With Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person who Ever Lived (available in hardcover, Kindle, audio version) creating such a stir, and pastors across the country rushing to warn their congregations about the book, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at some of the major accusations I’ve heard and give a little insight into what I believe Bell is really saying.
(You may want to read my first post – Rob Bell, Love Wins and why I hope he’s right before continuing.)
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t a full scope of what Bell is or isn’t saying — but perhaps it will encourage those of you who are getting over your certainty to take the time to read the book for yourself and make your own opinions about what’s inside it.
Hell
Two of the biggest charges against Bell’s book, seem to revolve around hell and Universalism.
Folks have suggested he doesn’t believe in hell and thus he also believes in Universalism.
So for starters… let’s tackle the subject of hell.
And I just can’t talk about hell without thinking about Bart Simpson’s trip to Sunday School…
While some are perfectly fine with this image of hell and a devil with horns and a pointed pitch fork, Bell paints a different picture for his readers.
And that doesn’t include denying the existence of hell (Bell has refuted that in numerous interviews).
And like his beliefs on heaven, Bell believes in hell now and hell when we die.
And we have the option to choose whether we participate in heaven… or in hell.
He points out several times (and likely one of the greatest take home points for me) that because God’s love for us is so great, God gives us the option to reject him and choose hell over an abundant life in relationship with him.
God gives us what we want, and if that’s hell, we can have it. We have that kind of freedom, that kind of choice. We are that free.
Bell suggests that perhaps hell is not a place of eternal torture and and punishment for billions of people who don’t accept (or hear) the message of Jesus in this life, it’s ultimately a part of God’s plan to restore all of creation back to him.
Throughout Scripture, we see God focused on the restoration of his people — over and over and over and over again. Despite their wrongs, despite their sins, God is always working to restore the relationship with humanity and bring us back to a relationship with him.
According to the prophets, God crushes, refines, tests, corrects, chastens, and rebukes — but always with a purpose.
No matter how painful, brutal, oppressive, no matter how far people find themselves from home because of their sin, indifference, and rejection, there’s always the assurance that it won’t be this way forever…
God always has an intention. Healing. Redemption. Love. Bringing people home and rejoicing over them with singing.
Granted, these ideas are contrary to the popular theology of today — but I don’t see Bell’s idea of hell being that original or that far fetched. Many Christians have suggested and believed along very similar lines.
(Purgatory anyone?)
And so Bell writes about the horrors he’s witnessed in Rwanda and in the lives of those he’s known…
Do I believe in a literal hell? Of course. Those aren’t metaphorical missing arms and legs…
I’ve seen what happens when people abandon all that is good and right and kind and humane…
…it is absolutely vital that we acknowledge that love, grace and humanity can be rejected. From the most subtle rolling of the eyes to the most violent degradation of another human, we are terrifyingly free to do as we please.
And later, in telling the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, Bell writes…
Jesus’ 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.
There are individual hells, and communal, society-wide hells, and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously.
There is hell now and there is hell later, and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously.
There is a hell. Bell believes in it and he makes sure his readers know that we can choose it or God’s grace and God’s love right now. And whatever decision we make, we’ll see the rewards or consequences of that decision both today and tomorrow.
Universalism
Of course, if we believe Bell (or anyone else) denies the existence of hell, we’re going to automatically label them a heretic and a Universalist.
Even before Bell’s book was released, the Interwebs were a flurry with the idea that Bell is a Universalist.
In reading the book, it seems clear to me that Bell is never suggesting a belief in Universalism as we typically understand it.
The traditional view of Universalism suggests that all people, regardless of age, belief, background, creed, etc. etc. etc. get a free pass into heaven, no matter how they live or what they believe. There’s no need for hell because no one is going.
It seems very clear that Bell doesn’t agree with this mindset.
…in speaking of the expansive extraordinary, infinite love of God there is always the danger of neglecting the very real consequences of God’s love, namely God’s desire and intention to see things become everything they were always intended to be. For this to unfold, God must say about a number of acts and to those who would continue to do them, “Not here you won’t.”
Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject and rebel against God’s ways for us. We can have all the hell we want…
John remembers Jesus saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”…
What he doesn’t say is how, or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through him. He doesn’t even state that those coming to the Father through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him. He simply claims that whatever God is doing in the world to know and redeem and love and restore the word is happening through him.
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….
