I haven’t posted on this blog in a long time, and it’s mainly because I haven’t had anything of consequence to say. I like to post when I have profound things to spout, and that hasn’t been the case in the past few weeks/months. Elections have come and gone (I knew Obama would win re-election), disasters have come and gone (Sandy hit NY and NJ hard), and places have come and gone (I’m no longer at the library where I first began my library job).
I’ve taken to writing nearly daily in a bound journal. I don’t know that it’s always cathartic, but it is very helpful to my ability to sort my feelings out about different matters. Take, for instance, God.
I received Anne Lamott’s Help, Thanks, Wow book from Barnes & Noble today. Yay! I read it in just over an hour. She refers to God as some sort of maternal deity but I like the paternal-ness of the Bible. That might be because I miss my own father.
What did I learn? There are three essential prayers: help, thanks, and wow. I’d agree with this, if for nothing else, in the texting age, it is much easier and more succinct to communicate those three words than to write out the entire Lord’s Prayer. I believe “wow” acknowledges the greatness and awesomeness of God while “thanks” expresses our gratitude. Then “help” is our supplication. We are asking—maybe even begging—for an answer to our request.
Perhaps I’ve written about this before—probably likely on a blog—but God answers all prayers with the following answers: Yes, No, Not Yet. Not Yes is where [my husband] and I are in our prayer for a child. No is God’s answer to me becoming a successful, let alone GOOD singer. Yes is God’s answer to me being able to freelance.
Not Yet is the most common answer from God, I believe, because He rarely answers prayer definitively right away. Our prayer for a child isn’t necessarily “no,” it’s “not yet.” For four years, God’s answer to [a friend] who sought a full-time position of employment was “not yet.” Clearly His answer was not “no” or [he] would not be gainly employed right now. But not yet can feel a lot like “no.” And in some ways, it is “no”—for the time being. God has said no to J and I for the time being about having a child. But it’s a synonym for not yet. This I believe.
I kinda went on a tangent about prayer and getting it answered, but I’ve probably said before, I’m not as orthodox about God as I used to be. … But is it OK to think that God is maternal? Like an Aunt Jemima, pancake-flippin’ black lady with an apron on as depicted in The Shack? I guess so. Why not right? Male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27). God’s got to have some maternal in him to create females, right? And all humans are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
[Next entry]
I don’t think I got around to writing about what I wanted to write about yesterday: how I feel about God. I do believe Jesus is the only way to heaven but apart from that, all hell could break loose. I believe in love. Whether it’s Adam and Eve or Adam and Steve. I don’t believe Catholicism is a one-way ticket to hell. Female ministers are not the worse things in Christendom. And go ahead and baptize little babies if that’s your fancy. I’m a liberal. Oh noes! I believe in developing one’s spirituality. Jesus Christ and him glorified. But at what cost? I don’t believe in beating my coworkers over the head with proselytizing (like I used to).
I’ve come so far from my emergent church posts. Maybe I’m Rob Bell-ish now. Maybe Love Wins. Maybe I can refer to God as her. (Although I probably won’t.)
All I really know for certain is love is all there is. —Sheryl Crow
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.)
A few quotes from Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins, that resonated with me on some level.
“So when people say they don’t believe in hell and they don’t like the word ‘sin,’ my first response is to ask, ‘Have you sat and talked with a family who just found out their child has been molested? Repeatedly? Over a number of years? By a relative?’
Some words are strong for a reason. We need those words to be that intense, loaded, complex, and offensive, because they need to reflect the realities they describe.” (p. 72)
“Often the people most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned with the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death.” (p. 79)
“I have sat with many Christian leaders over the years who are burned out, washed up, fried, whose marriages are barely hanging on, whose kids are home while the parents are out at church meetings, who haven’t taken a vacation in forever—all because, like the older brother, they have seen themselves as ‘slaving all these years.’ They believe that they believe the right things and so they’re ‘saved,’ but it hasn’t delivered the full life that it was supposed to, and so they’re bitter. Deep down, they believe God has let them down. Which is often something they can’t share with those around them, because they are the leaders who are supposed to have it all together. And so they quietly suffer, thinking this is the good news.
It is the gospel of the goats,
and it is lethal.
God is not a slave driver.
The good news is better than that.” (p. 181)
[This is the FINAL part of a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins.]
Indeed, the end is here! And I know you and I are probably both glad for it.
Bell gives his testimony of how he came to know God’s love and invites his readers to trust God and that “the love we fear is too good to be true is actually good enough to be true.” Bell reminds his readers that the decisions they make today will impact the future, the hereafter.
This invitation to trust asks for nothing more than this moment, and yet it is infinitely urgent. Jesus told a number of stories about this urgency in which things did not turn out well for the people involved. One man buries the treasure he’s been entrusted with instead of doing something with it and as a result he’s “thrown outside into the darkness.” Five foolish wedding attendants are unprepared for the late arrival of the groom and then end up turned away from the wedding with the chilling words “Truly, I tell you, I don’t know you.” Goats are sent “away” to a different place than the sheep, tenants of a vineyard have it taken from them, and weeds that grew alongside wheat are eventually harvested and “tied in bundles to be burned.”
This paragraph begs for an explanation, begs for elaboration because of all the images and stories presented here. But Bell only offers this:
These are strong, shocking images of judgment and separation in which people miss out on rewards and celebrations and opportunities.
Bell glosses over the striking imagery presented in each of the parables he quickly presents, completely ignoring the deeper meaning and symbolism that lies in each because the explanation wouldn’t support his purpose in writing the book. It’s a shame because that large paragraph (not typical for Bell; I’ve done my best to adhere to his short line breaks) prompts more questions than Bell will ever be inclined to answer.
