Dear St. Paul’s Family,
For today’s Mid-Week Message, I’d like to wade into a growing controversy that’s been brewing within Christian circles related to a new book called Love Wins by Rob Bell. I realize that many of you may have never heard of him, let alone read any of his books. But since his most recent work has garnered attention both in and outside of the church, through numerous television interviews, blog posts, and websites, it is important to keep current with this growing discussion. His latest book tackles the hefty topics of heaven and hell, atonement, and the relationship between Jesus and people of other religions. Since its release, Bell has been both blasted and praised, exposing many of the major theological fault lines that exist within the church.
HEAVEN AND HELL, HERE AND NOW
The first few chapters push against the church’s traditional emphasis on heaven and hell as places one goes after death. Instead of fanciful images of pearly gates, golden streets, and fiery brimstone, Bell locates them as present realities, as well as possibilities for the future. “Eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts now,” he writes. “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.”
To reach that conclusion, Bell exegetes numerous Scripture passages, including Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler, his conversation with the thief on the cross, a slew of prophetic oracles from the Hebrew Bible, and several teachings from Paul. He reinterprets the Greek word aion, commonly translated as “eternal,” as having much more nuanced meaning than futuristic permanency. Bell claims that the Bible does not view this kind of time linearly, with a defined beginning and end, but as an “intensity of experience that transcends time.”
Bell uses the term hell to encompass all of human suffering today, and he believes that it is the only adequate term to describe the vividness of that experience. Through people’s own choices, and the rampant work of evil in the world, many people are far removed from the full experience of God’s love. He recounts personal stories: a visit to Rwanda to see victims of genocide, women he has ministered to who have been raped, and parents who have lost children. He invites his readers to consider all of the inhumane, inhospitable, and insufferable situations people are facing today, and view them as a kind of literal hell much more powerful than any sort of fanciful, metaphorical image taught by many in the church.
The book asserts that that kind of figurative hell is neither biblical or missional. What is at stake if the church overemphasizes a futuristic image of heaven and hell? Complacency, according to Bell. Rendering the Christian life in solely future-oriented terms leaves little motivation to care for the needs of the world today. “Eschatology shapes ethics,” Bell writes. What we believe about the future necessarily impacts how we live in the present.
Furthermore, Bell believes that one’s placement in hell is not permanent. Chapter 4, titled, “Does God Get What God Wants?” makes the book’s central claim that underscores its title. Ultimately, God will continue to work to help people get out of their hell. To think that God would do otherwise suggests any of the following: God is not powerful enough, God is not loving enough, or God is a quitter. And, he adds, it would make God wasteful: “Is history tragic? Have billions of people been created only to spend eternity in conscious punishment and torment, suffering infinitely for the finite sins they committed in the few years they spent on earth?”
I can remember in one of my theology classes my professor Tyron Inbody posing it to me in this way: Consider the people who ever lived and are living today. Now take all the people who lived before the time of Jesus and never could have professed a faith in him. Then add all the people who were born in geographic seclusion from any reach of Christianity. And then add all the people who today who have never heard the message of the Christian faith. That means that the total number of people who could have possibly professed a faith in Jesus is less than one percent. Nevermind what that says about God’s power and love. That seems like a whole lot of waste for a God who otherwise demonstrates efficiency and excellence.
And therein lies the central premise of Bell’s book. God is not a quitter, and God is not wasteful. God’s love continues to work on lost, hurting people, now and into the future, and even death will not stop God. Hence the title of his book, “Love Wins.”
JESUS, THE ONLY WAY?
These claims lead to the book’s central controversy. Does Rob Bell really believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation? Bell is certainly aware of this potential accusation as a consequence of his prior chapters, so he negotiates his way through some classical theological categories: Bell says that he is neither “exclusivist” (only those who believe in Jesus will be saved) or “inclusivist” (everyone is saved, regardless of belief, because Jesus died for all). Instead, he states that Jesus is “exclusive, on the other side of inclusive.” Bell believes that God offers a way to salvation that is uniquely through Jesus, but that way is wider than any one unique, narrow approach. It is wider than any one scripted “sinner’s prayer,” wider than any emotionally wrenching altar call, and wider than any one church’s process for evangelism. He even allows for the possibility that people may come to salvation through Jesus in ways that are distinct from Christian experience. How that might happen, Bell doesn’t specify, perhaps to avoid the possibility of limiting what he claims is a vastly wide pathway to faith in God through Christ.
