The first part of Peter Rollins’ Insurrection was an exposition of the crucifixion as definitive of the Christian life (see part 1 of my review here).
Next, he turns to resurrection.
This is the part of the books that elicited the strongest reactions from me, both positive and negative.
I knew I was going to have problems with the chapter when its epigram read:
“I am God,” says love. -Marguerite Porete
God is love. Love is not God. This is a fatal mistake that haunts the chapter. It begins well, however.
Rollins leads us through the realization that we tell stories about ourselves. We have ideas about ourselves. But these do not match the reality of what we do. The true us, Rollins argues, is found in what we do; the explanation of what explains our actual actions is a more realistic depiction of us that the ways we idealize or even demonize who we are and what matters to us and what motivates us.
We say that we know money and a larger house and a different neighborhood will not make us happy, and yet we devote all our time and energy to obtaining those things. Which is the real us? The one 
that says she does not believe it? Or the one who acts like she does?
This part of the book is pure gold. It helps put more meat on an assertion that I make regularly: the hardest part of preaching is convincing people that the message is calling them to repentance. We tell ourselves stories about who we are and what we believe, blind to the fact that our lives belie every bit of it. We need stories to unmask our self-deceit.
Rollins argues in compelling fashion that “our actions do not fall short of our beliefs–our actions are are beliefs.”
Ch. 7 is where things get more complex.
Rollins articulates here the best of what biblical scholarship will tell you as well: the kingdom of God, and even eternal life, are not categories simply about the future, but categories about a transformed here and now that we are called to participate in.
But Rollins mistakes the presence of the transcendent God within our world for the falsehood of the idea of a continued transcendence. And he mistakes the presence of the kingdom here and now for the falsehood of the idea of a future and perfect reign.
The biblical narrative maintains a tension between the already and the not yet, as well as between the immanent and the transcendent. This dialectic is lost in Insurrection.
Thus, I find myself celebrating much of what Rollins affirms–because presence and realization are central to the gospel. And yet I find myself parting ways with Rollins in what he denies–because transcendence and futurity are core components to the gospel as well.
Here’s the problem, that manifests in the chapter, with confusing the statement “God is love” with its pagan counterpart, “Love is God.” This confuses God with the activity and attribute of God; it invites us, in fact, to worship and serve the creature–better, our own creation–rather than the creator.
In Rollins’s words, “God is the name we give to the way of living in which we experience the world as worthy of living for, fighting for, and dying for.”
God is a label of value we append to what we find beautiful in the world. God is an idol of our own making, rather than a being who is at work to make the world worthy of living for, fighting for, dying for. Far from a splitting of hairs, labeling God aright in relationship to the creation is the difference between Christianity being a projection of our imaginations, or a reality in which we are called by Another to participate, the difference between true (all of life-)worship, and idolatry.
Thus, while Rollins rightly challenges us with his claim that we cannot claim to love God while hating our neighbor, Christianity can never ground this on the claim that God is the love that exists between one person and another.
Heeding Rollins’ urgent pleas, we will find ourselves more invested in the world, never guilty of that classic failure of being so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good. But we must so engage the world with the understanding that the kingdom is God’s and not ours, and that there is a future for this world because the resurrected Lord is at work in it here and now.