Love is why I’ve written this book, and
love is what I want to leave you with.
I walked away from this book with more frustration and unanswered questions rather than love and peace the fills the soul.
[This is part XIII of a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins.]
Image from covdevotions2010.blogspot.com
Heading into Chapter 7, the reader gets the sense that Bell is wrapping things up. He details the parable of the Prodigal Son very much in Tim Keller-like style, giving equal attention to the elder and young brothers. But then he also focuses on the attributes of the father in how he dealt with his sounds:
The father redefines fairness. … Grace and generosity aren’t fair; that’s their very essence. The father sees the young brother’s return as one more occasion to practice unfairness. The younger son doesn’t deserve a party—that’s the point of the party. That’s how things work in the father’s world. Profound unfairness.
The odd thing as I read that is that well, yes, I agree. God is unfair. And somehow I see this as evidence that bolsters a Reformed theologian’s argument rather than Bell’s idea of religious universalism.
People get what they don’t deserve.
Bell and I still agree.
Parties are thrown for younger brothers who squander their inheritance.
I put on brakes here not because I disagree with the statement as it’s written, but I worry that the implication is that it’s okay to “squander” an inheritance because a party gets thrown anyway. (Romans 6 warns against this.)
As Bell continues to develop his idea of this widely known parable (shifting away from Keller), Bell seems to redefine “hell” as a person living in the enslavement of his or her own selfish attitudes and vices in the presence of a loving and generous God.
Jesus puts the older brother right there at the party, but refusing to trust the father’s version of the story. Refusing to join in the celebration.
Hell is being at the party.
That’s what makes it so hellish.
… In this story, heaven and hell are within each other,
intertwined, interwoven, bumping up against each other.
If the older brother were off, alone in a distant field,
sulking and whining about how he’s been a slave all these years and never even had a goat to party with his friend with, he would be alone in his hell.
But in the story Jesus tells, he’s at the party, with the music in the background and the celebration going on right there in front of him.
Later on, Bell says:
We create hell whenever we fail to trust God’s retelling of the story.
The odd thing is, I see Bell’s connection. But I fear that his conclusion is simply just a leap. This idea is not easily pulled from the text, and when you frame the parable of the prodigal son in the context of a book on heaven, hell, and fate, sure, it somewhat makes sense. But out of the context of Love Wins (and in context of the rest of the Bible), I don’t know that Bell’s interpretation of the story holds up. And therefore, ultimately, I think it falls apart as a whole.
Bell later on admits that people who reject God do suffer punishment:
We’re at the party,
but we don’t have to join in.
Heaven or hell.
Both at the party.
… To reject God’s grace,
to turn from God’s love,
to resist God’s telling [of our story],
will lead to misery.
It is a form of punishment, all on its own.
This is an important distinction, because in talking about what God is like, we cannot avoid the realities of God’s very essence, which is love. It can be resisted and rejected and denied and avoided, and that will bring another reality. Now, and then.
We are that free.
This is the part where I imagine Reformed Christians chafing at the collar at that last statement. But Bell continues on to unequivocally state that yes, hell exists and people can create it. But I fear Bell is too equivocal in what that hell is (negative attitudes and vices).
When people say they’re tired of hearing about “sin” and “judgment” and “condemnation,” it’s often because those have been confused for them with the nature of God. God has no desire to inflict pain or agony on anyone.
God extends an invitation to us,
and we are free to do with it is [sic] as we please.
Saying yes will take us in one direction;
saying no will take us in another.
… We do ourselves great harm when we confuse the very essence of God, which is love, with the very real consequences of rejecting and resisting that love, which creates what we call hell.
I’ll end this chapter analysis with a quote I liked (in light of the parable of the two sons):
Our badness can separate us from God’s love,
that’s clear.
But our goodness can separate us from God’s love as well.
Neither son understands that the father’s love was never about any of that. The father’s love cannot be earned, and it cannot be taken away.
After rambling on some random rabbit trail about “mystics” and the “Force,” Bell asserts that “Jesus is bigger than any one religion.”
Ah, durr. But then we get to Jesus’ claim in John 14 of being “the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Remember that acquaintance of mine I quoted from Goodreads who said that she encountered people more hung up on this statement than on hell? I said I agreed with her.
What he doesn’t say is how, or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through him.
John 3, John 16.
He doesn’t even state that those coming to the Father through him will ever know that they are coming exclusively through him.
John 14:6-7; John 17.
He simply claims that whatever God is doing in the world to know and redeem and love and restore the world is happening through him.”
I agree with the overall idea of the statement but I’m not sure it’s as “simplistic” as Bell makes it sound. Jesus has consistently proven to be accessible to the multitudes in a simple manner with a highly complex undertone in his parables and teaching—so complex that even the disciples who were with him rarely “got” what he was speaking of without Jesus having to explain himself first. So let’s watch Bell tackle Jesus’ bold statement of being the only way to God using mental gymnastics (because really that’s what it feels like to me).
And so the passage is exclusive, deeply so, insisting on Jesus alone as the way to God. But it is an exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity.
Dude, what?!
After explaining that exclusivity defines the traditional view of hell (“in or out”) and inclusivity is universalism (all roads lead to the same God), Bell says:
And there is an exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity. This kind insists that Jesus is the way, but holds tightly to the assumption that the all-embracing, saving love of this particular Jesus the Christ will of course include all sorts of unexpected people from across the cultural spectrum.
