Some thoughts on recent controversy...

As is often the case, I have come late to the party. The controversy over Rob Bell’s newest book Love Wins has been brewing for quite some time. Someone recently mentioned to me that Bell had come out and said that he didn’t believe in Hell, and I didn’t think much of it because I wasn’t all that surprised. I deeply enjoyed his Nooma video series, but I had to stop watching when I saw him leaning more and more in the direction of shaky theology. Bell is an iconic representative of the Emergent Church movement, which although quite popular today, has moved too far away from biblical theology for most evangelicals. An example of the skewed theology being put forth by these churches is this statement from the book Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger, “…seeing the church as not necessarily the center of God’s intentions. God is working in the world, and the Church has the option to join God or not.” This thinking is NOT biblical. Jesus Himself said of the church, “And Jesus came to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Here we see Jesus declaring that all of the authority of heaven and earth has been given to Him. In response He chooses to impart that authority to His church and command them to go and make disciples. This is not a picture of Christ working independently in the world and the Church having the option to participate or not. “Go and make disciples” is a command. Not going is disobedience and the Bible calls that sin.

Now Rob Bell has come out with a book that sounds great. Who doesn’t like the idea of Love winning? The interesting thing to me about this latest brouhaha is that this is not a new idea. Satan has been contradicting the clear teaching of God since the very beginning, and he always offers some better-sounding version. He tells Eve, “You will surely not die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, knowing good and evil.” Satan convinced Eve that what she heard from God was wrong, a lie, that God was holding out on her, that there was something better than what God offered her—knowing good and evil. This goes beyond just becoming aware of good and evil for the first time. Upon eating of the tree, Adam and Eve decided for themselves what was good and evil. This is exactly what is happening with the latest iteration of the “there is no Hell” idea. That is what Bell is saying in his book, and has restated in several on-air television interviews. Rob Bell has come along and decided that the Bible’s teaching on Hell is not the truth. He has decided for himself that his view is better because in his view, everybody wins.

This idea is not new, but that doesn’t make it sound. It is anti-biblical and goes against the clear teaching of Jesus Christ. I can find at least nineteen references to hell in the Bible that are written in red. That means they are quotes of Christ. He talked a lot about Hell. He believed it was a real place where real people will spend a real eternity. How much did Jesus think hell was real? So much that he was willing to be tortured and die on a cross in order to prevent anyone from having to go there. You see the reality of Hell is not just about my theological preferences. Would I prefer that there were no Hell? Absolutely! But I don’t have that option. Because not only did Jesus believe in Hell and teach about its reality, He went to the cross and died to overcome its power. If there is no Hell, Jesus was either mistaken about it, deluded about it, or lying about it. I cannot accept either of those answers. The Bible teaches that Hell was created as a place of punishment for Lucifer and his minions. When Lucifer convinced man to reject God and choose sin, man was forever separated from God. Christ came into this world to break sin’s hold on man’s destiny. By living a perfect sinless life and fulfilling the righteous requirements of the Law, and by taking the sin of the world upon Himself and dying on the cross, Christ freed man from a destiny in Hell. So the Christ’s death on the cross is intimately tied to the reality of Hell. To deny the existence of Hell is to severely undermine the work of the Cross, and by extension the power of Christianity. No matter how attractively it is packaged, or how sweet it sounds, bad theology is bad theology. Bible-believing Christians should reject it.