Is this delicate nuance of verbiage an effective argument? By saying that the singular way of Jesus is wide, is Bell trying to have it both ways? Bell answers those questions with a question of his own: What do we really believe about God? Do we believe that God is limited in the ways that God can redeem humanity, or is it possible that God could use any means necessary to save them? Wouldn’t it make sense that a God of perfect love, with absolute desire to redeem all people, would go to any means necessary to save all people? If so, then why would God use a limited approach? Couldn’t Jesus be both the only way, yet that way be broader than what we might assume? The answer for Bell, of course, is yes.
I’ve wrestled with his answers, and found some resonance with my own conclusions on the matter. I’ve come to adopt a position first taught to me by my theology professor Tyron Inbody. He first coined the term confessional pluralism as a way of suggesting our relationship to other faiths. First, I am confessional, which is to say that as a Christian, I can unashamedly proclaim my conviction about Jesus Christ as being the way to salvation. But as a confessional pluralist, I can also say that when I consider other faiths through the lens of my Christian conviction, there might be, and even are, truths to be found in other religions. And the more I continue to learn about other religions, the more I see this as the case. From Judaism, I can learn a lot about the beauty of ritual remembrance and the importance of Sabbath rest. From Islam, I can learn the significance of obedience to God. From Buddhism, I can learn to practice letting go of material things and enhance the way I quiet myself in prayer. And so on. Do any of these things make me any less a Christian? I certainly don’t think so.
SO, IS HE A UNIVERSALIST? (AND, FOR THAT MATTER, AM I?)
Universalism is the belief that, in the end, everyone will go to heaven, a position that the church has generally deemed heretical throughout its history. For someone to be a universalist, at least two criteria must be in place: one has to disavow a belief in human free will (since God saves us whether we choose it or not), and one has to believe that heaven and hell are permanent realities (since they have to be inescapable). In Love Wins, Bell does not ascribe to either. He clearly believes that a person has the ability to choose heaven or hell, both as a present and future reality, and he believes that neither are necessarily permanent situations. Just because someone is in “hell” here on earth does not mean that it is an eternal sentence. Why? Once again, for Bell it is all about God. God doesn’t quit. God cannot force us into heaven or out of hell, but God will never stop trying to love us into a relationship with God. And nothing, not even death, can get God to quit.
It is on this point that I most deeply resonated with Bell’s book. In my thirteen years of ministry, I have done a countless number of funerals and memorial services. Many of them have been for members of the church, but many of them were for people for whom faith had little to no impact on their life. Their families could not point to a moment in time when they prayed the sinner’s prayer, or claimed a relationship with Christ, or were baptized into the faith. For some family members, that troubling realization has prompted a gut-wrenching question: Is my family member in hell?
I can tell you that in my years of ministry, I have never turned down the opportunity to do a funeral simply on the basis of whether that person was a Christian or not. And when it came time to deliver a eulogy for those persons, I have maintained a standard approach. I read aloud the words of Romans 8: For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Basically, Paul supports Bell’s central claim. Nothing will ever stand in the way of God’s love at work in a person. Not even death.
So, as reluctant as I am to use labels like “universalist” to evaluate a person’s positions, I have to say that I don’t think Bell fits that category; his positions on free will and the impermanence of heaven and hell, along with his belief in God’s persistent love, don’t fit the claims made by a universalist. Just because one believes that God never quits loving us doesn’t make one a universalist. It just means we really believe in God’s love.
Now, I share all of this with you not just so that you learn about some author’s arguments in some book you may never read. I think it’s important for you to know where I’m coming from as your pastor. I’m one who is less fixated on where people go after they die, and really interested in the kind of kingdom we experience together in the present. And I’m not one to judge the level of one’s spiritual standing with Jesus, since we are all in this together. What I do know is that I believe in a pretty awesome God, who loves us enough to meet us where we are, and loves us too much to leave us there. [1]
THE NOVELTY OF ROB BELL
But in case you ever feel like picking up this or any other of Rob Bell’s books, I’d like to consider with you why Bell has become such a significant player in today’s church. If there is nothing in his book that is particularly original (which he freely admits in the introduction), and if the medium through which he shares his ideas (books and videos) is used by many other preachers, what is it about Bell that makes him so important?