As soon as the door is opened to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Baptists from Cleveland, many Christians become very uneasy, saying that then Jesus doesn’t matter anymore, the cross is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter what you believe, and so forth.
Not true.
Absolutely, unequivocally, unalterably not true.
What Jesus does is declare that he,
and he alone,
is saving everybody.
And then he leave the door way, way open. Creating all sorts of possibilities. He is as narrow as himself and as wide as the universe.
He is as exclusive as himself and as inclusive as containing every single particle of creation.
Bell is careful to write “Jesus is the way” omitting the oft-used word “only” or forgoing the italicization of “the.” (Just an observation. Jesus does not use the word “only” here although one could argue that it’s implied.) The problem here, which Bell raises by bringing in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc., is that Bell affirms Jesus is present in all of these different religions that claim to be salvation or divine attainment in some form. It’s like reverse religious universalism, in a way. Instead of all paths leading to the same God, Bell appears to be saying that Jesus is present in all of these paths.
So Jesus is the prophet Mohammad to Islam.
Jesus is nirvana—the place of Enlightenment.
Jesus is Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, Shakti, or any of the number of Hindu gods.
For some reason, this idea seems really offensive to me. As if Jesus isn’t accessible in his own form, in his own way, he must materialize in different forms like a shape-shifter of the universe. I think I’d be just as offended if a Muslim told me that Mohammed was a shape-shifter who appears as Judeo-Christian Messiah to bring salvation to Jews and Western Gentiles. My mind can’t fully grasp the idea Bell is throwing out here.
Again, we’re back to religious universalism: yes, all paths do lead to the same God because as Bell seems to say since Jesus is present in all these religions, everyone in these religions reaches the same God.
It’s the most astounding mental gymnastics I’ve ever encountered.
Jehovah God, the Old Testament God was clear that many of the gods and idols that non-Israelites set up were not Him and that He was not present or blessing any of those rituals. (“Baal” is a notable god that Jehovah had a special holy hatred for.) Jehovah was pretty exclusive about that.
But the inclusivity on the side of exclusivity is that He was willing to draft Gentiles who were willing to believe in him (Rahab, Ruth, and Job being prominent examples).
There’s your mental gymnastics from me, but I think Bell wins the gold medal in this competition.
So how does any of this explanation of who Jesus is and what he’s doing connect with heaven, hell, and the fate of every single person who has ever lived?
Bell’s essential answer is that since Jesus is everywhere and in everything, believers in Christ need not worry about the eternal destination of others because “God’s got this.” (Not a Bell quote.)
We are not threatened by this,
surprised by this,
or offended by this.
Sometimes people use his name;
other times they don’t.
I agree that Jesus can be encountered in different ways by different people and perhaps he may not even be known to some people as Jesus or Yeshua. But we must also consider that Jesus warned his disciples about false prophets in Matthew 7 and Matthew 24 (speaking of exclusivity, one of those verses has Jesus mentioning “the elect” whoever and whatever that means).
So while “none of us have cornered the market on Jesus, and none of us ever will,” I don’t believe Jesus was as vague or confusing with his statements as Bell makes him out to be. I do, however, wholeheartedly agree with the following quote from Bell:
It is our responsibility to be extremely careful about making negative, decisive, lasting judgments about people’s eternal destines.
So is Gandhi in hell? Do we know this for certain? No, I don’t think we do. But we can all hazard guesses for now.
Additional note:
Bell goes on to say that Jesus says “he ‘did not come to judge the world, but to save the world’ (John 12)” but if you continue to read on in that same passage, Jesus speaks of an ultimate judge (the assumption from other Biblical texts is God the Father) who issues judgment or (as the NIV puts it) condemnation. Another way Bell is able to raise questions and ably dodge them because his readers are unable to ask all of the questions he raises by completely ignoring their existence.
[This is part XI of a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins. Note: Chapter 6 is two parts.]
Image from communities.canada.com
I really want to push through chapter 6 for fear I’ll dwell here for days on end like I did with chapters 3 and 4 (which were major chapters really), but I do have a few things I want to point out and we’ll see where things take us.
Bell is pretty straightforward in this chapter, and as the title says, Bell indeed talks about rocks. He details the story in Exodus 17 in which the Israelities are thirsty and can’t find water. God tells Moses to strike the rock and the rock produces water. Bell and his readers jump to I Corinthians 10 in which Paul explains to his audience that “those who traveled out of Egypt ‘drank from the spiritual rock that accompanies them, and that rock was Christ.'”
Paul, however, reads another story in the story, insisting that Christ was present in that moment, that Christ was providing the water they needed to survive—that Jesus was giving, quenching, sustaining.
Jesus was, he says, the rock.
According to Paul,
Jesus was there.
Without anybody using his name.
Without anybody saying that it was him.
Without anybody acknowledging just what—or, more precisely, who—it was.
… Paul finds Jesus there,
in that rock,
because Paul finds Jesus everywhere.
From this brief passage, one gets the sense that Bell is making two points here:
The Israelites were saved in the wilderness by Christ who is the “living water” (John 4:10-15), which Bell really could’ve and, in order to strengthen his argument, should’ve mentioned here. Before the Israelites even knew who was saving them from physical death, the Messiah was already present providing them with the water of life.
Christ can be present in nearly anything, anywhere; the implication being that the saving work of Christ can be present in almost any form. This starts to get loaded.
Here’s the deleted portion of the previous passage:
Paul’s interpretation that Christ was present in the Exodus raises the question:
Where else has Christ been present?
When else?
With who else?
How else?
