In Rob Bell’s book Love Wins he writes this about God:
Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them the gospel does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God would have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell. God would, in essence, become a fundamentally different being to them in that moment of death, a different being to them forever. A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormenter who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony.
This is classic Bell: lovely, poetic, and sprinkled with question begging claims and straw men that put you in a corner if you disagree with him.
I don’t want to engage with all of that, but I do want to give my best understanding of a Wesleyan comment on the general issues that Bell is raising here.
Here is where I start. Jesus Christ came to save us because we need to be saved. We are like people in an elevator falling toward a great pit. We imagine nothing is wrong. We imagine we are in control of the path of the elevator. But it falls down, ever down.
Christ has come and pried open the doors. His outstretched arms on the cross have pushed them back. And on the threshold he calls to us. Flee the trap you are in. Step out with me. Grasp the wings of the Holy Spirit and fly from this fate. Enter the kingdom of God.
What will you do? Muttering a few words after getting whipped into an emotional state will not settle things. You see, it is not words, a matter of breath and vapor, that Jesus Christ desires. It is a matter of the heart. It is exchanging our heart of stone that pulls us down with a heart of love that lifts us up. This is what we need. We cannot give ourselves this heart. We cannot will it. We can only receive it. We cannot demand it. We can onlyask for it. And we can wait in humility.
But what of the girl in Rob Bell’s story? What of the car crash? Is she doomed to the lake of eternal fire?
I want to do a very Rob Bell thing and answer a question with a question. I want to ask why this question is so important. Why do we insist on devising tests for God to pass? Will we be able to have faith in God only after our tests have been passed? Do we think faith is what is left over after all our intellectual puzzles have been solved? Do we imagine we will ever reach a point when we cannot come up with any more questions?
Perhaps we need to stop demanding God answer our questions and start listening to what God is trying to say to us.
If we believe God is just and loving and merciful and holy, then we have no need to ask such questions. God will deal with the girl in the crash in accordance with his perfect will. Why do we find that hard to hear? What does it say about our faith that we rebel against that answer?
Let me ask a final set of questions: Has our heart been melted by the love of Christ? Do we know ourselves to be forgiven? Do we praise God with our life?
I don’t know what the millions of people who Rob Bell refers to in his book have been told. I have no doubt that both well-meaning and unscrupulous people get the gospel wrong. I have no doubt that I get it wrong. But I do not see how testing God leads to trusting God.
The good news is this: Jesus Christ came to save us. He is standing there at the threshold calling us into the kingdom. Do we know we need to be saved? Will we listen? Will we trust?
Yes.
I really do not think Rob Bell is asking these questions of God, rather of us. What kind of God do we imagine our God to be? I think if there is a test to pass it is our test to pass and it is a test of the manner in which we expect people to respond to the good news of salvation. While it may not be the case among many UMC preachers to proclaim hell fire and brimstone in order to convert the sinner, it is surely the case among a majority of fundamental evangelicals. Perhaps Bell is trying to reach those who have been not only turned off by this type of ministry, but also turned away by those who lay claim to a “my way is the right way” presentation of God, scripture, and salvation. I do find it curious that Bell’s presentation of the gospel is appealing to so many who have either never been in church or disgusted by church and yet so appalling to others who find it necessary to challenge.
Thanks for the comment, Jeremiah.
I don’t find it appalling, but I am trying to set the concerns Bell seems to focus on next to a Wesleyan view of the key issues. At least as I understand a traditional Wesleyan view.
I have no doubt lots of people present the gospel in bad ways. I’m just trying to figure out the way my faith tradition has understood these issues. I use Bell as a counter-point since he is a such an influential voice today. I could do the same with Mark Driscoll or John Piper, but among the people I encounter in the UMC, those two men are not widely read or discussed. Bell is, so he seems like a better anchor for such thinking.
I also think you have missed the point of the extract and the bigger themes that Bell often speaks and writes about.
The way I understand Bell is that he is speaking out against the idea of people needing to come to faith in order to avoid Hell – however you understand it. The kind of fear and coercion that has become the norm in many holiness movements (and Evangelical broadly). It generates its own legalistic patterns and expectations to conform, in fact very Pharisaical.
Unfortunately, evangelism has promoted this in great quantities and as a result produced a stifling effect on thought and living theology. It has produced the exact opposite to Wesley’s comment in his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament: “But it is not part of my design. to save either learned or unlearned men from the trouble of thinking… On the contrary, my intention is, to make them think, and assist them in thinking. This is the way to understand the things of God.” – ‘Reading the Bible in Wesleyan Ways”, p13.
When your only tool is fear, it loses it’s sharpness when God is so much more.
Thanks for the comment, Andrew. I should put a disclaimer on these types of posts. I’m not trying to engage with Bell’s thinking on the terms he may be setting out — which is not clear to me in any event.
I am reading and trying to respond out of what I consider to be a traditional Wesleyan understanding of the issues at hand.
John Wesley’s preface to his Notes on the Old Testament is a wonderful little essay. The quote you pulled above I rather prefer in its full length:
“But it is no part of my design, to save either learned or unlearned men from the trouble of thinking. If so, I might perhaps write Folios too, which usually overlay, rather than help the thought. On the contrary, my intention is, to make them think, and assist them in thinking. This is the way to understand the things of God; Meditate thereon day and night; So shall you attain the best knowledge; even to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent. And this knowledge will lead you, to love Him, because he hath first loved us: yea, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. Will there not then be all that mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus And in consequence of this, while you joyfully experience all the holy tempers described in this book, you will likewise be outwardly holy as He that hath called you is holy, in all manner of conversation.