Part of the reason, of course, has to do with his target audience. Some would label them as “evangelical,” “conservative,” and even “fundamentalist,” but, like the term “universalist,” I find these labels to be neither descriptive or helpful, especially when they are used to derogate others. Instead, I prefer to think of people in Bell’s target audience as premodern. This is not intended to be a demeaning label, and there is no connotation of primitiveness or immaturity. Rather, it is a commentary on the valid method in which they do the work of theology. Premodern Christians believe that the Bible depicts the actual words of the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and contains the foundations for what the church would later claim about him. All that we need to know about Jesus (the man who lived) and the Christ (the central figure of our faith) is recorded in the Bible.
In contrast, the modern project, begun by Albert Schweitzer in the 20th century, continued by Ernst Kaseman, and most recently taken up by Jesus Seminar scholars John Dominic Crossan, John Shelby Spong, and Marcus Borg, do not consider the Bible as a reliable source for describing the historical Jesus. For them, the Bible is helpful as a recording of early Christian reflections on the historical figure, but is unreliable as a historical document, since there were no video recordings, tape recordings, or newspapers. To see who the actual Jesus was, therefore, we need to strip away the Bible’s many layers of post-historical commentary about Jesus by the church, leaving us with very little Bible left as a reliable source for learning who Jesus was.
But post-moderns, including many recent liberation theologians, view the modern project with great skepticism, claiming that since there is no objective evidence to know with precision who the historical Jesus really was, we should render the whole modern project unnecessary. [2] They believe that what is most foundational to our faith is the record of what the church has said about Jesus, and how we consider him to be the Christ of our faith. The Bible, for postmoderns, is not evidence of the historical Jesus per se, but a record of what the church has said about him. And that’s the basis of our faith.
To put it most succinctly, premoderns believe that the Bible tells us everything we need to know about the Jesus of history and the Christ of our faith (in fact, to them the two are synonymous.) Moderns are less interested in the Christ of faith and want to know who the Jesus of history really was, and think the Bible has limited use in getting us there. And post-moderns are more interested in the history of the church’s interpretations of Jesus, including what is recorded in the Bible. And the catch, of course, is that all three kinds of people are represented across the church, each and every Sunday. [3]
By and large, Bell’s audience is mostly a premodern group, and therefore Bell’s methodology is essentially premodern. His books are largely based on conclusions he makes about biblical passages, with the assumption that the words of Jesus in the gospels were his actual sayings. All of his conclusions are based on biblical interpretation, rather than trying to make connections to other theologians and church traditions. Bell, after all, is a preacher at heart, and is not trying to write a book about first-order systematic theology.
But even though his methodology is premodern, his conclusions are decidedly modern and postmodern. He is most interested in analyzing the history of conclusions made about Jesus, stripping away populist convictions in exchange for something closer to what may be the heart of the gospels. His conclusions, then are nothing original. Much of what he says can be echoed by Borg, Crossan, and Spong, and his emphasis on social justice will resonate with many liberation theologians of the post-modern era. But he knows that his audience would never buy into any of those conclusions if they weren’t supported entirely by biblical passages. So he uses premodern means to make non-premodern claims. And therein lies the novelty of Rob Bell, as well as his importance to the contemporary Christian church.
LET’S BE CAREFUL WITH THE LABELS
Readers can most clearly see evidence of Bell’s approach in his book’s composition. Even though his book deals with weighty theological matters, there are no footnotes, endnotes, or bibliography. There is a section of recommended reading at the back, but it is unclear how Bell wishes to connect his work with those listed there. We know that citations are important, not only to properly attest an author’s thoughts to their source, but also to indicate how the author wishes to be viewed in the broader conversation. How does the author want her/his work to be regarded in relation to others who have said similar things? How does this material fit in the larger academic discussion? Footnotes and a bibliography are a quick and easy way to make that assessment.
It seems that Bell’s lack of citation is intentional. He knows that a book heavy with citations might be regarded by his premodern audience with skepticism. For those who have a degree of suspicion of anything from the academic world, who relegate anything from the “ivory towers” of higher education as irrelevant, and who would never think of picking up a book by, say, Marcus Borg, Bell’s presentation is decidedly accessible, non-threatening, and marketable.
Certainly, the controversy that has erupted in the blogosphere has to be playing right into the hands of HarperOne, publisher of Love Wins. The words on the back cover of the book and an accompanying teaser trailer were released weeks before the book’s distribution, igniting a firestorm of backlash before folks even had a chance to read it. Practically speaking, this is what a publisher has every right to do in order to sell books: raise awareness, spur interest, and get people talking. To that end, a friend of my wife in the publishing industry said it best, with a play on the book’s title: “Rob Bell’s Marketing Machine Wins.”