This opens up a can of worms, in a way. In Velvet Elvis, Bell is careful to show that Paul finds secular truth in Greek philosophy and poetry and doesn’t hesitate to incorporate it into one of his sermons.
[Paul] is speaking at a place called Mars Hill (which would be a great name for a church) and trying to explain to a group of people who believe in hundreds of thousands of gods that there is really only one God who made everything and everybody. At one point he’s talking about how God made us all, and he says to them, “As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offering.'” (ENDNOTE!: Acts 17:28) He quotes their own poets. And their poets don’t even believe in the God he’s talking about. They were talking about some other god and how we are all the offspring of that god, and Paul takes their statement and makes it about his God. Amazing.
Paul doesn’t just affirm the truth here; he claims it for himself. He doesn’t care who said it or who they were even saying it about. What they said was true, and so he claims it as his own.” (Velvet Elvis, p. 079)
And I’m with Bell with the ability to affirm truth wherever it is because God exhibits truth and truth is an extension of God.
But I tread carefully on the ability to find Jesus’ saving work in anything because God can do anything and use anything He pleases for salvation. But the Bible is clear that God isn’t present in everything so Bell’s questions make me a bit iffy on the ways Christ has been present, can be present, and in what ways he can be present. I won’t make any definitive assertions except to say that while I don’t believe God is present in sin or evil, He can (and often does!) use the outcome for good that can lead to salvation.
Jesus died and rose again. As a result of that action, he has forever reconciled us to God the Father.
This is not controversial stuff.
As a result, there’s not much that I need to ponder over or challenge because in this chapter, Bell lays out Jesus’ sacrifice and he does it in a way that is typically Bell-esque: with original analogies and beautiful images. (When Bell says something clearly, it’s like bursting into a magnificent, clear blue sky after having endured dark shadows and lingering gray storm clouds.)
Bell makes an interesting point that I’ve never heard of before (but find interesting): he speaks of John (the Gospel writer) numbering signs all throughout his gospel. In John 11, Lazarus’s resurrection from the dead is the seventh sign of Jesus outlined in the gospel.
Now ask: Is the number seven significant in the Bible?
Does it occur in any other prominent place?
Well, yes, it does. In the poem that begins the Bible. The poem speaks of seven days of creation.
But there’s one more sign in John’s Gospel. In chapter 20 Jesus rises from the dead. Now that’s a sign. The eighth sign in the book of John. Jesus rises from the dead in a garden. Which, of course, takes us back to Genesis, to the first creation in a . . . garden.
I’d never thought of things that way. Reading that blew my mind. Either John was a very clever fiction writer or God is the most amazing storyteller I’ve ever read.
What is John telling us?
It’s the eighth sign, the first day of the new week, the first day of the new creation. The resurrection of Jesus inaugurates a new creation, one free from death, and it is bursting forth in Jesus himself right here in the midst of the first creation.
… John is telling a huge story,
one about God rescuing all of creation.
I love it. John continually points his readers back to Genesis, constantly linking Jesus to God the Father, Creator of all things from the get-go (Jn 1:1) and here it is even in the final chapters of John and I totally missed it. It’s beautiful to see.
As I’m breathless and taken away by this beauty of discovering the symbolism in everything Jesus does, Bell kind of ruins it for me in “wait-a-minute-this-is-a-book-about-heaven-hell-and-the-fate-of-every-person-who-ever-lived-moment.”
How many people, if you were to ask them why they’ve left church, would give an answer something along the lines of, “It’s just so . . . small”?
No one I know really. They’d have tons of other reasons but it wouldn’t be that.
Of course.
A gospel that leaves out its cosmic scope will always feel small.
A gospel that has as its chief message avoiding hell or not sinning will never be the full story.
A gospel that repeatedly, narrowly affirms and bolsters the “in-ness” of one group at the expense of the “out-ness” of another group will not be true to the story that includes “all things and people in heaven and on earth.”
And I think to myself, this is not the gospel. No one I know or have ever heard in Biblical Protestantism (ok, and Anabaptism) preaches a message like this. (I’m not sure whether to classify this as a false dichotomy.) The main message of the gospel, which can often be “ye must be born again,” is always Christ and Him crucified.
Why was Christ crucified? To reconcile us to God. Why do we need to be reconciled to God? That’s a question, or more accurately, a tension we can be free to leave fully intact.
[This is part IX of a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins. Note: Chapter 4 has been broken up into four parts. Chapter 4, part I can be found here, part II can be found here, and part III can be found here.]
Let’s work on closing out Chapter 4 of this book.
“Many people find Jesus compelling, but don’t follow him, because of the parts about ‘hell and torment and all that.’ Somewhere along the way they were taught that the only option when it comes to Christian faith is to clearly declare that a few, committed Christians will ‘go to heaven’ when they die and everyone else will not, the matter is settled at death, and that’s it. One place or the other, no looking back, no chance for a change of heart, make your bed now and lie in it . . . forever.
Not all Christians have believed this, and you don’t have to believe it to be a Christian. The Christian faith is big enough, wide enough, and generous enough to handle that vast a range of perspectives.“
“Speaking of Jesus, I don’t find many non-Christians that are hung up on the idea of hell. Most I know are hung up on the idea that Jesus is the only way. And that the Bible says seemingly contradictory things and you’d be stupid/silly to believe it. “
Doctrinally, I’d say that’s been my experience too. In general, I’d say non-Christians tend to be averse to Christianity because of the hypocrisy that runs rampant among many of its believers. (Side note: Tim Keller makes a great point in regard to why this behavior occurs among Christians in Chapter 4 of The Reason for God.)
