Love Wins 2

In the preface, we find three main assertions. First, the Gospel, Jesus’ story, is “first and foremost about the love of God for every single one of us”. This story, according to the book has been “hijacked” by other stories that “Jesus isn’t interested in telling” because “they have nothing to do with what he came to do”. The book makes the claim that there is a “misguided and toxic” idea circulating widely among many, perhaps most, Christians in the world. This idea, this message, according to Rob Bell “subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message”. That message:

A select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. Its clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is in essence to reject Jesus.

The book is an attempt to “reclaim” the correct, true plot of the Jesus story.

Second, the kind of faith Jesus invites believers into “doesn’t skirt the big questions about topics like God and Jesus and salvation and judgment and heaven and hell”. However, there are some Christian contexts where questions are not welcomed. The book advocates that questions, inquiry and the discussion that it generates is itself divine. Rob states, “There is no question that Jesus cannot handle, no discussion too volatile, no issue too dangerous”.

Third, nothing in the book has not been taught or believed by many Christians before Rob Bell. The content of the book it is claimed has been taught an “untold number of times”. He contends that the historic, orthodox Christian faith is a “deep, wide, diverse stream that’s been flowing for thousands of years, carrying a staggering variety of voices, perspectives, and experiences”. The book claims to introduce the reader to “the ancient, ongoing discussion surrounding the resurrected Jesus”.

What do we make of these claims three claims?

The first claim represents an issue of colossal importance because if Rob Bell is in fact correct then we indeed need to repent immediately of our misguided and toxic understanding of the Gospel and push restart. We need to reboot our theological hard drives. If we have the Gospel wrong we won’t have much else right. But is Rob right here? Has the Gospel story been hijacked? Does the majority of evangelical Christians in the twenty-first century have the Gospel all wrong? Have most of us totally lost the plot? Have we left behind Jesus’ primary point? Have we somehow misunderstood or twisted the truth of what Jesus came to do? Well, this is a huge question that would require survey of Gospel accounts let alone a wide-ranging study of Gospel presentations today. Neither of which did Love Wins provide. So, it is certainly an overstatement. But it is worth asking don’t you think? It is possible that given our cultural conditioning we have gotten at least parts of the Gospel wrong? Or perhaps we have overly emphasized some aspects and neglected others?

While it is not yet altogether clear what Rob thinks is wrong with the typical evangelical Gospel story we can see glimpses of what he is protesting and what he will consequently develop in the book.

Traditional View		Love Wins
1. A select few will ultimately be saved.		1. Many if not most or all will ultimately be saved.
2. There’s no second chance after death.		2. There are an innumerable number of chances to be saved in this life and the next.
3. Heaven is a place somewhere else.		3. Heaven is here not somewhere else.
4. The central truth of Christianity is about getting out of hell and into heaven.		4. Whatever the central message of Christian faith is, it’s not about getting in and staying out.

The second claim about the importance of question asking is interesting. And there is indeed some truth in what he’s said in my opinion. I have noticed that some have taken issue with Rob’s questions asserting that they are not questions so much as statements, rhetorical questions. These are not questions Rob is really asking, they say, they are rather questions to stir up controversy, to cause confusion, to create disequilibrium. I can’t say speak to what the motivation is behind the questions. It seems reasonable to suppose I guess that the author is not simply asking questions for the sake of it. He clearly is making a point with the book and is using questions to create something of a need in his reader to receive his answers. Whatever the motivation, I am convinced that many of the questions the book raises are in fact good questions. And many Christians sitting in our churches are secretly asking them, but afraid to raise them publicly. I have a person at my church come to me late last year and confess that they were an evangelical universalist. I suppose they thought I would be a safe ear. While many are not as informed about the issues as this particular Christian, I’d be shocked if we conducted a survey of people in our churches and not many of them were either pluralistic or universalists. There is the official teaching of the church and then there is what the Christians who sit in the pews believe. Often these are two very different things. So applaud the book for raising the issues surrounding heaven and hell and putting them front and center. I think that to assume that there aren’t many people who if they thought about it would be convinced that in the end God’s going to sort it out and a good God will not send most of the world’s population who have ever lived to an eternal conscious punishment.

The third claim is perhaps the least able to stand up under the weight of the evidence not in its favor. It is incontrovertible that there has been a wide range of views with the context of what can loosely be labeled Christianity through the two millennia of its existence. However, it is not accurate by any stretch to call orthodox a view that (1) tends toward universalism, (2) presents a “second-chance” theology, and (3) argues that nothing of what is central to the Gospel story is about “getting in”. This view can claim the label orthodoxy about as much as those found among the Gnostic Gospels. Sure there were so-called Christians used these texts and who thought of them as Christian Scripture, but they were on the very fringes of early Christianity representing only a very small minority.