us a new perfect one for a great big heavenly party (I think we’re supposed to “judge angels” in there somewhere too)

What Does It All Mean?

So… this is the point where I throw up my hands and say, hey, I can see how different people reading the same Bible can honestly come to different conclusions. It’s a big book with a lot of nuance and it’s hard to keep all the pieces in perspective especially when we have certain biases that predispose us to remembering certain parts of it. I could probably dig into the Greeks and the Hebrews and figure out a way to reconcile the dichotomous views described above into one cohesive fully Biblical worldview, and, indeed, that is what I will always strive for as I become more familiar with the text.

But there’s also a point at which I don’t really care too much about the specifics of whether “heaven” fully comes to this “earth” or not, because while I agree that our eschatologies do affect how we live our lives, I think we should be trying to make this earth a better place either way, because that’s what God has called each of us to do in so many different ways, and I’m busy enough figuring out what that looks like. But it is all interesting to think about.

next up:
Chapters 3-4
Chapters 5-6
Chapters 7-8

So, then, let’s begin Love Wins by Rob Bell.

Chapter 1: What About the Flat Tire?

Does The Christian Salvation Doctrine Make Sense?

The first chapter asks a lot of questions about the narrow, traditional Christian doctrine of how one gets to heaven, wondering if it all makes sense. It is unfortunately true that many people find this doctrine unattractive, though I think one’s biases toward it are strongly influenced by what kinds of Christians one is familiar with; it is also unfortunately true that the Christ followers who are the loudest are often the least furthest along in their walk towards Christ. But I digress.

Some of the questions are pretty good: “Does God punish people.. with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life?” I might reframe the question with some hand-wavy theological arguments that “God” doesn’t “punish” people in hell, and it’s the separation from God that makes it hell, but the finite vs. infinite disconnect is still a pretty significant thing to ponder.

Then Bell asks about the “age of accountability” that you might say many Christians use to make themselves feel better about babies not being sent to hell before they’re old enough to accept Christ. “What happens when a fifteen-year-old atheist dies? Was there a three-year window when he could have made a decision to change his eternal destiny?”

It’s a reasonable question, though I feel like Bell is trying too hard to extract black and white answers from something that is beyond our complete understanding. There’s a difference between refusing “open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most,” as Bell rightly criticizes in the preface, and accepting that we cannot concretely determine all the details about some of those things.

What if a young kid misses his chance? Or “what if the missionary gets a flat fire?” It’s easy to wave these sorts of salvation-opportunity questions away with appeals to the sovereignty of God, who is the only one who can truly know if anyone is saved, and who could know if someone who dies young wouldn’t have ever gotten saved anyway, or who could give everyone an opportunity regardless of how long their “window” is, etc, etc.

As Bell keeps dragging out question after question, it got to the point where I felt like he was just trying to jab at the traditional Christian worldview in any way possible, throwing anything against the wall to see if it stuck. “Which Jesus?” he asks. The one whose followers round up Muslims and gun them down, or molest their children while singing hymns? I think we all agree those terrible tragedies have nothing to do with truly following God. If we’re trying to figure out whether or not the traditional Christian worldview of actually following Jesus is the only true path to salvation, how does that have anything to do with despicable actions performed by people who, uh, clearly still had quite a ways to go?

Bell pulls out another red herring as he critiques the overused phrase “personal relationship” for being “found nowhere in the Bible” and not even used “until the last hundred years or so.” I don’t know, maybe that cliché was just a modern response to American pop culture’s knowledge of God without actually following God? (This goes a long way to explaining the questions about demons’ knowledge of Jesus at the end of the chapter, too.) As far as I can tell the things modern Christians mean by “personal relationship,” which seems to involve claiming to follow the God of the Bible and reading it and praying to him, etc, etc, are pretty much the same things that being a Christian has always meant, whether or not our modern little culture came up with a new reactionary phrase for it.

