Rob Bell has a video clip out introducing his new book, Love Wins.
I posted this clip on Facebook and then immediately posted a link to a CNN article that reviews the pushback against Bell’s apparent universalism (the idea that everyone is saved) . I do not know if Bell is a Universalist or not. I haven’t had a chance to pick up his book yet. I fear that many of the people that are attacking him don’t know what he has to say either, but that is an altogether different issue.
Because I know people that know him (though I don’t personally) I can say without hesitation that Bell is passionately in love with Jesus; is committed to living in Jesus’ Kingdom so long as he breathes; that he loves and cares about people very deeply. It figures, given what some are saying about him, that is not enough, however.
Immediately friends began to comment about the topic. You can see the whole thread here. Me -- I'm pretty agnostic about it. My friend said what I think better than I could:
"...I am not so concerned with whether there is a heaven or hell. I am not living to avoid one or go to the other. I am living for one who is worthy of all my devotion no matter what happens after. I am not afraid of deception or heresy, ask the tough questions, but in the end I think the best way to ask the question is to change the direction the question is sent. Jer. 17:9 ("The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,and desperately wicked.Who really knows how bad it is?" Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. ) is often quoted without even finishing the verse, much less adding the next one (Jer 17:10 "But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.") and certainly not adding chapter 31. I don’t think I will know the mysteries of God so much by searching him out as by asking him to search me out. Inviting him into the deep waters of my own heart to search me and reveal me. Than I have more and more freedom to know him and the power of his resurrection. I don’t testify to the goodness and love of God to help people avoid hell or to earn rewards in heaven. I will testify because he is good and full of love and both his judgements and mercy are right. Let him be God.The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,and desperately wicked.Who really knows how bad it is?" -- Kent or Melanie Hempel
That being said, in the comment thread I was asked to explain my problems with Hell. And so here I sit typing...
In order to do so let me re-tell the gospel story as I understand it, in short-form fashion: Before there was a single star in the heavens or a galaxy to hold them, there was an eternal party going on. God -- the Almighty Three-in-One was having a blow out, and in the midst of this eternal, blow-out party he decided to create others who could join in the party. Even creation was a selfless act of love. He created so that we could all party with Him.
Now the Almighty Three-in-One was completely selfless. His holiness ("otherness," or "aboveness") came from the fact that he was simply "LOVE". His creation proved not to be. Indeed, we proved to be all about self -- self-aggrandizement, self-centeredness, egotistical, narcissistic, and fearful that we would be found out to be less than we needed others to think us to be. We were moving faster than warp 9 away from LOVE and love; toward complete isolation.
Then in an act of amazing grace, the Almighty Three-in-One intervened. God died. He came and in the greatest act of love ever, let selfishness, fear, hate, envy, pride, deceit, murder, betrayal and isolation win. The eternal party that had never previously been interrupted came to a screeching halt. Mourning ensued for three days. But death couldn't hold LOVE, and LOVE burst fromt he grave in a life-giving resurrection. By surrendering to the forces that stood against love and by dying LOVE won.
It was made clear by God himself that the only way that life could ever be found by us was through the death of self. And the only way we could ever trust enough to die was because He did it first, and was willing to give Himself to us so that we could follow in His steps. If, as He fills us, we trust him enough to kill ourselves each day we find life that transcends the death we'd been living in our own power. If there is one truth in the gospel story it is this: Death always proceeds Resurrection.
So what does this have to do with hell? Let me try to explain: In the West we have been taught to think that life is about a series of bounded sets. The Christianity I grew up in taught me this. So long as I believed the right things, said the right prayers, and occasionally did the right things, my eternal destiny was certain. I could rest in the loving hands of my Saviour Jesus who was faithful to never let me down.
This belief sprung out of a Foundationalist philosophy that taught that there was ultimate truth out there we could capture and rest our faith upon. In so doing we would be standing on a Rock and our faith could be sure. Lots of people still live in this head space. I do not think they are wrong though I don't understand them. That is simply how they process the world. They still trust. But they trust differently than me. That is OK.
I process the world differently. Brian May, the lead guitarist for Queen, and a Doctor in Astro-physics, wrote a dissertation tracking space dusts' path through the universe. He found that everything was moving away from the centre. He argues that we are moving outward toward something he calls "complete isolation."
I think that he is right and that the physical is a mirror of the Spiritual. I've come to view spirituality as being about a "Centred-set" rather than a "bounded-set". At the centre is the Almighty Three-in-One, who continually beckons us to join his eternal, once-interupted party that shines more brightly than any star in his multi-lit universe. Meanwhile, so long as we stay on the trajectory of self that we find ourself on, we move toward complete isolation and loneliness. We become gods of our own reality, cut off from all other life. To me that is hell, for it is life without LOVE or love which flows from LOVE.
The only way we find life is through death. "If you want to save your life, you must lose it..." Jesus said (And then He demonstrated what He meant). I don't think he was kidding. I can think of nothing more horrid than clinging to life only to find ultimate aloneness and death. In my understanding, this hell is the natural consequence of our own desires.
I don't think this violates the intention of Scripture. But I could easily be wrong. This is simply a word constructed picture that works for me to explain an eternal reality I won't fully understand until I pass through the veil myself.
Into this framework, I can accept some people who don't even know the name of Jesus choosing love, never knowing that it is because of Jesus' sacrifice they discovered love in the first place. While others who claim the name of Jesus choose against love and for themselves.
When Jesus came he lived outside of the box of what Jews thought a Messiah should look like. Many rejected him because he didn't look or live in a way that matched up to the pictures they'd been raised with that a Messiah looked like. So they missed him. Looking back we can see that they simply misinterpreted the pictures given all those years before in the Old Testament.
I wonder if we are not guilty of doing the same thing. We force the words of the Bible into our cultural understanding of them and miss what God was really trying to say. In so doing we communicate poorly and people tune us out. I know I do that all the time, despite my best efforts not to.
Hell to me is not so much about wrath and anger. My understanding is that all God's anger at how I betrayed him was poured out on Jesus at the cross. No, my understanding of Hell is that it is a natural consequence of turning our backs on LOVE and love and the Almighty Three-in-One giving us what we ask for.
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