Fist Bump for Rob Bell

DWill · Sat Mar 26, 2011 7:41 am

We can attack the crazy or hateful ideas of fundamentalists all we want, but it doesn't do any good. The evangelical set likes it and only grows stronger from it. That's why pastor Rob Bell should be praised for speaking out to his own peers about the toxic doctrine of damnation of unbelievers.

Author of the week: Rob Bell
In Love Wins, the pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church challenges the idea that only faithful Christians will spend forever in heaven.
posted on March 24, 2011, at 9:08 AM

Rob Bell has started an online firestorm over the question of hell, said Erik Eckholm in The New York Times. A “Christian celebrity” and the pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., Bell, 40, has roiled many in the traditional evangelical community with the message of his new best seller, Love Wins. In the book, which is outselling the pope’s at Amazon.com, Bell calls “misguided and toxic” the idea that only faithful Christians will spend forever in heaven while the rest of humanity spends eternity in hell. For Bell, the idea that Gandhi may be suffering in perpetuity somewhere seems absurd.

Bell’s critics are fighting back, using Twitter, Facebook, and podcasts of panel discussions to quash his proposition, said Cathy Lynn Grossman in USA Today. “This is a massive tragedy by any measure,” says Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who’s helped lead the counteroffensive. To traditional evangelicals—what Bell labels “the E-club”—Love Wins flirts dangerously with the heresy of “universalism,” the idea that all people can be saved, regardless of whether they embrace Jesus’ teachings. Bell, for his part, says he’s merely asking questions every Christian should ask. “I think that grace and love always rattle people,” he says. “Jesus spoke of the renewal of all things. He said, ‘I have sheep who are not of this flock.’ Through him, extraordinary things are happening in the world. If saying that gets you banned from the E-club, so be it.”

http://theweek.com/article/index/213465 ... k-rob-bell

Saffron · Sat Mar 26, 2011 7:54 am


	DWill wrote: Author of the week: Rob Bell In Love Wins, the pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church challenges the idea that only faithful Christians will spend forever in heaven. posted on March 24, 2011, at 9:08 AM

Thanks for posting this. It gives me hope.


	Quote: ......what Bell labels “the E-club”—Love Wins flirts dangerously with the heresy...

Well now that explains what happend to Jesus. :wink:


	Quote: http://theweek.com/article/index/213465 ... k-rob-bell

Unfortunately this link does not take you to the article, but rather to a subscribers sign-in page

Dexter · Sat Mar 26, 2011 8:35 am

Funny how his fellow preachers react with hostility. I'm sure it's because they really care about our souls.

Saffron · Sat Mar 26, 2011 9:08 am


	Dexter wrote: Funny how his fellow preachers react with hostility. I'm sure it's because they really care about our souls.

Do you really think it is motivated by caring about the souls of other people? I am of the thinking that a body needs saving not a soul. If I have read the New Testament correctly, Jesus ministered to the body. The mandate in many of the teachings attributed to him is that our number one responsibity it to care for the physical needs and comforts of each other.

Matthew 25:35-40
‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; 36naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ 37“Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39‘When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40“The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’

Dawn · Sat Mar 26, 2011 12:35 pm


	DWill wrote: We can attack the crazy or hateful ideas of fundamentalists all we want, but it doesn't do any good. The evangelical set likes it and only grows stronger from it. That's why pastor Rob Bell should be praised for speaking out to his own peers about the toxic doctrine of damnation of unbelievers.

He should only be commended in the way we would commend a medical doctor telling his terminally ill cancer patient that cancer is nothing to worry about, and not even real. Rob's job description as a pastor is to preach the Word of God, not what he thinks it should say/his own feelings/ impressions/ and rationalized conclusions. His peers are rightly concerned. We have the entertainment industry for this sort of thing--it's called 'tickling ears'--telling us what we want to hear, giving us a laugh, letting us lapse into mindlessness of all but the here and now. He's doing none of us a favor, no matter how good it sounds. The cancer patient needs the bad news (you've got cancer and this is where its headed) and the good news (we have an effective treatment!). To offer less is unconscionable--unless he is not a real medical doctor...and only out to look good and gain a following.

"If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehoood." (Jn.7:17,18)

DWill · Sat Mar 26, 2011 12:37 pm

Dawn, what you're saying is completely unfathomable to me. Sorry.

Dexter · Sat Mar 26, 2011 12:39 pm


	Dawn wrote: He should only be commended in the way we would commend a medical doctor telling his terminally ill cancer patient that cancer is nothing to worry about, and not even real.

So then you believe your benevolent God will punish people for eternity for not stroking his ego?

Dawn · Sat Mar 26, 2011 12:44 pm


	DWill wrote: Dawn, what you're saying is completely unfathomable to me. Sorry.

i.e. If there is a Hell for unbelievers and I assure you there is not, am I doing a good thing?

Dawn · Sat Mar 26, 2011 12:45 pm

Dexter wrote:


	Dawn wrote: He should only be commended in the way we would commend a medical doctor telling his terminally ill cancer patient that cancer is nothing to worry about, and not even real.

So then you believe your benevolent God will punish people for eternity for not stroking his ego?

Nope.

Dexter · Sat Mar 26, 2011 12:56 pm


	Dexter wrote: So then you believe your benevolent God will punish people for eternity for not stroking his ego?


	Dawn wrote: Nope.

What then? Are non-Christians going to hell, or not? Or just not going to heaven?

Dawn · Sun Mar 27, 2011 12:17 am

Dexter wrote:


	Dexter wrote: So then you believe your benevolent God will punish people for eternity for not stroking his ego?


	Dawn wrote: Nope.

What then? Are non-Christians going to hell, or not? Or just not going to heaven?

First, you tell me Dexter, what is your concept of Heaven?

Dexter · Sun Mar 27, 2011 5:42 am


	Dexter wrote: What then? Are non-Christians going to hell, or not? Or just not going to heaven?


	Dawn wrote: First, you tell me Dexter, what is your concept of Heaven?

Some sort of afterlife that many people want to believe exists because death is scary. It may or may not include virgins, angels with harps, lots of grapes and rivers of honey. Or if that sounds too silly, then some vague notion of "being with God"

DWill · Sun Mar 27, 2011 7:13 am

Dawn wrote:


	DWill wrote: Dawn, what you're saying is completely unfathomable to me. Sorry.

i.e. If there is a Hell for unbelievers and I assure you there is not, am I doing a good thing?

It wasn't that I couldn't get your meaning. It was more a matter of not being able to comprehend how someone could have and express such a belief. And you're the same person who has been so critical of Muslim belief?

Dawn · Tue Mar 29, 2011 12:40 am

Is it more comforting to consider a world without ultimate justice for any evil wreaked upon innocent people in this lifetime? This to me would be disconcerting and incomprehensible...

Dexter · Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:45 am


	Dawn wrote: Is it more comforting to consider a world without ultimate justice for any evil wreaked upon innocent people in this lifetime? This to me would be disconcerting and incomprehensible...

I would find it more comforting if the Sock Puppet in the sky took brutal revenge on the evil-doers, while providing endless supplies of bacon to the rest, but that doesn't make it true.

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