Then Bell descends into what just feels like trolling territory as he says “Christians have always claimed… that you don’t have to do anything” but just “accept and confess and believe,” but “aren’t those verbs? …things we do?” Wow! What a contradiction! Is Bell really completely ignoring the incredible difference between the “doing” of righteous activities to earn salvation and the “doing” of accepting the gift of salvation? That’s the sort of oversimplification you expect from middle schoolers chanting “If you love it so much why don’t you marry it?“

The icing on this needlessly antagonistic cake for me was the reference to “John, Peter, James, or the woman who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews.” My understanding (which could be wrong) is that scholars do not know who wrote Hebrews, and it is a subject of much speculation. Bell seems highly confident that it was a woman. He may be right, but I doubt  he knows it. And in the middle of a twelve-page exploration of every possible questioning of the controversial traditional Christian belief of what we know about salvation, I thought it was pretty ironic for Bell to unquestioningly assert such a controversial un-traditional fact, especially considering it would only further upset the traditional Christians he’s already doing a good job of upsetting.

But then I tried to remind myself that I was trying to read this with an open mind. I pushed back all the theological analogies I’ve heard about how you still have to “accept” a “present” freely offered. The question of whether or not some response is required of us to obtain salvation is an interesting and fundamental one. I was reading the book from my traditional perspective and feeling like Bell was just trying to tick off traditionalists with irrelevant questions, but I realized that he’s also writing to an outside audience for whom these questions are very real and important, and the more I think about them, the more I like them.

What Is The Biblical Salvation Doctrine Anyway?

At any rate, Bell finally stopped asking questions about the minutiae of the applications of salvation doctrine and started looking at the actual Bible from which this doctrine supposedly comes. And I thought he brought some up some pretty good points about apparent contradictions from Jesus himself about how to get to heaven.

In Luke 23, the man hanging on the cross next to Jesus says to him, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom,” and Jesus assures him that they’ll be together in paradise… So is it what you say that saves you?

…in Matthew 10 he teaches that “those who stand firm till the end will be saved.”

…in Luke 19, a man named Zacchaeus tells Jesus, “Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor…” Jesus’s response? “Today salvation has come to his house.”

…in Mark 2, Jesus is teaching in a house and some men cut a hole in the roof and lower down their sick friend for Jesus to heal. When Jesus sees their faith, he says to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” His sins are forgiven because of their faith?

Is it what you say,
or who you are,
or what you do,
or what you say you’re going to do,
or is it who your friends are or what your friends do?

I skipped a few examples, some of which I think Bell is stretching to include at all, or that are more easily explained than others, or that I’ve heard explanations for (especially the infamous “saved through childbearing”), but it is interesting that Jesus suggests that different people are saved for different responses. The more I think about it, the fewer contradictions I see – we don’t know that the sick friend didn’t believe in Jesus, too, for instance, and perhaps only those who believe in Jesus will be able to stand firm till the end, anyway.

You also get into the sticky issue of Jesus’ statements about salvation before he died – how does that affect the current, traditional understanding about salvation coming from accepting that Jesus died for your sins and committing to follow him? Do any of Bell’s examples really contradict that? Well, what about Paul’s “all Israel will be saved”? (Romans 11) Does that really mean that at some point all living Jews will become Christians? What about those who have already died?

So despite my initial protests, I think Bell’s first chapter does bring up some interesting questions, both for those who are not Christians and those who are traditional Christians, and I’m interested to keep reading and see what he has to say next.

next up:
Chapter 2
Chapters 3-4
Chapters 5-6
Chapters 7-8

I enjoyed many of L’Engle’s novels as a kid (A Wrinkle In Time, Wind in The Door) and this non-fiction work caught my eye in the library. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith And Art is a relatively short book with scattered thoughts from the author on what it means to be a writer, a Christian, and a woman. Many of her thoughts are good and profound, although many of them were not new to me – what makes Christian art “Christian”, be it writing, music, or painting? Can a non-Christian produce art that glorifies God? God likes to chooses unqualified people. We forget how to have faith like a child. There is no conflict between science and religion. It was good to revisit some of those concepts, and it was also insightful to peek into some of the inspirations for her writing. Anyone interested in creating art for the glory of God would probably enjoy flipping through this book.

Metalcore band For Today has a career-best debut at #15. I can’t confirm this but it may be their first album to chart on the Billboard 200.

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

Marvin Sapp’s album has sold over 100,000 copies. Casting Crowns is approaching 450,000. WOW 2012 has crossed 250,000.

