Yes.
It’s Time.
Having read some previews of Rob Bell’s book “Love Wins” this could well be a defining moment in my own Christian Experience.
Rob Bell is either loved or hated and with good reason. By appealing to younger Christians, he teaches a kind of liberal Christianity with an appeal to the “nice” aspects of God. Universal love and acceptance is the way to go and lets not condemn people for anything!
The Nooma videos have gone round the globe and indeed get shown in many churches, even during the main worship services.
I don’t like him, to be honest … so am I biased?
He comes across as quite arrogant and pleased with himself in those videos.
But what is his message.
Essentially, 2000 years of biblical preaching, teaching and understanding is totally wrong, according to Bell. It appears that he believes that everyone will eventually end up in Heaven. Some will find themselves in Hell for a short time, or longer time, but certainly not forever.
Love wins, see.
Hmm.
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I shall have to get a copy of the book and do a critical analysis of what he is actually saying. However, it does look like he has completely abandoned the God of the Bible.
He is essentially saying “Did God really say … ?”
We all know who started that train of thought in the Garden of Eden.
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The wider question, however, is why do we need Hero-Preachers in the first place?
Rob Bell has been called a Christian Rock-Star. This kind of idol should have no place in a protestant Christianity that effectively rejected one form of it when the reformation happened. Are we so lacking in confidence in our own walk with the Lord that we need an idol to look up to? Isn’t Jesus enough?
Welsh Reflections 
So much out there about this – I was just reading this comment that H. Richard Niebuhr wrote 75 years ago, “too often we want a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross,” – now that’s the sounds like a God Rob Bell would want……….
Can I have Charles H Spurgeon as a hero-preacher? Please? 🙂 ………
http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2011/03/dreary-task-terrible-truth.html
I don’t know much about Rob Bell. I must find out more, too.
He is reaching a certain demographic, it seems, so we should take note.
We are not reaching those people for Christ. He is.
This may be something we have to learn, something we support, despite our reservations, or something we fight as error, depending on God’s mission and permission.
Meanwhile, consider this quoted prose from his latest message:
‘Jesus was a man with dirty feet.
He spent most of these three years
walking around with people.
He invited folks to become his intimate followers.
Everywhere he went, great crowds gathered around to listen to him, to be with him, to see what he would do next.
As Jesus led his twelve closest followers
they would walk along the dirt roads together.
They went to parties together.
They ate meals together.
They worked together.
Jesus walked as a human among humans,
brushed elbows with politicians and outcasts,
went to parties with sinners and criminals,
and embraced as his own family
those he met on the street.
Jesus floated on no pristine clouds.
Jesus was no aloof elitist.
Jesus was no odd hermit.
He preferred the world of dirt
and friends and handshakes.
He embraced this relational life on earth
more passionately than anyone ever had.’
Everts, D. [1999]. Jesus with dirty feet. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Nice FL, but that is not the Gospel.
All it is is a reference to the Complete and perfect Humanity that Jesus represents in His human nature.
There is no doctrine in there.
Besides, Rob Bell is certainly reaching a demographic that is challenging for others to reach. But the question remains, is he reaching them with a false Jesus and a false God that will never punish them or tell them their hedonistic lifestyle offends Him? Will Bell show kids a God that will never show wrath and judgment on humanity for the stench of human filth that even we recognise?
When victims of terrible crimes cry out for justice, will God turn a blind eye and pat the culprits on their heads and give them sweets?
Rob Bell’s difficult questions against hell have their opposite difficult questions. His God appears to be one of mercy. Only mercy.
But the God that Jesus showed us is a God of Righteousness and Judgment. As well as a God of Love and Mercy. This is why Jesus had to go to the cross.
When God is not righteous, then the cross becomes unnecessary. God can just forgive … it just wont be seen to be right when one adulterer gets punished and another gets off. But, that’s OK in Rob Bells’ world. Everyone gets to heaven eventually. Those that get punished will spend some time in hell/purgatory before getting there.
The question is, will Rob Bell deny the substitutionary atonement? He’ll be in good company. Steve Chalke also denied the atonement. Isn’t this another gospel?
We’ll see.
well, isn’t that interesting that all so much debate fires up at certain topics like hell, LGBT stuff or the understanding of the atonement, but not about the core world view understandings that create opinion on these topics?
What I mean is, that I’ve heard a sermon where Bell preached that “we shape our gods and then our gods shape us” and goes on to say whether our imagery is violent and hateful it creates violent and hateful followers and whether our imagery is compassionate and loving it creates compassionate and loving followers.
What does it say about the god Bell envisions?
Is it a god that is either made up by some men (like L. Feuerbach claimed all religions do), or a being within them (in panentheistic understanding?)
Is it not natural that when you have a certain understanding of God and how he relates to the creation and especially towards humans you’ll then produce a certain understanding of, let’s say, heaven and hell, human condition and a lot of other issues too.
Maybe to debate about universalism or preterism or other things people may detect in Bell’s teaching is only dealing with symptoms, not with the root cause.
I think I see what you are saying there Gandalf.
It is all about God, and how we relate to and understand Him. The thing is, when we read something in the Bible we have trouble with, is the Bible in some way wrong? Or is it merely our understanding of God that is wrong?
So the answer to that question will dictate whether you are liberal or evangelical in your approach to scripture.
Hi Bull,
I think sometimes not everything what we read is meant for us to deal with. Some things – at least that is my experience – only become clear after we are practically experiencing a situation or after we’ve passed through it.
I have and had my trouble with certain passages and doctrines in scriptures.
However, since I had experienced that dark passages became clear in due time, I also believe that all those that are still dark to me have their right place and meaning.
“.. Whenever you find any statement in Christian writings which you can make nothing of, do not worry. Leave it alone. There will come a day, perhaps years later, when you suddenly see what it meant If one could understand it now, it would only do one harm.
C. S. Lewis