As for the bolded part about not having to believe in eternal punishment/torment/hellfireandbrimstone to be a Christian, I start to get a little twitchy. Because even though the basic rule of being a Christian is being an obedient (“as best as you can”) follower of Jesus, there are all these doctrines and tenets that have kind of been hung around his neck as part of the package and it’s difficult to distinguish whether you can have Jesus without hell.
[This is part VIII of a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins. Note: Chapter 4 has been broken up into four parts. Chapter 4, part I can be found here and part II can be found here.]
The other issue I have with Bell here about the talk of restoration, renewal, and if you will, “second chances,” is that gives people no real need to come to Jesus. If all things will be restored in the end anyway, what does it matter if I murder someone I don’t like? Even if I get fried in the electric chair, I still eventually go to heaven maybe after a brief punishment for my sins.
Although hell is an unlikable place to be or to think about (if you take it seriously), the purpose of it is for judgment. When a criminal is deemed guilty in a court of law and sentenced to life in prison, he is sent to jail until death. Hell is the jail that never ends.
But let’s take a step back. And we’ve got to follow Bell’s suppositions (maybe? he is careful to never outright say he believes these things) about what ultimately brings God glory in the end: restoration, reconciliation, and renewal.
Think of a terrible, gruesome time during the 20th century. I’ll give you a hint of where I’m going with this: think of a specific dictator who murdered tens of millions of people. There are at least three you can choose from.
1 . . .
2 . . .
This is kind of like an annoying email forward now, isn’t it?
3.
I’ll choose Hitler since Stalin and Tse-Tung (Zedong) don’t seem to strike the same kind of terror into Westerners’ hearts.
Adolf Hitler is estimated to be responsible for at least 12 million murders during World War II. When Hitler shot himself in the head on April 30, 1945, his soul plunged into eternity.
Now, tell me:do you think it brings God more glory to simply excuse such heinous and irresponsible actions and allow Hitler into heaven on the basis of restoration and reconciliation or does it bring God more glory to judge Hitler and punish him for the atrocities he committed while he was on this earth? Because remember, he was never tormented in the way that he tormented so many others (not just the Jewish and the Polish but anyone who either opposed him or didn’t fit his ideal Aryan race).
Maybe I’m a cold, heartless bitch, but I want God to make Hitler pay for the things that he never had to pay for on earth. It’s a little disappointing to think that Hitler could toy with the lives of 12 million people and after death still be reconciled to God after maybe a “season” in hell.
God is God, and yes, He could totally restore Adolf Hitler to himself in the era of restoration to come, but I just don’t see humans (who would have exacted the harshest sentences possible on Hitler before executing him) being more lenient than God.
Then Bell says things that make me wonder, Does this jive with scripture?
“To be clear, again, an untold number of serious disciples of Jesus across hundreds of years have assumed, affirmed, and trusted that no one can resist God’s pursuit forever, because God’s love will eventually melt even the hardest of hearts.”
Maybe. But again, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it remains that way forever. I think specifically of Pharaoh who had a rather hard heart against the people of Israel who wanted to be freed and even “repented” (!) of his temporarily “melted” heart (after a series of wearying plagues) and decided to go after them as they made their way out of Egypt. The Bible gives no indication that Pharaoh ever repented of his re-hardened heart.
“Could God say to someone truly humbled, broken, and desperate for reconciliation, ‘Sorry, too late’? Many have refused to accept the scenario in which somebody is pounding on the door, apologizing, repenting, and asking God to be let in, only to hear God say through the keyhole: ‘Door’s locked. Sorry. If you have been here earlier, I could have done something. But now, it’s too late.’
As it’s written in 2 Timothy 2, God ‘cannot disown himself.'”
These many who have refused need to reread the Parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13. Not that I like the idea of a door being shut permanently, but if we’re going off of scripture, we have to seriously consider what it says.
“At the center of the Christian tradition since the first church have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God.”
And in Christianity, there are some people who choose not to directly align themselves with views they believe so that they may not be tied directly with these specific beliefs therefore they speak of themselves in generalities so that it is almost impossible to pin them down with what they believe.
[This is part VII of a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins. Note: Chapter 4 has been broken up into four parts. Chapter 4, part I can be found here.]
Image by dan | FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Bell continues to expound on the concept that “In the Bible, God is not helpless . . . powerless . . . and [not impotent].” Then he goes through a series of his Socratic questions about God’s attributes and why people were created. And he frames the discussion in a way where it’s either God gets what God wants by all people being saved or God doesn’t get what God wants because some do not.
“God in the end doesn’t get what God wants, it’s declared, because some will turn, repent, and believe, and others won’t. . . . Although we’re only scratching the surface of this perspective—the one that says we get this life and only this life to believe in Jesus—it is safe to say that this perspective is widely held and passionately defended by many in our world today.”
There’s your orthodox Christian view of hell.
“Others hold this perspective (that there is this lifetime and only this lifetime in which we all choose one of two possible futures), but they suggest a possibility involving the image of God in each of us.”
I have no idea what perspective this is. A Christian mystic perhaps?
“. . . And then there are others who can live with two destinations, two realities after death, but insist that there must be some kind of ‘second change’ for those who don’t believe in Jesus in this lifetime. . . . At the heart of this perspective is the belief that, given enough time, everybody will turn to God and find themselves in the joy and peace of God’s presence. The love of God will melt every hard heart, and even the most ‘depraved sinners’ will eventually give up their resistance and turn to God.”