MercyMe’s latest album debuts at #7. They are one of the biggest CCM bands these days, but their previous album’s debut remains their career-best. After several releases with increasing debut sales, this one was quite a bit lower than their last four. Casting Crowns has twice come close to being the first Christian artist to hit #1 on Billboard, and it looked like MercyMe might have a shot with their career trajectory up to this point, but it’s hard to say now. Their selected discography to date, according to Wikipedia:

Almost There – 2001 – N/A (peaked at #37)
Spoken For – 2002 – #41 (28,000)
Undone – 2004 – #12 (55,000)
Coming Up To Breathe – 2006 – #13 (58,000)
All That Is Within Me – 2007 – #15 (84,000)
The Generous Mr. Lovewell – 2010 – #3 (88,000)
The Hurt & The Healer – 2012 – #7 (33,000)

12 Stones released their first album in several years, and so far it is not looking as successful as previous releases. Their selected discography, according to Wikipedia:

12 Stones – 2002 – #147
Potter’s Field – 2004 – #29
Anthem for the Underdog – 2007 – #53 (13,000)
Beneath the Scars – 2012 = #194 (2,500)

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

Gospel duo Mary Mary is still at it, and while Go Get It is not a career-best for them it still shows them holding a strong place in the “urban contemporary gospel” scene. It also sounds like this was not a completely new album like last year’s which hit #10, but contains some remixes and remasters, and these are pretty good numbers for that kind of album. Selected discography for Mary Mary:

Thankful – 2000 – #59
Incredible – 2002 – #20
Mary Mary – 2005 – #8
The Sound – 2008 – #7
Something Big – 2011 – #10 (42,000)
Go Get It - 2012 – #16 (19,000)

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

There were a lot of CCM albums that reappeared on the chart last week. I don’t know if there were more sales going on or if it was a Mother’s Day effect.

Point of Grace’s new album A Thousand Little Things debuts at #186. The female CCM group seems to have peaked about a decade ago, even before losing one of their members a few years ago. Selected chart history for Point of Grace, according to Wikipedia:

The Whole Truth – 1995 – #132 (Gold)
Life Love & Other Mysteries – 1996 (Platinum)
Steady On – 1998 – #24 (Platinum)
Free to Fly – 2001 – #20 (Gold)
I Choose You – 2004 – #85
How You Live – 2007 – #56
No Changin’ Us – 2010 – #60
A Thousand Little Things – 2012 – #186

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

Wow Gospel 2012 cross the 100,000 mark. Newsboys crosses 125K. Britt Nicole’s new album fell off the charts after selling 25,000. Chris Tomlin’s compilation album fell off again after hitting 150,000.

Heavy act War of Ages hits #155 with their new album Return to Life. This is a career-best for them. Here is their selected chart history:

Arise and Conquer – 2008 – N/A
Eternal – 2010 – #179
Return to Life - 2012 – #155 (2,900 copies)

The alleged sale on Laura Story’s album must be continuing. Only a very small percentage is being added to the reported total so her real sale numbers are likely much higher. The Passion album has popped back onto the chart and has now sold over 75,000 copies.

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

Thousand Foot Krutch hit a career-best #14 with their new album The End Is Where We Begin. The band has continued to grow bigger with each new release. Here is their selected chart history:

Set It Off – 2001 – N/A
Phenomenon – 2003 – N/A
The Art of Breaking – 2005 – #67
The Flame In All Of Us – 2007 – #58
Welcome to the Masquerade – 2009 – #35 (13,000)
The End Is Where We Begin - 2012 – #14 (23,000)

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

The Newsboys album shot up to a better position than its debut week – although the sales weren’t as high. Laura Story’s album shot back onto the chart apparently due to a $5 sale. I don’t have older tracking data for it but its real sales are likely much higher. Chris Tomlin’s “hits” album crosses 150,000. tobyMac’s remix album fell off the top 200 after three weeks and sales of 17,500. Gospel artist Fred Hammond’s album God, Love & Romance dropped off the chart again after 11 weeks and sales of just under 80,000.

If They Only Knew – 2006 – N/A
20/20 – 2008 – #193
Between Two Worlds – 2010 – #58
Good Life – 2012 – #17 (21,000)

Demon Hunter lands #36 with True Defiance. That is a career-best chart position for the heavy band, but slightly fewer sales than their last one.

Demon Hunter – 2002 – N/A
Summer of Darkness – 2004 – N/A
The Triptych – 2005 – #136
Storm the Gates of Hell – 2007 – #85 (10,000)
The World Is A Thorn – 2010 – #39 (14,000)
True Defiance – 2012 – #36 (12,000)

Desperation Band hits #180 with Center of it All.

