Greetings!

Make it a great week,

Is Rob Bell On the Right Track?

What Should Christians Believe About Sin and Redemption?

C.S. Lewis was once reading a periodical in which the author claimed that "the fundamental thing is how we think of God.' Lewis replied indignantly, "By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important."(1)

"How do you shape God?" is the kind of question postmoderns ask one another. The assumption is, "You define your own reality, so whatever you feel is what matters." In his new book, Love Wins, Pastor Rob Bell embraces this perspective enthusiastically. He repeatedly says, almost mantra like, "You shape God. And then God shapes you."

According to Bell, the main thing that keeps people away from Christianity is that they don't feel good about a God whose "shape" is such that He would condemn the unrepentant to hell. To help people feel better, he argues, we need to reshape God and tell folks that God's love will eventually woo everyone. Furthermore, since God's love doesn't seem to be wooing everyone here on earth, we need to tell people that God has some kind of plan for saving people after they die.

So What Is The Real Problem Here?

If it were true that the doctrine of hell is what really bothers non-believers, one would expect to find them flocking to liberal churches that deny that hell even exists. That's not happening. People are staying away from liberal churches in droves.

With very few exceptions, the churches winning converts are the ones that teach orthodox doctrines of God, heaven, hell, the Bible and so forth.

So what explains the success of these more orthodox evangelical churches? Are they "misguided and toxic," as Bell claims, achieving success in conversion by "scaring the hell" out of people, so to speak? Not really. About ten years ago a spate of articles came out about how pastors rarely, if ever, preach on hell.(2) And it probably wouldn't faze congregants even if they did--according to survey by George Barna, only 1% of Americans actually think they're going to hell anyway.(3)

So how do these churches win converts? They do it by preaching the Bible, demonstrating loving community, and praying that the Holy Spirit will work in people's lives to bring them to repentance. And when it comes to the communities in which they live, they testify to the truth of what they believe by, among other things, giving generously of their time, energy and money.(4)

But when I read Bell's book, I got the strong impression that the doctrine of hell is the main thing evangelical churches emphasize today. Through carefully chosen, shocking examples, Bell takes his stand against what he sees as heartless and socially-inept yahoos who get a perverse pleasure out of seeing others get punished in the afterlife. Not that you know very many people like that personally--but it's still impressive to watch the straw man fall.

Where Does Rob Bell's View Fit in a Christian Worldview?

Is the traditional doctrine of hell, as Bell claims, really the problem? And how would we view this issue from a Christian worldview?

Keep in mind that a person's worldview is his default answers to life's most pressing questions: Where did I come from? How should I live? What happens when I die?, and How do I know my answers to these questions are true?
 
Those with a Christian worldview start with the assumption that the Bible is an accurate revelation of what God wants people to do, and that its descriptions of fallenness and the possibility of redemption describe the contours of the world as it actually is. 
 
Adherents to a Christian worldview believe that the set of assumptions given in Scripture offer the most reasonable explanation of "why things are the way they are" when it comes to understanding God's character, sin, human nature, and what it means to be a person.

In Rob Bell's case, it isn't that He disbelieves what Scripture says, it's that he reinterprets it. Compelling new interpretations can lead to fresh, helpful insight. But if it is done by cherry-picking certain Scriptures and ignoring others, it can also hoodwink people into believing half-truths which are all the more dangerous because they sound so reasonable.

So What is a Christian Worldview of God's Love and Wrath?

Adherents to a Christian worldview recognize that it is difficult to fully understand the nature and character of a transcendent God. Through the biblical narrative, however, they can clearly see that God is described as a creator, a ruler, and a redeemer. His attributes include truth, justice, and love.

It bothers many people to try to imagine God's love and His justice, expressed through the biblical term "wrath," at complementary. We see this all the time among humans, though, and it seems perfectly natural:

• A mother shows her love for her child by forcefully opposing a would-be molester.
• A missionary demonstrates his love for the oppressed by offering a no-holds-barred testimony against twisted soldiers who kidnap children.
• A district attorney expresses her love for justice by passionately arguing for strict punishment for a criminal who terrorized a neighborhood.

