Telling the story of a woman…”I grew up in an abusive household. Much of my abuse was spiritual-and when I say spirtual, I don’t mean new age, esoteric, random mumblings from half-Wiccan, hippie parents…I mean that my father raped me while reciting the Lord’s Prayer, I mean that my father molested me while singing Christian hymns.”

When he shares stories like this I want to scream that is not my Jesus either. That is the product of a fallen world but not the desires of my God. Bell thinks that these atrocities will prevent people from making decisions for Christ and therefore these people should not be held responsible for the hell that they are living in in this life. He then gives verse after verse where he looks at all the different views that scriptures have about the afterlife. This section is very troubling as he pulls many verses out of context (one thing I find troubling throughout the book is he does not give exact scripture references, just generic). He wants you to believe that even scripture is unclear about what happens when you die. He closes the chapter with James 2 “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that and shudder,” indicating that belief is not enough. This is one of the first places I really took offense. To put this verse in any sort of context of doubt about afterlife is a completely false interpretation. This verse is simply indicating that saying Jesus saves is not enough. It is having faith in Christ, believing not just intellectually but in the heart that saves you.
In the next chapter he looks at the cultural images associated with heaven, things like harps clouds, streets of gold, robes, and more. He says, “Does anybody look good in a white robe? Can you play sports in a white robe? How could it be heaven without sports…What if you spill food on the robe?” As much as I love Audio Adrenaline I am pretty sure that when I am in the presence of God I will not care about football.
Let’s take a step back and notice that for Bell heaven will not be what we typically think of when we talk of heaven but a reestablishment of the kingdom here on earth forever. That we will live in heaven much the same way we live here and now on earth. While he believes that heaven will be here on earth, Rob wrestles with the concept of anyone being sent to eternal damnation.

He speaks of a funeral…”The woman sitting next to her, however, is realizing that if what the pastor is saying about heaven is true, she will be separated from her mother and father, brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends forever, with no chance of any reunion ever. She in that very same moment has tears streaming down her face too, but they are tears of a different kind.”

As difficult as this is to internalize, this is the truth of Scripture. Mark Driscoll says “Despite God’s love for and patience with sinners, it is a horrid mistake to dismiss the Bible’s clear teachings on hell. Richard Niebuhr characterized the ongoing attempt of liberal Christians to deny hell as “a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” Jesus said more about hell than about any other topic. Amazingly, 13 percent of his sayings are about hell and judgment; more than half of his parables relate to the eternal judgment of sinners.” Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 1:5-9 “God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” If we believe this scripture then there is a literal eternal destruction not just what we experience in this life.
Bell wants us to believe that Jesus doesn’t really talk about eternal life the same way that we think of eternal life. He spends a lot of time on the story of the rich young ruler and to make his point about our misconception of eternal life he says, “When the man asks about inheriting “eternal life,” he isn’t asking about how to go to heaven when he dies. This wasn’t a concern for the man or Jesus. This is why Jesus doesn’t tell people how to ‘go to heaven.’ It wasn’t what Jesus came to do.” I cannot imagine how he comes to this conclusion the man asks a very straightforward question that needs no interpretation how do I have eternal life? As far as Jesus he didn’t need to tell the man how to get to heaven because he knew the man’s heart and knew it needed to change before he could appropriately answer that question. The ESV study bible says “Jesus knows the mans wealth has become his means to personal identity, power, and a sense of meaning in life-that it has become the idolatrous god of his life. Jesus’ strategy is to turn this man from focusing on external conformity to the law to examining his heart, revealing his ruling God.”
He looks at the prophets and how they spoke “about all nations” indicating that everyone will be in heaven. He says, “That’s an extraordinarily complex, interconnected and diverse reality, a reality in which individual identities aren’t lost or repressed, but embraced and celebrated. An expansive unity that goes beyond and yet fully embraces staggering levels of diversity.” I agree with him wholeheartedly that heaven will be a very diverse place full of people nothing like me but not because God will allow everyone in. Clearly his view of heaven and mine are very different.
He says “Life in the age to come. Earthy.” Indicating that the next life will be much like the one we are currently living in. I am not sure if he has read Revelation or perhaps takes Revelation simply as allegory but “Earthy” is nothing like that picture of heaven. As he discusses this concept of heaven he transitions to what heaven will look like when he says that it will be “The day when God says “ENOUGH!” to anything that threatens the peace (shalom is the Hebrew word), harmony, and health that God intends for the world. Gods says no to injustice. God says, “Never again” to the oppressors who prey on the weak and vulnerable. God declares a ban on weapons.” I agree with all of this. This is an accurate picture of heaven even I disagree with everyone he thinks will be there.
One of the main problems that I have with his picture of the after life is that this is a very easy gospel to believe in which I think is counterintuitive to what scripture teaches.”God Acts. Decisively. On behalf of everybody who’s ever been stepped on by the machine, exploited, abused, forgotten, or mistreated. God puts an end to it. God says, “Enough.” This is how we all want the Gospel to be, simple, easy, and for everyone, but this is not what Scripture teaches. Matthew 7:14 says “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” The way to life is difficult Scripture is very clear on this subject and there will only be a few that find it.