Bell never comes right out and says it but the reader gets the sense that this is the view Bell aligns with. And this view sounds a bit like purgatory in the sense that there’s judgment for wrongs committed in this lifetime but that eventually God will soften a person’s heart and allow him or her to turn to God’s presence. It’s a nice view but one that I don’t see supported by the Bible despite Bell’s support of Jesus saying in Matthew 19 that “there will be a ‘renewal of all things’ and Paul in Colossians 1 says that through Christ “God was pleased to . . . reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven.” (The context of Colossians seems to actually make Bell’s argument weaker because Paul mentions a few verses later “if indeed you continue in the faith” giving me the impression that one needs to believe in Paul’s teachings.)
To add further support to his argument, Bell drops heavyweight names like church fathers Clement of Alexandria and Origen from the third century and Gregory of Nyssa and Eusebius in the fourth century. Clement of Alexandria appears to have been a gnostic Christian (a Christian form widely rejected by mainstream and orthodox Christianity), Origen was Clement’s student, and Eusebius seems to have been a student of Origen (although Eusebius seems to be considered well-respected church father). Bell pushes the idea that “the ultimate reconciliation of all people to God” was a common belief in early church history. (Hence, how Bell gets away with saying at the beginning of the book that he’s not saying anything new.)
Although Bell tries to shift the wording slightly to attribute it to these early church fathers, the reader can tell that Bell’s leanings are in this category:
“Central to their trust that all would be reconciled was the belief that untold masses of people suffering forever doesn’t bring God glory. Restoration brings God glory; eternal torment doesn’t. Reconciliation brings God glory; endless anguish doesn’t. Renewal and return cause God’s greatness to shine through the universe; never-ending punishment doesn’t.”
I am really, really resisting the urge to fire Socrates-like hypothetical questions after that quote because it haughtily assumes that Bell knows the mind of God and what brings Him glory in the end. Do I want suffering, torment, anguish, and punishment to be what brings God glory? No. And does it? From my perspective, I don’t think so either. But I can’t determine anything from God’s perspective. Since I am not God, I cannot definitely determine or define what brings Him glory.
[This is part VI of a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins. Note: Chapter 4 has been broken up into four parts. Chapter 4, part II can be found here.]
Bell starts off this chapter with actual statements from church websites:
“The unsaved will be separated forever from God in hell.”
“Those who don’t believe in Jesus will be sent to eternal punishment in hell.”
“The unsaved dead will be committed to an eternal conscious punishment.”
Then Bell notes what I’m assuming he considers a paradox:
“Yet on these very same websites are extensive affirmations of the goodness and greatness of God, proclamations and statements of beliefs about a God
who is
‘mighty,’
‘powerful,’
‘loving,’
‘unchanging,’
‘sovereign,’
‘full of grace and mercy,’
and “all-knowing.'”
Bell seems to pit these statements as either/or as though they contradict one another. God can’t be all of this good stuff and then do all this seemingly bad stuff that these websites claim. But the Old Testament God was a wrathful, violent (yes, I said it) God who also possessed immense mercy and love. When he brought judgment, it wasn’t because He did it out of spite or was a temperamental woman suffering from PMS; He would send out repeated warnings for repentance before executing judgment. There is justice for wrongdoing, and Bell seems to overlook that God is not only a loving parent but a fair and just judge. Later on, he writes:
“I point out these parallel claims:
that God is mighty, powerful, and “in control”
and that billions of people will spend forever apart from this God, who is their creator,
even though it’s written in the Bible that
‘God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim. 2)
So does God get what God wants?
How great is God?
Great enough to achieve what God sets out to do,
or kind of great
medium great
great most of the time,
but in this,
the fate of billions of people,
not totally great.
Sort of great.
A little great. …
Will all people be saved,
or will God not get what God wants?
Does this magnificent, mighty, marvelous God fail in the end?”
First of all, why does God’s greatness need to be defined solely by our view of what great should look like? Just like the Bible verse that says that God will give us the desires of our heart… well, no. I haven’t gotten all the desires of my heart. God changes my heart to make my desires reflect his. I can’t inject my view of what my desires should look like and allege that God has failed me on this. In this, I think Bell’s view of God and His greatness is actually too small.
Bell continues on with scripture verses that support God’s affirmations of love and determination to save everyone. He quotes Paul in Philippians 2:
“‘Every knee should bow . . . and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is LORD, to the glory of God the Father.’
All people.
The nations.
Every person, every knee, every tongue.”
Agreed. But those actions may not necessarily be done willingly.
[This is part V of a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins. Note: Chapter 3 on Hell has been broken up into two parts due to excessive length. You can find Part I on this chapter here.]
Image from Jesus-is-lord.com
Bell retells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus because it the most vivid description of hell we get from Jesus. Bell points out that the rich man is able to communicate from hell to Abraham in heaven. After ignoring the poor man Lazarus in his earthly life, the rich man in death wants Lazarus to serve him. He tells Abraham that he wants Lazarus to fetch him water then says that he wants Lazarus to warn his family of what’s in store for them in the afterlife. Bell’s perspective of this is insightful:
“The rich man wants Lazarus to serve him.
In their previous life, the rich man saw himself as better than Lazarus, and now, in hell, the rich man still sees himself as above Lazarus. It’s no wonder Abraham says there’s a chasm that can’t be crossed. The chasm is the rich man’s heart! It hasn’t changed, even in death and torment and agony. He’s still clinging to the old hierarchy. He still thinks he’s better.”
Bell expounds on this some more:
“Jesus teaches again and again that the gospel is about a death that leads to life. It’s a pattern, a truth, a reality that comes from losing your life and then finding it. This rich man Jesus tells us about hasn’t yet figured that out. He’s still clinging to his ego, his status, his pride—he’s unable to let go of the world he’s constructed, which puts him on the top and Lazarus on the bottom, the world in which Lazarus is serving him.
