Love Wins, by Rob Bell

As far as Christian pastors go, Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, MI, is a rock star. His third book, Love Wins, was highly anticipated for two reasons. 1) Because his first two, Sex God, and Velvet Elvis, were both very well received, provocative and inspiring. Read my review of Velvel Elvis here. 2) Because of the subtitle and what it might mean for evangelical Christianity. The subtitle is: A book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived.

In my reading, the book's main aim is to challenge some widely held notions about God, the afterlife, heaven and hell. The notion he most challenges is the popular belief that when we die there are two final destinations, heaven or hell, and God will send you to one of them forever. The very fact that this belief is the central crux of many Christians' faith system has made this book quite volatile. Rob Bell was catching criticism for it before it even came out. 

Rob Bell spends a good amount of page space raising questions about, unpacking, deconstructing and balking at the traditional idea of hell (a horrible place you might go after you die where you'll endure unending conscious torment). He points out just what kind of God it would take to sentence so many people (the majority of the human race that has ever lived) to spend forever in hell because of a finite amount of sins committed during a relatively brief life.

To make sure he's covered his bases, Bell acknowledges every single mention of hell in the Bible. Luckily, this isn't a difficult task, because it's not mentioned very much. The Old Testament often mentions a place called Sheol; however, whatever this word actually means (biblical scholars only have a vague idea) it is not synonymous with the modern notion of hell.

In the New Testament, the word most commonly translated as hell is the word "gahenna," which is the name of a valley just outside of Jerusalem where all the city's trash was dumped and burned. Animals often went there scavenging for food and fought over dead carcases gnashing their teeth at each other. The Valley of Henna, otherwise known as the town dump, was a place of perpetual burning fire and gnashing of teeth. I hope with this information it's a bit clearer from where some of the biblical imagery for hell comes.

But, Rob Bell isn't denying the existence of hell altogether. Citing the suffering and pain and torment so many people go through in life, Bell gives a fantastic discussion of the presence of hell on earth, just as Jesus prayed for and acknowledged the presence of heaven on earth.

The punch of Love Wins comes in the chapter titled "The Good News Is Better Than That." He points out how often our dominant ideas of hell often impair our hearing of the chorus of scripture passages that reference God's efforts to redeem all humankind. He points to Paul's statement in 2 Corinthians 5 that "God is reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them." Bell seems to be singing about the inclusivity of God of all people and all things even while noting the exclusive idea that it is all happening through Jesus.

He discusses and re-frames a popular verse in John 14, you know the one, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father except through me." Too often this verse has been quoted as if it means that Jesus is in the way between us and God, like a linebacker, and the only way to get to God is to somehow get past Jesus. But Rob reinterprets this passage (more true to it's original intent, I think) by saying:

What [Jesus] doesn't say is how, or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through him. He doesn't even state that those coming to the Father through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him. He simply claims that whatever God is doing in the world to know and redeem and love and restore the world is happening through him.

What Jesus does is declare that he, and he alone, is saving everybody! In spite of what's been done to us or what we've done, God has made peace with us.  

Finishing his book with a thrust of foresight, Rob Bell tells us that the good news, the gospel that Jesus talk about, is about participating in the Kingdom of God, the party God is throwing right now, right here on earth. He continues,

So when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will "get into heaven," that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club. The good news is better than that.

When the gospel is understood primarily in terms of entrance rather than joyous participation, it can actually serve to cut people off from the explosive, liberating experience of the God who is an endless giving circle of joy and creativity. Life has never been about just "getting in." It's about thriving in God's good world.  

The book is well written, as is expected. Bell has a unique writing style making his material very readable. In only a few sittings I read the short 200 pages. It reads much like a sermon. But that sounds really boring. It's like a really really good sermon, a conversational one. My sister could probably read this book in 20 minutes.

I really like this message put forward by Bell and so many other pastors and writers today, that Christianity is not centered around getting into heaven, or getting "saved" for the afterlife; but rather, following Jesus is about the here, and now, and today, and the kingdom of God on earth. Or as Tony Campolo puts it, "The kingdom of God is a party!"  

Rob Bell ends his book in the typical style that he ends his sermons. I will use it to end this blog post. "May you experience this vast, expansive infinite, indestructible love that has been yours all along. May you discover that this love is as wide as the sky and as small as the cracks in your heart no one else knows about. And may you know, deep in your bones, that love wins."

May you be blessed