Yet God goes a step further: he expresses both love and wrath toward the same people. Why? Because Scripture indicates to us that one attribute of human beings--all human beings--is that we are self-righteous and think we can bear our own image rather than God's.

In his blog, Justin Taylor quotes Don Carson on this point:

God's wrath is not an implacable blind rage. However emotional it may be, it is an entirely reasonable and willed response to offenses against His holiness. At the same time His love wells up amidst His perfections and is not generated by the loveliness of the loved. Thus there is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed toward the same individual or people at once. God in His perfections must be wrathful against His rebel image-bearers, for they have offended Him; God in His perfections must be loving toward His rebel image-bearers, for He is that kind of God....(5)

So how can God's love and His wrath be reconciled? Scripture is clear: God is unalterably wrathful against anything that mars His image in those who are to bear it.

Throughout the New Testament we see that God's love is presented in the context of His wrath. Ephesians 2:4-5 says "Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ..." but is preceded by, "we were by nature deserving of wrath."

Even the beloved verse, John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son") is followed by John 3:19, "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil."

The biblical diagnosis is not that we have been sinned against, and are therefore justified in creating a god in our own image; it's that we have worshipped ourselves and thereby fallen into sin. From a spiritual standpoint, we don't need rescuing from other people's misdeeds--we need salvation from our own.

In short, I can't atone for the sin of the kid who beat me up in grade school. But I am accountable for my bitterness, pent up anger, unforgiveness, and resentment. He threw a punch, but in my mind I wished him dead. I don't know where he stands with God, but I know I stand in desperate need of salvation, for I have been, and am, desperately wicked.

As Bell offers his explanation of heaven, hell and salvation, he is unfailingly poignant, sometimes brilliant, often silly, and consistently baffling. But his diagnosis is wrong, and if you've got the wrong diagnosis, your prescription could be deadly.

Hell Isn't the Real Issue--And Rob Bell Knows It

Actually, as I read Love Wins, I realized it isn't about heaven and hell at all. It's not even really about whether people who have rejected Christ will be wooed to salvation after they die, because there's no way to really prove that Bell's interpretations of specific scriptures are true.

And, to be clear, Love Wins is not about "those who have never heard." If it were, the book could have just been three sentences long: "We can't know what God will do in every circumstance because the mind of God is a mystery. But Scripture tells us that God is just, so whatever the just thing is, that is what He will do. Still, Jesus commands us to go and tell the Good News throughout the earth, and when he says go, he means GO."

Rather, Love Wins is about trying to remove the barriers that people erect in order to excuse themselves from understanding the truth. The problem is that the way Bell goes about removing those barriers also removes the heart of what the Good News is all about.

It's good news when someone is saved from a poor self-image or a wretched up-bringing, but it's not the Good News. It's good news when someone suddenly feels God's presence, but that's not the Good News either. It's good news when someone is able to overcome an addiction, but again, it's not the Good News.

The Good News is that Jesus died to satisfy God's wrath, so that His decaying image-bearers, and the creation they brutalized, may be restored. The Good News is that by trusting in that sacrifice we may know Christ and reflect His character in all of culture.

That Jesus satisfies God's justice is one of the key themes of Scripture, and one that Bell explicitly rejects ("we do not need to be rescued from God"). He is so sure he's right that he assigns blame for "inquisitions, persecutions, trials, book burnings, blacklisting" to those who disagree. It's odd for Bell to hold this conviction so strongly given that his own church doctrinal statement clearly says that "Jesus is our only hope for bringing peace and reconciliation between God and humans."(6)

Most non-believers have no problem acknowledging that Christianity has some kind of power to help people overcome addictions and leave anger behind and reunite with their wives and invest in their kids. But they believe that Buddhism and Hinduism and Atheism can do that too.

The central problem of non-belief is actually a belief: that the biblical narrative, from creation to the fall to redemption, is simply untrue. People don't like seeing themselves as sinners who deserve wrath; they're motivated to cast Christianity as a primitive fable invented by people who didn't know the facts of science and who therefore superstitiously established rules to gain a sense of normalcy in an uncertain world. Just like all religions. Interesting, but not true.