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 leaves the door way, way open. Creating all sorts of possibilities. He is as narrow as himself and as wide as the universe…
People come to Jesus in all sorts of ways…
Sometimes people use his name; other times they don’t.
Some people have so much baggage with regard to the name “Jesus” that when they encounter the mystery present in all of creation—grace, peace, love, acceptance, healing, forgiveness—the last thing they are inclined to name it is “Jesus.”…
What we see Jesus doing again and again — in the midst of constant reminders about the seriousness of following him living like him, and trusting him — is widening the scope and expanse of his saving work.
What Bell does seem to suggest could be categorized as “Christian Universalism” or “Salvific Generosity.” The idea that all people may (or will) eventually be saved through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus — and that may take place in this life, or in the life to come.
Anything brand new
While Bell is a truly gifted communicator, I don’t get the impression that he’s saying anything brand new.
Christians have long struggled with the ideas of heaven, hell and who’s in or who’s out.
And Christians have long responded with a variety of answers.
There’s not one controversial idea in Love Wins that is not clearly voiced as a real possibility by the most popular evangelical writer of the last century, CS Lewis.
C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity:
If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all other religions are simply wrong all through… If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of truth…
Here is another thing that used to puzzle me. Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him.
And perhaps in an even more striking image than even Bell proposes, Lewis writes in The Last Battle about Emeth’s encounter with Aslan (the Jesus figure), after a life filled with serving Tash and hating Aslan.
the name of Aslan was hateful to me…
Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honor) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him… But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me…
For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him…
And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me Beloved, me who am but as a dog.
Beloved? Wow!
And even Billy Graham has seems to have come to at least some sort of belief in salvific generosity.
In August 2006, Newsweek did an extensive report on an interview with Billy Graham. Graham made it clear that he is still firmly confident that Jesus is the only way to salvation. When asked, though, about the destiny of “good Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or secular people,” Billy had this to say: “Those are decisions only the Lord will make. It would be foolish for me to speculate on who will be there and who won’t … I don’t want to speculate about all that. I believe the love of God is absolute. He said he gave his son for the whole world, and I think he loves everybody regardless of what label they have.”
Billy Graham is no universalist. But he has come to a theology of salvific generosity, a perspective that he combines with a passionate proclamation of the message that Jesus alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Keep calm and carry on (aka There’s no judgment or consequences to sin)
The argument against Universalism in general is that we can live however we want, because we’ll all be saved in the end. But since Bell is no Universalist, he definitely doesn’t agree with this sentiment.
Throughout the book, Bell reminds us that we do have a choice and there are consequences of our choices — separation from God — and in the last pages of the book he writes:
These are strong, shocking images of judgment and separation in which people miss out on rewards and celebrations and opportunities. Jesus tells these stories to wake us up to the timeless truth that history moves forward, not backward or sideways. Time does not repeat itself. Neither does life. While we continually find grace waiting to pick us up off the ground after we have fallen, there are realities to our choices. While we may get other opportunities, we won’t get the one right in front of us again. That specific moment will pass and we will not see it again. It comes, it’s here, it goes and then it’s gone. Jesus reminds us in a number of ways that it is vitally important that we take our choices here and now as seriously as we possibly can because they matter more than we can begin to imagine.
Whatever you’ve been told about the end — the end of your life, the end of time, the end of the world — Jesus passionately urges us to live like the end is here, now, today.
Love is what God is, love is why Jesus came, and love is why he continues to come, year after year to person after person.
Finally
No matter what you believe, agree with or disagree with about Bell’s theology — I don’t think he’ll be too upset if you choose to believe differently than him.
And I don’t think you should be too upset that he believes differently than you.
This book isn’t a call to arms to change the face of Christianity. This isn’t a threat to modern Christianity or to the youth of America (Bill Kinnon has a great post on that).
I believe this is simply Bell’s way of explaining to those who have had a hard time dealing with ideas like hell and eternal damnation, that there are other ways to view Scripture. There are other ways to view heaven besides just sitting around in white robes playing harps while we float above streets of gold. And there are other ways to view hell besides a horned creature with a pitchfork who sits beside a lake of fire listening to Led Zeppelin played backwards.
And whatever belief(s) you find yourself believing… there is a space of grace for you at the table.
The table is far bigger than most of us want to admit or realize. And our faith and our God are far bigger that we often care to admit or realize as well.
The Christian faith is big enough, wide enough, and generous enough to handle that vast a range of perspectives.
AMEN!