This is why Jesus tells the man that if he sells his possesions, he’ll have rewards in heaven. Rewards are a dynamic rather than a static reality. Many people think of heaven, and they picture mansions (a word nowhere in the Bible’s descriptions of heaven) and Ferraris and literal streets of gold, as if the best God can come up with is Beverly Hills in the sky. Tax-free, of course, and without smog.”

Forgive me for believing what the Bible says about heaven when it refers in Revelation 21 to the glory of heaven

“18 the wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. 19 The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20 the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. 21 And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.”

This is the biblical picture of heaven.

“In Matthew 20 the mother of two of Jesus’s desiciples says to Jesus, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and other at your left in your kingdom.” She doesn’t want bigger mansions or larger piles of gold for them, because static images of wealth and prosperity were not what filled people’s heads when they thought of heaven in her day. She understood heaven to be about patnering with God to make a new and better world, one with increasingly complex and expansive expressions and dimensions of shalom, creativity, beauty, and design.”

I searched commentaries far and low and could not find one person to support his supposition here. Everyone seemed to take a standard view that she was looking for a place of glory and honor in the life to come for her sons. This is foundational to his viewpoint, he needs to prove that Jesus never taught about heaven in the terms that we think of and that Heaven for Him was always “Earthy”. In this case scholars simply do not seem to agree with him on this one.

“Much of the speculation about heaven-and, more important, the confusion-comes from the idea that in the blink of an eye we will automatically become totally different people who “know” everything. But our heart, our character, our desires, our longings-those things take time.”

Mark Driscoll says “Upon death, a believer’s spirit immediately goes to heaven to be with Jesus. Jesus gives us a picture in Luke 16:19–31 of existence after death. Lazarus, the godly beggar, goes to be with Abraham, while the self-indulgent rich man is in a place of torment.” I know it is hard to imagine but everything happens in the blink of an eye. 1 Corinthians 15 says, “52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” EVERYTHING will change when we get to heaven!
Bell again looks at the idea of believing in Christ in this life. Belief in Christ as in the Sunday School tradition for Bell is not an accurate way to look at a relationship with God. He references the thief on the cross indicating that when he is on the cross “He doesn’t announce that he now believes.” He wants to be a part of heaven, but there is no indication of belief, yet somewhat amazingly three sentences later he says of the thief on the cross “He BELIEVES that God is doing something new through Jesus.” How can he say that he never announces belief yet also say that he believes. Very contradictory!
He wraps up the chapter by saying “Eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts now. It’s not about a life that begins at death; it’s about experiencing the kind of life now that can endure and survive even death.” In a way I agree with this statement completely. Every believer’s life goal should be about experiencing the kind of life that endures after death. I go back to where I started at the beginning of this piece (if you can even remember back that far) that Love could win if we would live the Gospel out the way that it was intended.
In the third chapter Rob really dives into the idea of hell and particularly that in his interpretation of Scripture a loving God would not send someone to eternal damnation. He looks at the concepts of hell again as being in this present age. He says Jesus refers to hell as Gehenna which was a city outside of Jerusalem that was a city dump that was always on fire, burning constantly to consume the trash. He says, “Gehenna was an actual place that Jesus’s listeners would have been familiar with. So the next time someone asks you if you believe in an actual hell, you can always say, “Yes, I do believe that my garbage goes somewhere…” This section is the crux of his entire argument and is not backed up by Scripture and certainly not backed up by church tradition. Everything that he says about Gehenna is true but Jesus was known to use metaphors to make His points. The main way he taught was through parables using metaphors to put concepts of God on a commoners perspective. In Matthew 10:28 it says, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” The word here is gehenna and as John Wesley says in regards to gehenna “In the valley of Hinnom (whence the word in the original is taken) the children were used to be burnt alive to Moloch. It was afterward made a receptacle for the filth of the city, where continual fires were kept to consume it. And it is probable, if any criminals were burnt alive, it was in this accursed and horrible place. Therefore both as to its former and latter state, it was a fit emblem of hell. It must here signify a degree of future punishment.” Church history is very clear that when Jesus refers to gehenna he is not simply talking of a city but a future judgement. Saint Augustine of Hippo had a similar view to Bell except he believed that hell was separation from a God that continued to love them. He says “The suffering of hell is compounded because God continues to love the sinner who is not able to return the love.” History is very clear on this issue.
He spends much of the rest of this section showing pictures of hell on earth. I cannot argue that the stories he tells are horrific and real picture of hell. He says, “I tell these stories because it is absolutely vital that we acknowledge that love, grace and humanity can be rejected.” This he says is what constitutes hell. On many different occasions he references Christianity in the same breath as this rejection. He says, “Often the people most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned with the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death.” I cannot argue with this at all. As I have stated previously Christendom is constantly missing out on opportunities to exemplify the love of Christ. The people that Bell is referring to do not really get what Jesus was all about.