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

Artist: Bloodline Severed
Album: Letters to Decapolis
Label: Red Cord Records
Release Date: 3/13/12

I’m not normally into the more guttural side of metal, but these guys mix the growls with nice melodic lines of clean vocals and guitar solos. Topped with some very worshipful lyrics, this album is a lot more interesting than I first expected.

Buy on Amazon

Artist: Becoming the Archetype
Album: Celestial Progression
Label: Solid State Records
Release Date: 4/17/12

These remixes give a little more electronic flavor to the Christian metal band, highlighting their strong use of melody, layers, and structure. It’s an interesting intersection of genres that works pretty well.

Buy on Amazon

Artist: Marvin Sapp
Album: I Win
Label: Verity Records
Release Date: 3/30/12

Marvin has been one of the more popular acts in the gospel genre for some time, and this album debuted at #9 on the Billboard 200. It’s not really my style, and didn’t really stand out to me from other gospel I’ve heard. It’s got a choir directed by Marvin singing upbeat tunes with confident lyrics about overcoming troubles.

Buy on Amazon

Artist: Sucré
Album: A Minor Bird
Label: Red Velvet
Release Date: 4/10/12

This is a MuteMath/Eisley side project by married musicians Darren and Stacey King. It’s the charming melancholy of Eisley mixed with the simple folky delight of She & Him and the symphonic grandeur of Imogen Heap. It’s less energetic than MuteMath, but it doesn’t hold back King’s percussive creativity, either.

Buy on Amazon

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

Say It – 2007 – N/A
The Lost Get Found – 2009 – #62 (7,000)
Gold – 2012 – #41 (10,000)

tobyMac’s remix album hit #52. His last two “regular” albums have hit the top 10, but this is a career-best for a remix album:

Re:Mix Momentum – 2003 – N/A
Renovating Diverse City – 2004 – #162
Dubbed & Freq’d: A Remix Project – 2012 – #52

Another CCM artist, Sidewalk Prophets, had a nice debut at #83. I can’t tell if their previous releases charted or not, but I think there’s a pretty good chance this is also a career-best for them.

We also have Jimmy Needham coming in at #128.

Speak – 2006 – N/A
Not Without Love – 2008 – N/A
Nightlights – 2010 – #136
Clear The Stage – 2012 – #128

Here are the selected sales for artists in the top 200:

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

The latest Newsboys album has crossed the 100,000 mark. Casting Crowns will cross the 400,000 mark next week.

The latest from Casting Crowns will hit 400,000 copies soon.

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

Everything Glorious – 2006 – #69
God of This City – 2008 – #72
Awakening – 2010 – #15 -(25,000)
Here For You – 2011 – #11 – (30,000)
White Flag – 2012 – #5 (48,000)

Dave Barnes hits #59 with his new album Stories To Tell. It looks like that tied his previous release. Some of Barnes’s chart history:

Brother, Bring the Sun – 2004 – N/A
Chasing Mississippi – 2006 – N/A
Me and You and the World – 2008 – #94
What We Want, What We Get – 2010 – #59
Stories to Tell – 2012 – #59

It looks like metal band Impending Doom had their best release to date.

Nailed. Dead. Risen – 2007 – N/A
The Serpent Servant – 2009 – #144
There Will Be Violence – 2010 – #123
Baptized in Filth – 2012 – #106

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

Unbreakable – 2008 – N/A
For Those Who Wait – 2010 – #96
Now – 2012 – #51

Rapper Flame also debuts at #67. As best I can tell Flame’s albums have been hitting the Christian charts for many years but this is his first to debut in the overall Top 200.

Also, last week I missed the debut from Kutless at #36, their first album inside the top 40 after ten years of work. Kutless’s charting history:

Kutless – 2002
Sea of Faces – 2004 – #97
Strong Tower – 2005 – #87
Hearts of the Innocent – 2006 – #45
To Know That You’re Alive – 2008 – #64
It Is Well – 2009 – #42
Believer – 2012 – #36 (14,000)

(For whatever reason, Soundscan includes sales from Christian outlets in their weekly totals that determine the Billboard 200 chart positions, but they don’t include them in their reported totals. So I just add up all the weekly totals and compare them to the reported totals to see how many sales are missing from Christian outlets.)

Casting Crowns is sailing past 380,000 copies of their latest. Newsboys may hit 100,000 soon with theirs. Lecrae’s Rehab sneaks back into the chart this week, although I haven’t been following it long enough to know what its true sales might be.