Hell, no? Hell, yes!

He wears all black and stylish glasses.
How can we not believe what he says?

Rob Bell knows how to make a splash.  When we moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1998, Bell preached at the Saturday night service at a local megachurch.  In 1999, he founded Mars Hill Church, which, by the time we moved back to Texas in 2002, had taken over a shopping mall, where thousands of people attended multiple services every weekend.  His best-selling books and teachings have raised eyebrows in the church world, but none more than his most recent book, Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.

Bell, a gifted communicator who captivates his readers and listeners, couches weak theology in entertaining and thoughtful messages, leaving them wondering how anyone could disagree with him.  In Love Wins, Bell makes the case that a God who loves us and created us for fellowship with him would not toss us into a fiery pit of eternal suffering.  Bell loves narrative theology, the story of God.  He says, "Telling a story about a God who inflicts unrelenting punishment on people because they didn't do or say or believe the correct things in a brief window of time called life isn't a very good story." 

Another gifted communicator whose resume parallels Bell's in some ways is Francis Chan.  Chan started a church in Simi Valley, California, in 1994 which now has thousands of members and has planted a number of other churches.  He also has a couple hot-selling books, especially Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God.  His theology is, shall we say, more in the mainstream of evangelical theology.

Also wears black.  Also shaves his head.
No cool glasses.  Hmmmm. . . .

Partly in response to Bell, Chan co-wrote, with New Testament scholar Preston Sprinkle, Erasing Hell: What God Said about Eternity, and the Things We've Made Up.  They argue that while we may not always understand the ways of God, the full testimony of the Bible teaches the existence of hell, where there is actual suffering.  While Bell certainly does quote scripture, he does so in a selective way to fit his "story."  Chan approaches scriptural themes more comprehensively.  On universalism, for example, in Philippians 2, Paul writes that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord."  Taken alone, that sounds like it could teach universalism.  But in chapter 1 of the same letter, Paul writes of those who oppose Christ being destroyed, and in chapter 3, he says the destiny of the "enemies of the cross of Christ" is "destruction."

Given the choice between story and scripture, I have to choose scripture.  Bell is certainly a good storyteller, and avoids dogmatic statements while making some really good points.  I have to agree with him that we have over-simplified the gospel to mean mere fire insurance.  But he goes too far the other way, stopping just short of declaring himself a full universalist, but still strongly implying that all will eventually be saved.  Hell is not a place to him, as taught in so many passages in scripture, but it is a state of horrible conditions on earth: famine, holocausts, domestic abuse, sexual slavery are all forms of hell.  Jesus will redeem the earth and rescue us all from this earthly hell.  Amen to Jesus' redemptive work, but as hellish as those human experiences are they are not hell.

Not so fast, Chan and Sprinkle argue.  Jesus taught in the context of a Jewish theology and culture that firmly believed in hell as a place of suffering.  He never denied that, and that cosmology is supported in his teaching.  Good stories aside, the one story we should avoid is the one that starts, "If I were God, I would never. . . ."  That seems to be Bell's take: if he were God, he would not send anyone to hell.  But just as the clay can't tell the potter how to shape it, much less understand it, neither can we understand all the ways of God.

My pastor, Jack Deere, has responded to this and other heresies in some recent sermons.  (There, I said it: heresy.  Bell is teaching heresy.  Jack never names Bell, but I am thinking he would agree.)  He made a couple of relevant points.  First of all, we should never put our own reason before scripture.  Sure, we might be able to come up with some good arguments to support a point of view, but it our conclusions are out of line with scripture, we have to lean on God's word.  A second, related point is that mysteries are OK.  Predestination, Trinitarianism, inspiration, all leave us with unanswered questions.  But the author of those questions is much bigger than we are, and we can't expect to have perfect understanding of his ways.

Both Chan and Bell have a compelling writing style and a refreshing humility when it comes the their teaching.  But Chan's approach, based in scripture, must prevail.  It's not without a cost, though.  If there is an actual hell, where people who don't know Christ will suffer, the burden is on us who do know him to live as if that's true.  People we meet every day, people we love, are destined to suffer there.  Our task is to partner with God in leading people to relationship with Christ.  It would be much easier to agree with Bell, that we'll all end up in heaven anyway, so no big deal, but I'm afraid we don't have that option.