I have been somewhat intrigued by the controversy that has surrounded Rob Bell’s new book called Love Wins. Not enough to buy the book yet (no time to read with a new baby in the house), but intrigued by the responses from various places.  I can’t find a good summary of the controversy, but I’ll link to a short interview with Bell where he gets to speak his side: Is Rob Bell a Universalist? on Relevant Magazine’s website.

Before I offer my commentary on this matter, a bit of a disclaimer.  If you don’t like this disclaimer, then you probably won’t like the rest of this post.  I firmly believe that when we get to heaven, we will be shocked by how wrong we were on many things, both small and large.  If we could get everything right on Earth, then we wouldn’t need God, the Bible, or the Church.  So we’re all going to get some things wrong.

In fact, I’ll probably look back in a few years and shake my head at this post.  I have been coming to the revelation recently that my way of seeing things is always evolving, sometimes going to new areas, some times circling back to stuff that I previously rejected and realizing that I was wrong to reject.  One of things that bugs me the most is people who act like they know everything or at least act like they are better than you because they have come to a different conclusion.  Statements like “I used to think that way, but now I know better” really seem completely arrogant to me, maybe because I look back at when I have said them and can see how much arrogance was in my heart.

So here is the kicker – of course Rob Bell got something wrong.  But go pick any book you have by any great author and guess what? There will be something wrong in there, too.  John Piper, C.S. Lewis, Mother Theresa, you name it – they are all human and therefore had to have some error in their thinking. It’s a nagging little fact that I think many Christians like to conveniently overlook for people they place in the “I’m okay with you pile” but throw up huge red flags for with people in the “I’m not okay with you” stack.

Some have accused Bell of being a universalist – something that just isn’t true.  Universalists believe that at some point everyone who ever lived will be in heaven when all is said and done.  No matter what they believed or did.  Bell has stated specifically that he believes many will go to Hell.

From what I can tell, Bell is trying to explore an issue that most Christians at best try to ignore, and at worst come up with Biblically unsound beliefs on.  This issue is the one of what happens to people who die never having heard an accurate presentation of who Jesus is.  Some believe that it is our fault for not going to them and telling them.  This is very wrong in that the Bible is clear that God saves people, not us.  So for the billions of people around the world that die with no idea who Jesus is – there has to be something else.

Otherwise, how did the beggar get to heaven in the Biblical story of Lazarus and the beggar?

And then there are the people who never get an accurate idea of who Jesus is.  I’m thinking of people like Muslims in the middle east that only read about a prophet names Isa and then meet one Christian person that tells them they need to repent of their sins or Jesus will smite them.  They decide to reject this “turn or burn” version of Jesus (understandably).  Would it be loving of God to send them to Hell because they heard the wrong idea of him?

Some people talk about the witness of our conscious and the witness of creation that the book of Romans speak of… the idea that basically God has left evidence of himself for everyone to see and that if you never hear about Jesus you will get in to heaven based on how you respond to that evidence.  Basically, if you are good enough, you get in to heaven.  The problem with that is – how good do you have to be to get past the line of being “in”?  No one is perfectly good or completely evil – we all have a mix of both.  Where would the line be? If you respond correctly to the evidence 51% of the time is that enough?  Or does it need to be 70%?  What about the poor person that almost made it there at 49%?

Maybe you are an expert and you already know for sure the answers to this.  After reading through the entire Bible a good 20 times, I still can’t find a clear answer.  But that doesn’t mean I am afraid to explore the possibilities – or realize that maybe I missed something.  And that is basically what I think Bell is doing.

Really, though, we are talking about disagreements over a small number of vague scriptures.  Some would say that because some of these vague scriptures disagree with Bell, then that makes him a heretic. If that is so, then you would also have to label Calvinists and Arminianists as heretics, too.  There are a small number of vague scriptures that contradict both of those beliefs.  Of course, Calvinists and Arminianists can explain those scriptures, and even if we disagree with their explanations we still don’t label the one we disagree with as heresy.  Well, unless you are a fringe extremist on one side.  So maybe we should give Bell a little grace now.

For the record, I do disagree with some of the statements Bell has made.  Others I am not so sure on – he raises some great points.  I am sure that Bell would disagree with me on some points if I wrote a book on anything.  He still claims that Jesus alone does the saving, that it is not anything that we can do to earn it. He just has a wider view of the methods through which Jesus does the saving than many evangelical Christians do.  Even if I disagree with some of those methods, as of yet I see nothing to label him a heretic.  That doesn’t mean that might change, but I would hopefully still extend my disagreements with him in a loving way.

Oh, and what about love? I just don’t see a lot of love coming from the Bell haters.  I have a confession – I am not his biggest fan at all.  But I just don’t see how someone filled with the love of God could say something so glib and smug as “Goodbye Rob Bell” without so much as giving as an explanation why they pronounce that judgement.