He’s dead, but he hasn’t died.
He’s in Hades, but he still hasn’t died the kind of death that actually brings life.
He’s alive in death, but in profound torment, because he’s living with the realities of not properly dying the kind of death that actually leads a person into the only kind of life that’s worth living.”
I don’t disagree with Bell at all. A few pages later, Bell says brilliantly:
“There is hell now,
and there is hell later,
and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously.”
With this statement, Bell does not deny the existence of hell “in this age or the age to come.” However, I do take issue with a few statements prior to this, mainly because they start to muddy the waters, making his belief in hell seem unclear.
When Bell talks about the rich man, he says that the rich man “hasn’t yet figured out… that the gospel is about a death that leads to life.”
Yet is an important word. Its implication is that even though something hasn’t happened, there’s a chance it will. I believe Bell is a man who chooses his words carefully so when he says that the rich man hasn’t yet figured things out, it’s because if he does (in due time), only then he’ll be able to live “the only kind of life that’s worth living.” Bell doesn’t give any indication that the rich man is forever shut out and utterly without hope. In fact, through Bell’s recounting of this parable, the dead rich man has more hope of life than I’ve ever heard before.
From pages 75-79, I infer that Bell thinks people can get a second chance after death if their heart changes. When Bell says that the “chasm… can’t be crossed [because] the chasm is the rich man’s heart,” I get the impression that if the rich man’s heart changes, then the chasm can be crossed.
So far, I’ve concluded that Bell believes hell exists (on earth and in the afterlife) and that people really do go there. It also seems that Bell says people can choose hell because they cling to an “old hierarchy” of belief but if that belief changes, they can move from death unto life even in the afterlife. Statements later on in the chapter give me the impression that Bell believes judgment for hell isn’t final, isn’t forever, and that God is a god of second and third and multiple chances until we get it right.)
“What we see in Jesus’s story about the rich man and Lazarus is an affirmation that there are all kinds of hells, because there are all kinds of ways to resist and reject all that is good and true and beautiful and human now, in this life, and so we can only assume we can do the same in the next.”
Is your head swimming yet? Because mine is.
Bell goes on to reference Ezekiel 16 in showing that Sodom and Gomorrah’s fortunes will eventually be restored and quotes Jesus in Matthew 10 in which he says, “It will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for you.”
Bell overall concludes that if there’s still hope for a place like Sodom and Gomorrah (widely thought of as being condemned forever) that no longer exists, then there’s hope for everyone outside of these towns.
“Failure, we see again and again, isn’t final,
judgment has a point,
and consequences are for correction.”
I don’t know how Bell lines up this thinking with Hebrews 9:27 which says “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” Hence, the book raises a question for me that the author never addresses.
Bell begins to wrap Chapter 3 up by speaking of restoration and quotes how God over and over in the Old Testament, especially among the minor prophets, speaks of the restoration of His people. (Note: there is no wider context given among the 10 verses on restoration that Bell lists.)
Bell ends Chapter 3 with this summed-up definition:
“To summarize, then, we need a loaded, volatile, adequately violent, dramatic, serious word to describe the very real consequences we experience when we reject the good and true and beautiful life that God has for us. We need a word that refers to the big, wide, terrible evil that comes from the secrets hidden deep within our heats all the way to the massive, society-wide collapse and chaos that comes when we fail to live in God’s world God’s way.
And for that,
the word ‘hell’ works quite well.
Let’s keep it.”
Chapter 3 proved to be a rather challenging chapter on a variety of levels. It forced me to read critically and question nearly everything Bell said, especially since many things weren’t referenced. I’ve already challenged some of Bell’s statements in order to, perhaps, paint a fuller view of the issue, but really, I really just touched the tip of the iceberg.
On page 80, Bell uses Jesus’ statement from Matthew 26 in which he says those who “draw the sword will die by the sword” is used to depict Jesus a strictly non-violent, pacifist leader.
“To respond to violence with more violence, according to Jesus, is not the way of God.”
But in Luke 22, Jesus encourages his disciples to sell their cloaks and buy swords. When the disciples said they had two swords, Jesus replied, “It is enough.” (v. 38) If Jesus was extremely non-violent, he would’ve discouraged the disciples from even arming themselves. Even though Jesus worked through non-violent means, it doesn’t mean that his entire philosophy is non-violent. I think Jesus really embodies Ecclesiastes 3, but on this issue, his philosophy was probably more along the lines of verse 8’s “a time for war and a time for peace.” To paint Jesus as a total pacifist would be misleading.
Or perhaps let’s also tackle page 89 in which Bell says:
“‘Satan,’ according to Paul, is actually used by God for God’s transforming purposes. Whoever and whatever he means by that word ‘Satan,’ there is something redemptive and renewing that will occur when Hymenaeus and Alexander are ‘handed over.'”
Whoever and whatever? Of a lot of the things in this book, I have a serious problem with Bell flippantly referring to Satan as “whoever” and “whatever.” And it makes me extremely uncomfortable that a pastor of a Christian church (emergent, it may be) puts Satan’s name in quotes as if he’s not real, doesn’t exist, or is a figure of speech for something humans are not sure about. Having read Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity, this kind of talk gets dangerously close to how McLaren refers to evil.
