March 5, 2011

• Bell and Hell

  (This is one of those posts I didn't intend to write, but I looked at a comment and said, "Dang, I went and wrote them a book," and since I don't post as much as I used to, I then recycled the comment as a post.  Hope you don't mind.)

  Apparently there's some controversy bubbling up in the evangelical Christian community regarding Rob Bell's new book.

  Rob Bell, from what I understand, is one of the pastors of Mars Hill church, and has been characterized as being on the more liberal side of mainstream evangelicalism.  But the thing that has some people in a froth is that he released a YouTube video, actually a trailer for his latest book, which seems to question the doctrine of Hell.

  It's an old question, "How can a loving God send people to Hell?"  "Is Ghandi in Hell?"  "How is Hell fair?"  I guess people aren't used to hearing such questions from a pastor, though.

  Here's the video, if you want to see for yourself:

  If that video is what people are reacting to, this really is disheartening.  In my opinion, unless there's more evidence that is as of yet forthcoming, this video is not worth the level of reaction some have witnessed.

  First: he starts out, bouncing off the story of the note pinned to the art exhibit, by asking a series of very good questions.  Questions that everyone should have asked at one point or another.  And he makes several very good connections (such as that our view on Hell will be influenced by who we think God is).  A friend of mine pointed out that he "answers no questions in this video, only raises them," and that since his book isn't out yet, we can't know what his answers are.  I'm with her-- we know little from this video as to what *answers* he will proffer to these questions.

  So, is evangelical Christianity going to write off one of its own because of the questions he's asking, before it even knows what conclusions he has come to?  Yikes. 

  Second: One of the things he does question--and in questioning, seems to criticize--is that the Gospel is that you're going to Hell unless you believe in Jesus, and thus that Jesus saves us from Hell (and therefore from God). 

  This idea is worth questioning and criticizing even from an entirely orthodox platform.  The Gospel is that God and humanity have been reconciled, that humans can now once again be part of the already-and-not-yet Kingdom of Heaven, and (as a side note) that when you die you can enter God's presence, commonly known as heaven.

  That is very different from "The Gospel means we are saved from Hell."  The idea that Gospel = saved from Hell has already been criticized extensively by (for example) Dallas Willard, in his book "The Divine Conspiracy," among other books by other theologians.  Quite simply, it's the wrong focus, and takes all the emphasis off of our lives here on this earth--quite the opposite of what Jesus preached.  Jesus promised them not just life eternal but life more abundant.  The Gospel is about so much more than simply dodging Hell, so much more even than attaining heaven.

  Third: if we are going to criticize Rob Bell for saying that God doesn't send people to Hell, we must also criticize various other theologians who have been embraced by mainstream evangelical Christianity, such as C.S. Lewis and Timothy Keller.  Both of those writers wrote that we send ourselves to Hell, that ultimately we seperate ourselves from God, and that God is desperately trying to rescue us from ourselves through his own loving sacrifice.

  First Lewis:

  "Finally, it is objected that the ultimate loss of a single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does. In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat. What you call defeat, I call miracle: for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity. I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside."  -- The Problem of Pain

  "Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it.  You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it.  But there may come a day when you can no longer.  Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine.  It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell.  In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud."  --The Great Divorce

  "All that are in Hell choose it.  Without that choice it wouldn't be Hell.  No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it."  --The Problem of Pain.

  And then Keller:

  "In short, hell is simply one's freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity...  That is why it is a travesty to picture God casting people into a pit who are crying,  'I'm sorry!  Let me out!'  ...All God does in the end with people is give them what they most want, including freedom from himself."  --The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

  So saying that God doesn't send people to Hell doesn't mean that Hell doesn't exist, or that people don't go there--it only clarifies God's role in damnation.  (I highly recommend the chapter on Hell in Keller's "The Reason for God," or Lewis's parable "The Great Divorce," if you want to better understand this idea.)

  I don't know if Rob Bell holds to a "The Great Divorce" -style view of Hell, in which Hell is ultimately ourselves left alone in the absence of God's presence, an emphasis on the "Depart from me, I never knew you" and a de-emphasis on flames and whips and pitchforks and many things not found in scripture but only in Dante.  If Bell does hold such a view, however, this book-trailer would make perfect sense: the "Love Wins" statement and the questioning of Christian subcultural belief.  And yet he would not be a Universalist by any stretch.

  I can't say more without more information to go on.  Perhaps I will buy the book, when it comes out on Kindle, and report back.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe Bell is, in fact, becoming a universalist, who believes that all people go to heaven--a believe sadly incompatible with Christianity.  We won't know until we read his book, though.

  And until that time, I am concerned by how freely Christians feel they can blast this pastor for assumed theology. 

  • 11:34 am
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