A Critique of “Love Wins” by Rob Bell
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ Mark 9:42-48
And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.” Rev. 14:9-11
Rob Bell is a pastor of a church in Grand Rapids, MI. He has written a book titled “Love Wins” that is currently number seven on the Amazon Bestsellers list, and has stirred a lot of controversy. Bell is no stranger to controversy as a leader in the so-called Emergent Church.
In his book, Bell challenges the traditional Christian view of Hell. In fact, in the preface to the book he calls this view “toxic” and says that the true “Jesus story” has been hijacked and needs to be reclaimed. His position is hard to nail down, but in a nutshell, he teaches that Hell is not a literal place that God sends people who break His commandments, refuse to repent, and reject Christ, but rather, Hell is a state of mind, in which someone refuses to soften their own heart, do good deeds, and instead commit atrocities like not recycling or not buying fair trade coffee.
Bell’s position is known as Universal Reconciliation. UR is the belief that, eventually, everyone goes to Heaven, albeit through Christ. He teaches that, eventually “love wins” and everyone, no matter their rejection of Christ and His Gospel in this life, will embrace Jesus.
This position is not supported in scripture, and undermines evangelism, the church, and ultimately, the Gospel itself. But this is only a symptom of a much greater problem. Bell’s problem is not only the heresy of UR, but rather, Bell is wrong on two essential points of Biblical theology. First, he doesn’t believe that man is sinful, and second, he doesn’t believe that God is holy! His position on Hell is merely a symptom of an unregenerate heart worshipping a god of his own sinful imagination.
On page 54 of “Love Wins” Bell says:
“Think about the single mom, trying to raise kids, work multiple jobs, and wrangle child support out of the kids‘ father, who used to beat her. She’s faithful, true, and utterly devoted to her children. In spite of the circumstances, she never loses hope that they can be raised in love and go on to break the cycle of dysfunction and abuse. She never goes out, never takes a vacation, never has enough money to buy anything for herself. She gets a few hours of sleep and then repeats the cycle of cooking, work, laundry, bills, more work, until she falls into bed late at night, exhausted.
With what she has been given she has been faithful. She is a woman of character and substance. She never gives up. She is kind and loving even when she’s exhausted.
She can be trusted.
Is she the last who Jesus says will be first?
Does God say to her, ‘You’re the kind of person I can run the world with’?
Think about her, and then think about the magazines that line the checkout aisles at most grocery stores. The faces on the covers are often of beautiful, rich, famous, talented people embroiled in endless variations of scandal and controversy.
Where did they spend those millions of dollars?
What did they do with those talents?
How did they use their influence?
Did they use any of it to help create the new world God is making?
Or are we seeing the first who will be last that Jesus spoke of?
When it comes to people, then-the who of heaven-what Jesus does again and again is warn us against rash judgments about who’s in and who’s out.”
Notice that we know nothing of this woman’s spiritual state. She may be Christian, atheist, Buddhist, etc. To Bell, it doesn’t matter, she is a “good” person. No mention of sin, righteousness, judgment, or the cross.
On page 173 of “Love Wins” Bell says,
“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 die 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.
If there was an earthly father who was like that, we would call the authorities.
If there was an actual human dad who was that volatile, we would contact child protection services immediately.
If God can switch gears like that, switch entire modes of being that quickly, that raises a thousand questions about whether a being like this could ever be trusted, let alone be good.
Loving one moment, vicious the next.
Kind and compassionate, only to become cruel and relentless in the blink of an eye.
Does God become somebody totally different the moment you die?
That kind of God is simply devastating.
Psychologically crushing.
We can’t bear it.
No one can.
And that is the secret deep in the heart of many people, especially Christians: they don’t love God. They can’t, because the God they’ve been presented with and taught about can’t be loved. That God is terrifying and traumatizing and unbearable.”
Rob Bell assumes that God has no rights over His creation. He divorces God’s love from His holiness, and in the process turns the triune Yahweh of scripture into an impotent beggar, who could not possibly judge anyone for anything. AND HE CAN’T! Because the god that Rob Bell believes in is a figment of his imagination.
Rob Bell is not a brother in Christ who has strayed on a minor doctrine. He has been presented clearly with the truth in scripture and denies it. Bell is a ravenous wolf seeking to devour the sheep under his care.
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