“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.”

With this one statement he turns the Gospel on end. He references Lamentations 3:31-32 where it says “People are not cast off by the Lord forever, though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.” Bell indicates that this is referring to the fact that no one will suffer eternal punishment. The ESV study bible says of this verse “God’s first instinct is not to punish. He does so only when his patience with sinners does not lead to their repentance.” Although he is loving and patient God is not giving a free pass to everyone. In fact his point is completely rebutted if he places the verse in context of the whole chapter. Verse 64-66 of the same chapter says “You will repay them, O Lord, according to the work of their hands. You will give them dullness of heart; your curse will be on them. You will pursue them in anger and destroy them from under your heavens, O Lord.” God is a God of love but he is also a God of justice.
Rob spends much of the rest of this chapter and in to chapter 4 pulling verses out of context or misinterpreting them. He references Philippians 2:10 “Every knee should bow…and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Here he indicates that this verse means that because we will all worship God one day that means we will all be in the presence of God for eternity. Origen one of the early church fathers held this same viewpoint. Thomas Aquinas wrote in response to Origen (and perhaps Rob Bell),

“Therefore, God bestowed, i.e., made manifest to the world, that He has this name. This was manifested in the resurrection, because prior to it the divinity of Christ was not that well known. This is supported by the text which follows: it implies that He did not give Him a name He did not already have, but that all should venerate it. And he mentions two types of veneration, namely, subjecting the body and confessing with the mouth: and every tongue confess. He says therefore: He has given Him a name which is above all names, even as man; hence he adds, that at the name of Jesus, which is the name of the man, every knee should bow; “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear’ (Is. 45:23).
But here is where Origen erred, because when he heard that every knee should bow, which is a sign of subjection, he believed that at some future time every rational creature, whether angels or men or devils, would be subjected to Christ by the allegiance of charity. But this is contrary to Matthew (25:41): “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” It should be noted that there are two kinds of subjection: one is voluntary and the other involuntary
In the future it will come about that all the holy angels will be subject to Christ voluntarily; hence he says, every knee should bow, where he mentions the sign for the thing signified: [“Adore him all his angels” (Ps. 96:8) ]. Likewise, holy and just and beatified men will be subject in this way: “All the nations thou has made shall come and bow down before thee, 0 Lord, and shall glorify thy name” (Ps. 86:9); but not the devils and the damned, for they will be subject involuntarily: “Even the demons believe—and shudder” (Jas. 2:19).
Then when he says, and every tongue confess, he touches on the reverence shown by confessing with the mouth: Every tongue, namely, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. This does not refer to a confession of praise from those under the earth, but to a forced confession, which is made by recognizing God: “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” (Is. 40:5); “Let them praise thy great and terrible name! holy is he!” (Ps. 99:3). And this confession will recognize that Jesus Christ is Lord [in] the glory of God the Father. He does not say in a similar glory, because it is the same glory: “That all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father?” (in. 5:23). It should be noted that earlier he had said that, he was in the form of God, but here he says in the glory, because it would come to pass that what He had from all eternity would be known by all: “Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made” (Jn. 17:5).”