Toward the end of the chapter, Bell pulls out the Greek dictionary again to translate words better, and I’m frustrated and annoyed. It’s not just Bell who does this though; many pastors do this. It’s as if they’re saying “the English translations we have aren’t good enough so let me translate this a little bit better for you.” Really, of the 25+ English translations out there, you couldn’t find one suitable to reference so you had to retranslate it for us yourself? Do people who don’t have access to the Greek worse off because they’re reading something that hasn’t been translated to its best extent in the English language? (Oh, this kind of stuff gets my rankles up.)
On the flip side, Bell sometimes says things that challenge my conceptions of how I traditionally view Christian teaching. If I can’t find anything scripturally that contradicts Bell, I pause to consider the truth in what he says. (Mind you, I will not take an opposing view against Bell simply to be belligerent.) I quote pages 82-83 because I think his view his striking:
“Many people in our world have only ever heard hell talked about as the place reserved for those who are ‘out,’ who don’t believe, who haven’t ‘joined the church.’ Christians talking about people who aren’t Christians going to hell when they die because they aren’t . . . Christians. People who don’t believe the right things.
But in reading all of the passages in which Jesus uses the word ‘hell,’ what is so striking is that people believing the right or wrong things isn’t his point. He’s often not talking about ‘beliefs’ as we think of them—he’s talking about anger and lust and indifference. He’s talking about the state of his listeners’ hearts, about how they conduct themselves, how they interact with their neighbors, about the kind of effect they have on the world.
Jesus did not use hell to try and compel ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’ to believe in God, so they wouldn’t burn when they die. He talked about hell to very religious people to warn them about the consequences of straying from their God-given calling and identity to show the world God’s love.
This is not to say that hell is not a pointed, urgent warning or that it isn’t intimately connected with what we actually do believe, but simply to point out that Jesus talked about hell to the people who considered themselves ‘in,’ warning them that their hard hearts were putting their ‘in-ness’ at risk, reminding them that whatever ‘chosen-ness’ or ‘election’ meant, whatever special standing they believed they had with God was always, only, ever about their being the kind of transformed, generous, loving people through whom God could show the world what God’s love looks like in flesh and blood.”
Overall, Chapter 3 was a challenging read. There was no way to walk away from it without thinking one of three things:
My beliefs and preconceptions on hell have been reinforced as a result of reading this chapter.
My beliefs and preconceptions on hell have changed as a result of reading this chapter. (Even if it’s ever so slightly.)
My beliefs and preconceptions on hell have not changed as a result of reading this chapter but have given me a different perspective that I had never considered before.
I fall into category 3. I certainly don’t agree with Bell on a lot of things, but he makes many good points about not overlooking the hell here and now in favor of the hell later. Christians would do well to heed some of his warnings.
[This is part IV of a multi-part series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins. Note: Chapter 3 on Hell has been broken up into two parts due to excessive length.]
Rob Bell reiterates the typical conceptions of hell to start with:
So he goes on to show his readers every instance of the word “hell” in the Bible. He tackles the Hebrew scriptures which make references to Sheol, “a dark, mysterious, murky place people go when they die” (p. 65) and “a few references to the realm of the dead.” Bell concludes that “affirmations of the power of God over all of life and death” and “God’s presence and involvement in whatever it is that happens after a person dies” are consistently found in the Old Testament scriptures “yet very little is given in the way of actual details regarding individual destinies.” He wraps up this section by saying the Old Testament “isn’t very articulated or defined on what happens after a person dies” (p. 67).
“Sheol, death, and the grave in the consciousness of the Hebrew writers are all a bit vague and ‘underwordly.’ For whatever reasons, the precise details of who goes where, when, how, with what, and for how long simply aren’t things the Hebrew writers were terribly concerned with.”
I still have no arguments with Bell so far. But then, he tackles the New Testament and things start to get interesting.
“The actual word ‘hell’ is used roughly twelve times in the New Testament, almost exclusively by Jesus himself. The Greek word that gets translated as ‘hell’ in English is the word ‘Gehenna.’ Ge means ‘valley,’ and henna means ‘Hinnom.’ Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, was an actual valley on the south and west side of the city of Jerusalem.
Gehenna, in Jesus’s day, was the city dump.
People tossed their garbage and waste into this valley. There was a fire there, burning constantly to consume the trash. Wild animals fought over scraps of food along the edges of the heap. When they fought, their teeth would make a gnashing sound. Gehenna was the place with the gnashing of teeth, where the fire never went out.”
I had never heard of Gehenna translated in this way. (Again, my frustration with the lack of references.) So I had to put the book down and go searching to verify everything on my own. And what I discovered surprised me. Continue reading “Love Wins Analysis: Chapter 3: Hell (Part I)”→
[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.'”
On Goodreads, I gave Rob Bell’s book Love Wins three stars. I might have given it 2.5 if I had the option.
“So when people say they don’t believe in hell and they don’t like the word ‘sin,’ my first response is to ask, ‘Have you sat and talked with a family who just found out their child has been molested? Repeatedly? Over a number of years? By a relative?’
“Often the people most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned with the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death.” (p. 79)
“I have sat with many Christian leaders over the years who are burned out, washed up, fried, whose marriages are barely hanging on, whose kids are home while the parents are out at church meetings, who haven’t taken a vacation in forever—all because, like the older brother, they have seen themselves as ‘slaving all these years.’ They believe that they believe the right things and so they’re ‘saved,’ but it hasn’t delivered the full life that it was supposed to, and so they’re bitter. Deep down, they believe God has let them down. Which is often something they can’t share with those around them, because they are the leaders who are supposed to have it all together. And so they quietly suffer, thinking this is the good news.
Let’s work on closing out Chapter 4 of this book.
This Journey Is My Own 