Love Wins - My Thoughts

After exploding the Christian Blog-world, Rob Bell’s newest book came out. I own and have read each of his previous 3 books. They were all good, not life-changing, but good.

I’ve seen most of the Nooma videos.

I want to say that I’m surprised with this latest turn for Rob Bell, but, quite frankly, I feel like President Bartlet when he found out that Toby was the leak.

He said that this sort of thing was “inevitable.”

In Velvet Elvis, Bell said that Christianity was like a trampoline; Jesus is like the mat, and theology is like the springs.

He said, not merely implied, but said that if you removed some springs, that was okay, Christianity would survive.

I think he was right, there are some springs on the trampoline of Christianity that can be removed or moved and Christianity, as a whole will be okay.

But, if you keep removing springs, you end up jumping on the ground, and the trampoline loses its effectiveness.

When discussing the “springs,” Bell mentioned specifically the Virgin Birth as one that could be removed. This was the start down a road that Evangelicals didn’t want to travel down.

Just as Bartlet said to Ziegler, this sort of thing was inevitable.

At some point, Bell, if you keep removing springs, then what you’re promoting will no longer be Christianity.

Now, having read the book, I can say that it’s not nearly as controversial as people thought it would be.

The basic concept is that heaven and hell are realities that you can experience here on Earth. And, if we’re going to be honest, that’s true, sort of.

Because, heaven and hell are realities based on your connection to God. So, in essence, when you’re connected to God, it’s like experiencing heaven on earth. Haven’t you ever been a part of a really great worship service and thought that you must have just experienced something of what heaven’s like?

For Bell, heaven is a great big, socially just, green movement.

Hell, then, is the opposite. It’s consumerist, not environmentally friendly, and void of social justice.

And so, we can agree that given those definitions of heaven and hell, we understand why there’s a possibility of heaven (or hell) on earth.

However, at that point, my support for the thoughts in Love Wins ends.

Bell treats the Holy Scriptures like an essay, written by a college professor. He rips quotations out of their context to say what he wants, and he cuts and pastes the Scripture portions that he does use. (This is the way we’d treat an essay, we’d cut and paste the quotations for our own essay)

In all of the books I’ve read, I’ve never seen someone do that to the Bible. It’s as if he’s saying, “here check out this quote I found in the Bible, but I’m going to remove something from the middle of it.”

We do not do that to the Bible.

That’s one of the most important lessons I learned in college, we use entire Scriptures to teach from, and it’s this insistence that we don’t just yank verses out of their context that helps us to stop from proof-texting and reading into the Bible things that we want it to say as opposed to what it actually says.

Rob Bell focuses on very small portions of Scripture that say what he wants it to say, and then breezes over and past great big chunks of Scripture that would really harm his viewpoint. (This is incredibly evident in Chapter 3, most notably pages 68-69)

His explanation of Lazarus and the Rich Man is extremely shallow and leaves much to be desired.

I suppose we should be grateful to Bell, he’s opened up dialogue. That’s essentially what we want to do. This new movement of Christians (or Christ-Followers), if nothing else, wants to know that we can talk about anything. And, they’re right. We should be able to talk about all parts of Christianity and approach with an open mind. That’s a good thing.

However, we need to guard our theology. We have to.

It wasn’t until page 110 that I really had a problem. Bell implies that Christianity is a story. And he says that the story that people have been telling, that many, many people are destined for eternal, conscious separation from God is not a good story.

You’re right, it’s not a good story. It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to point us to the good story. The story that we don’t have to be slaves to our sin.

The story that Christ is bigger than death. He’s bigger than our sin. He’s the mighty conqueror of the grave.

That is the good story.

And the end of that episode of The West Wing seems to play out, Bartlet says to Toby: “When you walk out of here, there'll be people out there, perhaps a great many, who'll think of you as a hero. I just don't for a moment want you thinking I'll be one of them.”

To Rob Bell, I was on your team, but I’m not anymore. And there are a great many people who think this book has revolutionized the way Christians should think about heaven and hell and that you must be some sort of enlightened genius to have figured this out.

I’m not one of them.

I’m not angry with Bell and I won’t be protesting at Mars Hill. I’m just moving on, in my own way. And since this is my blog, I decided to post about it here.

Love Wins.

Twitter and the Blogosphere are up in arms today about a new book by one of my favorite authors, Rob Bell. The book is called “Love Wins” and he’s released a video promo to go with the book.

John Piper and Josh Harris, also authors, have publicly criticized the notion behind the video.

Pastor/Author Mark Driscoll has subtly made comments about the book/video.

Justin Taylor, who I never heard of before this made a great comment on his blog about this video and book.

My friend Travis has made a comment about the comments regarding the book and video.

Someone on my facebook commented, “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Someone else mentioned the narrow gate and the deception that would lead people astray.

And some people, myself included, have said, “I want to read the book first.”

So, I preface my thoughts with that, I want to read the book first.

However, the video is worth talking about. Yes, some of the questions that Bell is asking are rhetorical, and I wouldn’t argue that some of the questions he’s asking are meant to have “yes” answers and some are meant to have “no” answers.

The age-old question that we’ve been talking about for centuries is this: what happens to us when we die?

The Bible makes it clear. There is a heaven. There is a hell.

Some people will go to heaven, most will not. There is no in-between here. There isn’t a third, middle-ground eternity. Either you’re in, or you’re out.

The problem is that this type of thought has come under fire as non-inclusive, divisive and hate-filled. Because, how can a God who loves everyone send people to hell? This is a question that Bell asks in his video, and one that is echoed by throngs of people who don’t want to believe that they could possibly be heading for eternity in a place of torture.

Can I just put it bluntly? If everyone gets to go to heaven, if nobody has to go to hell, then Jesus death was for nothing. The sacrifice that Christ made on the Cross is useless without that fact.

We live in a world that is bathed in sin. We see it every single day. Every single one of us is born into a hopeless, sinful existence. Every single person.

But God’s grace is so much that we don’t have to receive what we deserve.

God’s love always wins. And God’s grace always wins.

But Jesus is extremely clear, not everyone who thinks they have received God’s grace has actually received it.

There are thousands, millions of people on this planet who are believing a lie.

Rob Bell, you’ve always come at us like you were painting Christianity with a different brush. This was a movement that I’ve always been for. We don’t need to look the same as we did 50, 100, 1000 years ago. We just don’t.

But the Bible is truth, friend. Jesus, Peter, Paul and the Church Fathers all told us these things. There is a heaven. There is a hell. Some make it to heaven. Most don’t.

It’s the harsh reality of the condition of sin.

Do. Not. Compromise.

We do not need to compromise the truth. If the book is anything like the video, Rob, I’m out. I hope I’m wrong and that the points in the video are meant to stir up conversation and get people talking about the book so that when people read it you point people in the right direction.

Galatians 1:8 - “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned.”

Let’s be cautious in what we accept and we we tolerate from Christian leaders. Sin is always sin. But, God’s grace is so much bigger than all our sin.

(God’s) love (always) wins.