Bell then downgrades and looks at some of the opposition to his beliefs. He says, “For there to be love, there has to be the option both now and then to not love. To turn the other way. To reject the love extended…Although God is powerful and mighty, when it comes to the human heart God has to play by the same rules we do…If at any point God overrides, co-opts, or hijacks the human heart, robbing us of our freedom to choose, then God has violated the fundamental essence of what love even is.” He argues that if you can chose to do evil in this life you can by the assumption of free will chose to do evil in the next life. Again this is counterintuitive to Scripture. Scripture is clear that the decision you make for Christ in this life has eternal significance in the next life. He argues that many people throughout history have seen eternity the same way as he does as if this somehow validates his inaccuracies.
Bell says, “Could God say to someone truly humbled, broken, and desperate for reconciliation, ‘Sorry, too late’?” Unfortunately we will not get that option in the next life. Mark Driscoll states, “Jesus made this very clear, saying in John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” Jesus’ death propitiated God’s wrath against sin. Those who refuse this gift have the double penalty of wrath for their sins and for rejecting God’s Son. Jesus himself taught this in John 3:18, saying, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” Unlike Jesus’ words to the sheep, to the goats on his left he will say, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
As we move through this chapter ‘Love Wins’ begins to fall apart. Bell thinks that his diverse thought is perfectly understandable because “It is, after all, a wide stream we’re swimming in…The Christian faith is big enough, wide enough, and generous enough to handle that vast a range of perspectives.” Matthew 7:14 says “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” There is nothing easy or safe about the Gospel. In one of the most heretical statements of the books he says that “It’s important that we be honest about the fact that some stories are better than others. Telling a story in which billions of people spend forever somewhere in the universe trapped in a black hole of endless torment and misery with no way out isn’t a very good story.” In this case better means easier. To say some stories are better than others is simply to say that some stories are easier to tell than others. NOTHING about my Gospel has ever been easy. 1 Peter 2:8 says “So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.” The Gospel is offensive and never easy, to say it is is to minimize what Christ endured on the Cross, even though Bell indicates that his sacrifice is not minimized because Christ covers all, that picture is an easy Gospel!
Bell’s premises are full of holes and full of questions, but as he says “Those are questions, or more accurately, those are tensions we are free to leave fully intact. We don’t need to resolve them or answer them because we can’t, and so we simply respect them, creating space for the freedom that love requires.” So for Bell ignoring these tensions is better than actually having answers.
He continues to look at one of the tensions when he goes on in the next chapterto say ” When people say that Jesus came to die on the cross so that we can have a relationship with God, yes, that is true. But that explanation as the first explanation puts us at the center…When Jesus is presented only as the answer that saves individuals from their sin and death, we run the risk of shrinking the Gospel down to something just for humans, when God has inaugurated a movement in Jesus’s resurrection to renew, restore, and reconcile everything on earth or in heaven.” I agree that the gospel is never about me it is always about Christ. On my own there is nothing I can do to receive grace it is only through Christ but that does not mean that I do not personally have to make a decision for Christ in this life.
He continues “As obvious as it is, then, Jesus is bigger than any one religion.” I think a major problem occurs when we equate “religion” with Christ. It is true that Jesus transcends all religions however it is not true that because of that everyone no matter what their beliefs will receive grace in the end. He says that the Christian culture “cannot claim [Jesus] to be ours any more than he’s anyone else’s” I find this statement to be very offensive. I most certainly claim Jesus as mine and believe that anyone who believes in the saving work of the cross should do the same, no matter what background they come from (again hinging on believing in the redemptive work of the cross).

Jesus says “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…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 on inclusivity…This kind insists that Jesus is the way, but holds tightly to the assumption that the all-embracing, saving love of this particular Jesus the Christ will of course include all sorts of unexpected people from across the cultural spectrum. As soon as the door is opened to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Baptists from Cleveland, many Christisans 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. Absolutley, unequivocally, unalterably not true. What Jesus does is declare that he, and he alone is saving everybody.”

