Love Wins . . . my take on the new Rob Bell book

I’m only writing about this because almost every day since the controversy erupted, someone asks me what I think about it. For those who don’t know, Rob Bell, mega church pastor in Grand Rapids, MI, and from the conservative Reformed tradition has written a new book entitled “Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and The Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.” Rather than characterize the message of the book, let me simply say that the message falls outside of the boundaries of faithful, conservative, orthodox theology – as I understand all of that.

So there are three things that I want to say.

First, at some level, I don’t get what the big deal is. Rob Bell’s view on heaven and hell are not new. As he says in his book and as Christianity Today writes in an article they’ve written in response to the response to his book – his view is not new. People who love Jesus and who are faithfully following him have held the view that Bell holds from the earliest days of the church. It's not the orthodox view, but it is not new.

Second, the controversy that his book has caused is, to me, a reflection of a serious problem in the church. Jesus – the Scripture in general – gives very clear, unequivocal instructions to his followers about how we are to deal with offenses. The explosion of blogs, emails, and editorials roundly condemning Rob Bell publicly for the view that he holds on one very important doctrine puts the church’s habitual and embarrassing disobedience on clear display to the world. In yet another display of anger, judgement, and condemnation, we (self-identified Christ followers) have put on full display that there are some fundamental teachings of Jesus that we simply are not committed to obeying. That makes me really sad and causes me to want to redouble my own efforts to be obedient in this arena.

I’m not saying that we can’t disagree with each other. I don’t know Rob Bell but based on his writings, he has a view of the world that is pretty different from mine in some ways. I’m pretty sure that he and I have some significant differences in beliefs. But, if I wanted to take that up with him, my understanding of the teaching of Jesus is that I need to go to Rob personally and see if I could work it out there. There is no place where I’m allowed to castigate him publicly.

Third, the controversy has clarified again for me a place that I’m trying to define myself. When I look at the life of Jesus, I mostly don’t see him being so concerned about unity of belief as I find him focusing on unity of purpose and a radical commitment to our loving one another. Nowhere does he say, “The world will know you by your unity of belief.” He says “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another (John 13:34-35).

I can’t speak for any other person – I'm just saying that for me, I’m committed to loving, loving well, loving in the teaching and spirit of Jesus, even when it challenges the deepest stuff in me. And I'm committed to loving those with whom I agree and those with whom I disagree. In saying this, I don’t have some mushy, willy-nilly view of love. I recognize that love has hard conversations. I recognize that love defines itself. I recognize that love confronts as well as accepts. And I recognize that it is 1000 times harder to love than it is to judge, criticize, and reject.

I recognize that this is the harder way - and I am giving my word again to this harder way.