Here's the question I didn't see Bell grappling with in Love Wins: What if the thing that really keeps people from Christ is that their hearts are desperately wicked and that they prefer a counterfeit form of salvation to the biblical one because it helps them maintain the illusion that they are in control of their own destiny?

In other words, what if the rejection of clumsily made Christian arguments is actually an excuse, and what is really being rejected is Christ's sacrifice? What is God to do with these people?

Implications of Bad Arguments Argued Badly

You wouldn't know it from Bells' book, but even among orthodox evangelical Christians there is disagreement about what hell is like. Some say that hell is the absence of God's presence. Others say that hell is the wrath of God poured out on those who did not put their trust in Christ and seek reconciliation by his sacrifice. Some Christians even believe that the souls of the lost are annihilated rather than tormented forever (historically Justin Martyr seemed to believe this, and in our own day it is the position of Seventh Day Adventists and has even been defended by the respected scholar John Stott).

Bell doesn't even attempt to deal with these perspectives, except in mockery. Sadly, in his attempt to create space for skeptics to reconsider the claims of Christ, Bell's solutions create more problems than they solve. For instance:

1. The idea that God pursues all people forever has implications for the doctrine of free will. Bell argues for free will ("We're that free," he says) and yet without apparent irony he posits that God will keep after people until they acquiesce, even after they're dead. Is it really love if you have no choice?
2. The idea that God won't take "no" for an answer has implications for our understanding of God's nature. It's kind of creepy to think about a God who never exercises justice but who, refusing to take "no" for an answer, forces everyone to "love" Him. Sort of like a cosmic stalker to whom "no" really means "yes."
3. The idea that God will win people no matter what we do has implications for missions. If, as Bell reasons, God will accomplish in eternity what His people have failed to do on this earth, maybe we should call back all our missionaries and use our resources elsewhere. God will get them second-time-around. 
4. The idea that God sorts everything out after we're dead has implications for the problem of evil. Christians hold to the belief that while God has not yet vanquished evil, He will do so in the future. But Bell's argument that God is always loving and never wrathful about injustice undercuts this view. It also lessens the urgency to stand against evil here and how--after all, if God is going to bring everyone to Himself after we're dead, then why should we try to stop evil acts here and now?
5. The idea that God is only loving, not wrathful, has implications for justice. How can a God who doesn't act to restore justice ever truly express love? Imagine a Nuremburg judge saying to Nazi concentration camp murderer Rudoph Hoess, "Because of love, I overlook your offense." It would be an outrage because justice involves setting things to rights. The failure to do so is called injustice, not love. The point of Scripture is not that God fails to exercise justice, but that He laid on Christ the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6).

The Apostle Paul says that "Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men" (2 Corinthians 5:11). Love Wins shows how far one kind-hearted pastor is willing to go to avoid acknowledging the fear of the Lord or to persuade men that they themselves are evil and need redemption.
 
It's too bad that Bell chose the Easter season as the time in which to project his sad caricature of orthodox evangelicalism, because it has the effect of turning people's attention toward a trumped-up controversy and away from the power of God to secure salvation through the reconciliation that has been won, at great cost, by Christ's sacrifice.

So how, exactly, does God secure that salvation? Well, that's another newsletter. Perhaps, though, we can at least agree with the description given in the old hymn: "I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew; he moved my soul to seek him, seeking me; it was not I that found, O Savior true; no, I was found of thee."


Sources:

(1) C.S. Lewis, C.S Lewis: Readings for Meditation and Reflection (New York: HarperOne, 1996), p. 37.
(2) http://articles.sfgate.com/2002-07-06/news/17553634_1_evangelical-churches-portions-of-christian-theology
(3) http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/5-barna-update/128-americans-describe-their-views-about-life-after-death?q=hell
(4) The two biggest predictors of people's altruism is how conservative and religious they are. Arthur Brooks has shown that even though liberals' household income is more than 6% higher than conservatives, the giving of conservative families is 30% higher on average than liberal families. See Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.
(5) D.A. Carson (1999), "God's Love and God's Wrath," Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 156, pp. 388-390.
(6) http://marshill.org/believe/