Love Wins?

The latest episode of furor over Rob Bell has prompted me to come out of blog retirement. I have made some observations in the reactions of many people over this book, both before its release and after, in response to his advertising and in response to his previous work. I need to get these of my chest so that I can go on with life.

I will first establish that I had previously been firmly against Rob Bell. His name made me react viscerally without even giving thought to him. My reaction was based on what I had read about him. Many, many reliable sources and, as a friend recently put it, ‘senior church leaders’ had critiqued his work in the form of the books Velvet Elvis, Sex God and The Gods Aren’t Angry. Their conclusions made me feel unwell. Thus I was always repelled from him. An example of the conclusions can be seen here. I also heard a lot of rubbish teaching delivered by people, who attributed it back to what they read in his book.

Nonetheless, as an academic I recognised the importance of always referring back to primary material when making a point about it. Anything you say is absolutely void of credibility unless you have done so and in my opinion, you are an idiot if you don’t.

So recently as the furor over Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins began to erupt, I figured it was time to make worthy my criticism and at least honour God before commenting on it. I got my hands on a copy of Velvet Elvis and began to read.

I didn’t get far into it before I began to realise a travesty has occurred.

They were wrong.

All of them.

Somehow all of these reliable men and women had made declarations that Rob Bell’s doctrine was screwy based on what they claimed to have read in his book, when in actual fact it was beginning to look more and more like they hadn’t actually read the book properly.

You can’t skim read something and then purport to warn people of what it says. Particularly when it’s dealing with complexities.

How can you say that you are honouring God if you are not taking anywhere near reasonable care to ensure that you are teaching others the truth?

‘Senior Church leaders’ and other reliable (and unreliable) sources told me that Rob Bell misrepresents Jesus. In actual fact they have misrepresented Rob Bell. And deceived people who trusted them. Betrayed.

I can confirm from having actually read his material that Rob Bell believes in the importance of the following doctrines that he has been accused of saying are not important:

- The Virgin Birth

- (To use Evangelical language) Conversion

- Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life and only through him can a person come to the Father and be saved

He clearly affirms these thing. He just questions the way that mainstream Christianity has gone about it of late. And frankly, so do I.

Now, I’m neither for nor against him at this stage. I don’t really agree with everything he says, but the things that I have reservations about aren’t enough for me to go about saying he’s not a Christian.

The latest accusation (which really is the same one they’ve always levelled against him) is that he is a universalist. A very coarse and by no means exhaustive definition of universalism is simply the notion that Jesus is not in fact the only way to the Father and that God has set certain provisos around the place that allow people to get away with not having put their faith in him. There are different kinds of universalism that I haven’t the time to discuss right now, but I suppose the main kind that they are accusing him of is some kind of notion that you can have a second chance after your carnal death.

The curious thing is the Rob Bell (knowing what he is being accused of) flatly denies that he is a universalist or that he believes this.

Nonetheless, because ‘senior church leaders’ – the same ‘senior church leaders’ who can’t read something that’s written on the page in front of them in plain English – have decided that he is a universalist neither his word nor his affirmation of sound doctrine seem to matter. He is not being heard. A prejudicial implication that everything he says is coming from the position of universalism means that no matter what is written in his books, it will be determined to be against the Christian faith.

He is being denied justice. Lam 3:35, Prov 21:3, Eze 18:5.

By ‘senior church leaders’.

The fruit of these people is hatred, deception, dishonour (particularly of God), lies, envy and judgment.

Rob Bell looks more like Jesus than these people.

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