But we are right to be concerned about the way that this methodology is exacerbating the already evident fault lines throughout the contemporary church. Immediately, people have become quick to assign others with labels of “evangelical,” “progressive,” “conservative, and “liberal,” all with pejorative disdain. In a season of polarizing rhetoric, we do not need yet another reason to pigeonhole people into manageable, derogatory boxes. This is no way to have constructive dialogue, even if it does increase a publisher’s sales.
We need to remember that labels are mostly important for helping individuals get a handle on other people, but are of little use in helping communities wade through complex matters. That only happens when we are all open to struggling through the issues together, and willing to listen to a variety of viewpoints. I don’t think Rob Bell is interested in fracturing the church. If anything, he is wanting to advance an age-old conversation, particularly for people who did not know such a discussion was permissible. If that’s really is goal, which I think it is, then we need to be able to treat people who are different from us with civility and respect.
So with that comment in mind, I commend Bell’s book to you. He is a voice for a generation of Christians who are unafraid to ask the tough questions and be in conversation about the answers. And he emerges from an important segment of the church for whom much of his conclusions would be considered new. If nothing else, Love Wins will invite you into the conversation, which I would be delighted to have with you as your pastor, your resident theologian, and your spiritual companion.
THIS SUNDAY: APPEASEMENT: FREEDOM FROM GOD’S WRATH
The release of Bell’s book could not be more timely for us. As we continue our sermon series on the seven major atonement theories in the church, we turn our attention to one that for some might be the toughest to understand. It is called “Appeasement,” which is the action that Jesus took to deflect God’s anger and wrath away from a sinful humanity. This theory, like all the others, has been around for centuries, but received its most direct attention in American history through the preaching of revivalists like Jonathan Edwards. His sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is a vivid portrayal of a God who needed appeasing to diffuse the urge to destroy humanity for its sins.
I’ll be preaching on this atonement theory this Sunday, and will be using Rob Bell’s Love Wins as a helpful way to critique – and perhaps redeem – some of this theory’s more unattractive attributes. I hope that you’ll join us this Sunday as we continue our march to Jerusalem, and experience once again the power, passion, and drama of the week that changed the world.
Grace, Hope, and, indeed, Love,
Magrey
The Rev. Magrey R. deVega
St. Paul's United Methodist Church
531 W. Main St.
Cherokee, IA 51012
Ph: 712-225-3955
http://www.cherokeespumc.org
[1] My favorite definition of God’s grace, given to me by my former senior pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jim Harnish.
[2] As an aside, I don’t think that’s a totally valid argument, since if we believe that Christianity is an incarnational, and therefore, historical religion, we should be willing to investigate it with the same level of scrutiny as we do any other kind of history.
[3] For more on these categories, I recommend Tyron Inbody’s Faith of the Christian Church. An excellent resource on postmodernism is Andrew K. M. Adam’s What is Postmodern Biblical Criticism? He was one of my favorite college professors!
SOLES4SOULS 4 JAPAN
We received word that our ongoing Soles4Souls shoe project is placing special emphasis on the devastation in Japan. Please bring in your used shoes of any size, style, and condition to the church. If you are interested in helping with the delivery of the shoes to the collection site, please contact Sheree Hausmann.
HOT DOG DAYS
We are exploring participation in this year’s Cherokee Hot Dog Days on May 12, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. We would like to take part in the event as an opportunity to promote our upcoming Vacation Bible School to the kids who attend. We are needing people to help set up, cook, and serve on that day. If you would like to help out with Hot Dog Days, please contact the church office.
ONE GREAT HOUR OF SHARING OFFERING APRIL 3
We receive our annual offering to support the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) on April 3. Your gifts support the central relief agency in the United Methodist Church, which is often the first to arrive at a disaster scene and among the last to leave. Thank you for your generosity.
NEW MEMBERS JOINING APRIL 10
We are excited to welcome several new members into our church on April 10. If you are interested in joining the church, please contact the church office.
TALENT’S FUND MEETING APRIL 10
Chuck Tolzin has assembled an exciting group of about ten people to serve on the revitalized Talent’s Fund, and he continues to seek the input of interested persons. If you would like to explore ways for the church to creatively fund the hiring of a new children and youth person, join the team on April 10 for a meeting after the worship service.
