Tag: fate

Love Wins: Book Review (aka Cliff Notes Analysis)

~ K ~ 7 Comments

On Goodreads, I gave Rob Bell’s book Love Wins three stars. I might have given it 2.5 if I had the option.

I went through a detailed chapter-by-chapter analysis (but not as thorough as I would’ve liked to be!) outlining some of the issues I had in the book. Let’s see if it’s possible to recap:

Preface: Raises more questions than it answers, book has no notes, footnotes, endnotes, or bibliography. Further reading doesn’t cut it.

Chapter 1: Questions about heaven and hell that are set-up for the rest of the book.

Chapter 2: Heaven is a place on earth. God will eventually redeem and restore this broken world.

Chapter 3: Bell says Gehenna was really the city dump in Jesus’ day. Not a spiritual place of eternal torment. Bell says people can still reject God in the afterlife but leaves the door open for eventual repentance. He introduces an idea similar to purgatory in Catholicism. Then he says everyone will eventually be reconciled to God.

Chapter 4: Bell asks: Does God get what God wants?  What is it that God wants? “‘God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim. 2).” Bell says contradicts himself in this chapter by saying that yes, some people believe God gets what He wants through eventual universal reconciliation and restoration but that God’s love allows for the freedom to reject him if someone wishes to do so. He adds that people don’t need to believe in the traditional doctrine of hell to be a Christian and that people can assume there’s a chance for repentance in the future.

Chapter 5: Bell tells his readers that Jesus dying on the cross and rising again the third day was a very beautiful thing. Don’t mar this beauty with nasty talk of eternal exclusivity via the traditional view of hell.

Chapter 6: Bell says that (since Paul says that) Jesus was present in the rock that Moses struck to give water to the Israelities, so Jesus is present in anywhere or anything. He also puts forward the odd idea of reverse universalism which posits that Jesus is present in all paths (ie, Jesus can be Mohammad for Muslims, Vishnu for Hindus, or nirvana for Buddhists).

Chapter 7: Using the template of the parable of the prodigal son (or the two sons), Bell says that we will all be at a party/celebration (heaven) and we can choose to exhibit negative attitudes and vices (hell) during the party if we want to. We can reject the Father’s love.

Chapter 8: Bell reminds his readers that people can miss out on rewards, celebrations, and opportunities and that love wins.

(And no, I would not have been able to do the summary above had I not done the analyses first.)

Love Wins Analysis: Chapter 2: Here Is the New There

~ K ~ 2 Comments

[This is part III of a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins.]

“First,
heaven.”

Image from onceuponacross.blogspot.com

“I show you this painting because, as surreal as it is, the fundamental story it tells about heaven—that it is somewhere else—is the story that many people know to be the Christian story.”

The painting above isn’t the black-and-white replica that Bell has in his book but it’s pretty close and retained the same ideas.

Bell’s point in Chapter 2 is to challenge the reader’s conceptions about heaven and all that they’ve heard or think (or know) to be true. He references the parable of the rich man who wants to know how to get eternal life. According to Bell:

“When the man asks about getting ‘eternal life,’ he isn’t asking about how to go to heaven when he dies. This wasn’t a concern for the man or Jesus. This is why Jesus doesn’t tell people how to ‘go to heaven.’ It wasn’t what Jesus came to do.

Heaven, for Jesus, was deeply connected with what he called ‘this age’ and ‘the age to come.'”

Bell’s references to “this age” and “the age to come” become foundational to Love Wins:

“We might call them ‘eras’ or ‘periods of time’:
this age—the one we’re living in—and the age to come.

Another way of saying ‘life in the age to come’ in Jesus’s day was to say ‘eternal life.’ In Hebrew the phrase is olam habah.

What must I do to inherit olam habah?

This age,
and the one to come,
the one after this one.”

Bell defines ‘age’ further:

“Now, the English word ‘age’ here is the word aion in New Testament Greek. Aion has multiple meanings… One meaning of aion refers to a period of time, as in ‘The spirit of the age’ or ‘They were gone for ages.’ When we use the word ‘age’ like this, we are referring less to a precise measurement of time, like an hour or a day or a year, and more to a period or era of time. This is crucial to our understanding of the word aion, because it doesn’t mean ‘forever’ as we think of forever. When we say ‘forever,’ what we are generally referring to is something that will go on, 365-day year, never ceasing in the endless unfolding of segmented, measurable units of time, like a clock that never stops ticking. That’s not this word. The first meaning of this word aion refers to a period of time with a beginning and an end.

So according to Jesus there is this age, this aion—
the one they, and we, are living in—
and then a coming age,
also called ‘the world to come’
or simply ‘eternal life.'”

When Bell has paragraphs that meaty, they beg to be explored. Continue reading “Love Wins Analysis: Chapter 2: Here Is the New There” →

Love Wins Analysis: Chapter 1: What About the Flat Tire?

~ K ~ 2 Comments

[This is part II of a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins.]

Here is a summary of Chapter 1 for you:

For real. When I began reading Chapter 1, I thought to myself, I’ve read this already. No, I hadn’t. But I’d heard it before through Bell’s video dramatization. (Most of his speech is derived from Chapter 1.)

And so I breeze through Chapter 1 because yes, some of it I’ve heard before but then there are parts that make me wince:

  • Renee Altson’s experience of being raped by her father while reciting the Lord’s Prayer and assorted Christian hymns
  • The Eastern European Muslim who refuses to set foot in a Christian Church in America because the Christians in his country rounded up all the Muslims and executed them
  • The Christians who stand on a busy street corner with signs, screaming into bullhorns about judgment and hell

Bell goes through a list of possible things on how one gets to heaven. Actions? Behaviors? He even picks apart the “personal relationship with Jesus” answer that many Christians offer.

“The problem, however, is that the phrase “personal relationship” is found nowhere in the Bible.”

Bell has me in agreement with him on this issue. So far. Then he has to go and ruin it by saying the following:

“Nowhere in the Hebrew scriptures, nowhere in the New Testament. Jesus never used the phrase. Paul didn’t use it. Nor did John, Peter, James, or the woman who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews.”

Did you see how he ruined it for me? Continue reading “Love Wins Analysis: Chapter 1: What About the Flat Tire?” →

Love Wins Analysis: Introduction & Preface

~ K ~ 1 Comment

[This is a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins.]

I could say that I read 198 pages of a mind-bending Q & A & Q book. If Love Wins were a movie, it would be Inception.

Great script. Lots of confusion. And there’s never-ending speculation about how it ends.

I suppose I should warn readers that Love Wins isn’t my first experience with Rob Bell’s books. I read Velvet Elvis upon the recommendation of a friend and loved it so much that I bought my own copy. I hope to reread Velvet Elvis again next year, but I remember wanting to give it 5 stars because it was that good.

Love Wins… not so much. But not for the reasons you’d think or the ones that have been commonly cited.

  • Does Bell deny the existence of hell? Eh, kind of, not really.
  • Does Bell assert that Jesus is the only way to heaven? Well… yeah.
  • Is Bell a universalist? Eh… yes and no. That’s a loaded question that requires explanation and is never explained quite clearly (to me anyway).

The reason I nearly loathe Love Wins and probably will never read it again is… are you ready for this? Continue reading “Love Wins Analysis: Introduction & Preface” →