“If you desire to read the scripture in such a manner as may most effectually answer this end, would it not be advisable, 1. To set apart a little time, if you can, every morning and evening for that purpose 2. At each time if you have leisure, to read a chapter out of the Old, and one out of the New Testament: is you cannot do this, to take a single chapter, or a part of one 3. To read this with a single eye, to know the whole will of God, and a fixt resolution to do it In order to know his will, you should, 4. Have a constant eye to the analogy of faith; the connexion and harmony there is between those grand, fundamental doctrines, Original Sin, Justification by Faith, the New Birth, Inward and Outward Holiness. 5. Serious and earnest prayer should be constantly used, before we consult the oracles of God, seeing “scripture can only be understood thro’ the same Spirit whereby “it was given.” Our reading should likewise be closed with prayer, that what we read may be written on our hearts. 6. It might also be of use, if while we read, we were frequently to pause, and examine ourselves by what we read, both with regard to our hearts, and lives. This would furnish us with matter of praise, where we found God had enabled us to conform to his blessed will, and matter of humiliation and prayer, where we were conscious of having fallen short. And whatever light you then receive, should be used to the uttermost, and that immediately. Let there be no delay. Whatever you resolve, begin to execute the first moment you can. So shall you find this word to be indeed the power of God unto present and eternal salvation.”
Excellent post, John. These are the exact things I’ve been thinking in response to Bell’s book. Part of the problem we face is so many years of people hearing “All you have to do is say this prayer and everything will be fine.” It just ain’t so. I really like the elevator illustration.
This is excellent, John.
John, if you get a chance to read this ebook by Dr. Greg Crofford, please do. It is a response to both Bell and NT Wright’s ‘Surprised by Hope’. It is intentionally written for thinking congregations as a means to balance the various understandings of Hell. Greg is a Nazarene theologian of international reputation, adds his name to this list, raising fundamental questions of fairness, holiness, and proportionality. His reasoning is biblical, sound and compelling.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Side-Destiny-Re-examined-ebook/dp/B0074U51WG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329587738&sr=8-1
I find Bell and NT Wright overlapping in many areas….
Thank you for the suggestion, Andrew.
I guess where I’m unclear as to what you’re getting at here, John, is what is it that you read Bell saying in this particular passage. I’m neither sure of with what you don’t want to engage, nor with what you do.
Could you articulate in your own words what exactly in that Bell excerpt you’re contending with (and what you’re not)?
‘Cause honestly, this was the evangelism tool used by most of the other churches I encountered while pastoring a UM Church in rural northeast Texas, and it was infuriatingly difficult to talk about a Wesleyan understanding of sanctification when even my own congregants came to church to keep from burning in Hell.
Kurt,
My primary concern is the argument (or bald assertion) that the existence of Hell and the judgment of God makes God arbitrary, vicious, unloving, and cruel. Bell’s entire book — to my reading — is set upon the premise that God somehow fails to be God if Hell exists.
I don’t have any beef with the notion that salvation is about much more than getting eternal fire insurance. Salvation — as Wesley wrote — is a present thing. It is about today as well as eternity. To reduce it to a “get out of Hell free card” is not consistent with a Wesleyan reading of the Bible.
But our creeds and our Scripture both speak of judgment and eternity. They both claim that the way we live this brief span of time we have between birth and death has eternal significance. We have been given the gift of existence. How we use that gift matters.
So, while I do not want to reduce the preaching of the gospel to fire insurance, I would not criticize Christians who have responded to an appeal to flee from the wrath to come. I try — and yes, I encountered UMs who have been evangelized the same way — to open people’s eyes to the Wesleyan doctrine of holiness. If we are not growing toward inward and outward holiness, we are dying spiritually. And just because we “got saved” does not mean we cannot backslide. Press on toward the goal.
These are my thoughts.
I don’t read that in Bell’s book, “Love Wins.” I think he’s very clear that Hell exists both here on earth in a very tangible way for many people and that it exists in a very real way after death for people who choose to embrace it.
And I think that’s the distinction he’s making. God does not desire to condemn us, but God loves us so much that he lets us have exactly what we want, even if what we think we want is Hell. I think its an entirely consistant argument both internally and in accordance with scripture.
John Wesley’s own understanding was similar in his soteriology of double conditional predestination. God establishes the two paths we can go by and the conditions by which either is chosen. Then by his sovereignty gives us the choice. God does everything he can short of coercion to woo us toward himself, but the option is always available to go the other way.
I read Bell as arguing against is the notion that God arbitrarily switches from loving father to devilish tyrant based upon our adherence to the corrects side of some binary behavior sets, negating God’s invitation to humankind into a familial relationship with the persons of the Trinity.
But is he saying that the default condition is “heaven” unless we make an active choice for Hell?
It sounds Pelagian to me. We have the ability to choose heaven or hell and unless we choose hell (by doing what I’m not sure) then everyone goes to heaven, because otherwise God is cruel.
Not any more than Wesley does. Our natural inclination without Christ–for both Wesley and Bell–is to choose Hell. Choosing Hell is no more than not choosing God.
I really feel like you’re knocking down a straw man and not engaging with what Bell wrote in the full stream of his narrative. Bell is by no means Pelegian; he’s more Reformed than I am.
Kurt, I’ll have to go read it again one day. I find little of the clear statements of what he thinks that you see.
regardless of the Bell/Hell conversation this was an excellent statement: But I do not see how testing God leads to trusting God.
There are so many questions that I really don’t have answers to. And I could imagine endless questions to pose and situations to consider, but at the end of the day, do I trust God? Do I trust in his love and mercy and goodness? Do I trust in his justice and power? Do I trust that God’s will will come to earth as it is to heaven? If so, then the question posing is for naught. It doesn’t matter.