Wow that is a mountain of theology that he just climbed there. I believe in the supposition that Jesus alone has the power to save but not that Jesus is saving everybody. Mark Driscoll says “People who reject Jesus in this life will not rejoice in him after this life. Hell is only for those who persistently reject the real God in favor of false gods. So in the end, people get to be with the god they love. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, either people will say to God, “Thy will be done,” or God will say to them, “Thy will be done.” Not only is God loving, but he is also just. Heaven and hell are the result of his love and justice.” Jesus sacrifice is for everyone but not everyone will accept it and thus not everyone will be in heaven.
As he closes the sixth chapter he says many things that I agree with. “We aren’t surprised when people stumble upon this mystery, whenever and however that happens. We aren’t offended when they don’t use the exact language we use…Sometimes people use his name; other times they don’t…and none of us have cornered the market on Jesus, and none of us ever will.”
In chapter 7 Bell gets to the core of his beliefs in make a decision for Christ in this life. He attempts to equate the traditional church view of God to a volatile abusive father, saying, “If God can switch gears like that, switch entire modes of being that quickly, that raises a thousand questions about whether a being like this could ever be trusted, let alone be good…Does God become somebody totally different the moment you die? That kind of God is simply devastating. Psychologically crushing. We can’t bear it. No one can.” Again Bell never addresses the issue of God’s justice that is put in direct opposition of his love. Bell simply states his view as “to reject God’s grace…will lead to misery.” That is all nothing more nothing less. Reject God in this life and you will simply be miserable. This is such a palatable gospel. One that everyone can find refuge in no matter what they do in this life.
He does make an accurate statement when he says “A discussion about how to ‘just get into heaven’ has no place in the life of a disciple of Jesus, because it’s missing the point of it all.” Jesus’ sacrifice is not simply about my getting to heaven. He says “Those people out there may be going to parties and appearing to have fun while the rest of us do ‘God’s work’ but someday we’ll go to heaven, where we won’t have to do anything, and they’ll go to hell, where they’ll get theirs.” Again anyone who has really bought in to the gospel would never see it this way. My heart breaks for the lost and it is never my desire to see anyone go to hell.
Bell closes the end of the book by saying “Jesus reminds us in a number of ways that it is vitally important we take our choices here and now as seriously as we possibly can because they matter more than we can begin to imagine.” Unfortunately by my estimation he never really says why it is vitally important. It is a shame that the major tenant that separates what I believe from what he believes is never really addressed. Saying that Jesus’s sacrifice has eternal value because it allows everyone to potentially be in God’s presence is not an answer to the question of what does it mean to make a decision in this life for Christ.
Bell’s gospel is an easy gospel. One that we get as the old phrase goes our cake and eat it too, “God says yes we can have what we want, because love wins.” It is a gospel where none of the responsibility is put on humanity and all is put on Christ. Scripture is very clear that it takes a balance of both, the grace displayed by Christ on the cross and my decision in this life to faith in that grace. God’s love for us and throughout Scripture is balanced completely against his justice. If he is wrong, as I believe that he is, this view of the gospel is very dangerous and will potentially lead many people astray. I struggle with this because of what I think of Bell and because of how convincing he can be without proper exposition of the Word.
Again I challenge you search the Scriptures on your own and see what God’s word says. Trust and know that I spent hours pouring over the Word seeking what God has to say about His love and how in the end he wins and prevails over hell, but don’t take my word for it take God’s!

http://www.thesource4ym.com/GAMES/sick.asp – Ever wonder where we get all of our crazy ideas for openers. Well some of them we just come up with because we are that messed up but a lot of our ideas come from this site. Just remember you are not at camp, we don’t have to see your parents you do!
http://grad2010.com/free_grad/ – Our friends at Interlinc want to give you something you will really like. Get a FREE ConGRADulations! Class of 2010 (gift for graduating seniors) CD by going to www.grad2010.com/free_grad.
http://www.newsboys.com/bornagain/ – Download a free copy of the Newsboys new single “Born Again”. If you are like me you probably think the newsboys are outdated but the is actually a pretty cool track and it is free music you can use for your youth group.
http://www.songlyrics.com/search.php – Got some lyrics stuck in your head but not sure the name of the worship song or the artist who sings it, this website has a search engine that will let you look up any section of lyrics. Almost all of the worship songs we do are on here. When you find the song you can click on the lyrics to make sure it is the right song. Be sure when you search to click inside the “within lyrics text box” and then select the “phrase” button not the “scattered words” button underneath that box.
http://www.christianguitar.org/ – If you have a worship band or just a students who wants to lead worship for your group but doesn’t know the chords, this site has hundreds of worship songs. Most of what we play at camp is on here. If you are not sure the name of a song use the previous link to search for the name and artist.