If it is not clear by now, I am not attempting to write a review of, or take apart the various chapters and points in Love Wins. Many others are taking on that task.
Instead, I am attempting to address what I feel is a much deeper issue. That issue is how the Evangelical community has treated Rob Bell these last few months. I mentioned this in my first post, but it has been unrelenting. I see it especially in the comment sections on otherwise good blog discussions. Folks have even taken to posting his comments leading into his sermon the week after the most vigorous attacks out of context and after making them into a video, criticize him for defending himself.
I am sorry, but when your sentence begins with “I have not read the book, but . . .” But what? You have no voice. How is this different than folks who have never read the Bible but claim it is not inspired, or contains errors, or number of other criticisms?
As I stated weeks ago, there have been times where I have physically hurt as I read viscous attacks on a man who loves and serves the same Jesus we do. To simply Tweet “Good bye” is just not Christlike by any definition. Did Jesus not say, “If they are not against me, they are for me?” I don’t think he feels as threatened by all of this as we think.
This week, as with most weeks, I listened to Rob’s sermon at Mars Hill. I heard something I have not heard before. He was not arrogant. He was not attacking. He was not defending. He was hurting. He was a man who has felt the full force of the Evangelical onslaught and it has hurt him. Being attacked by the group you are in some way a part of is the worst pain of all. He was pretty open about how he has had his “hope meter” shot through over the past weeks. Having felt that brunt my own in the past, I know whereof he speaks.
Does anyone honestly think that makes Jesus smile? Does seeing someone hurt and attacked please him? If there is anything we all MUST agree on it is that we are to love one another. We are to love even our enemies. Has this been loving?
Why do we feel this need to talk so much about judgment to the exclusion of love and grace? Oh, we use the word “grace,” and talk about it in some sense, and put it in our communications, but do you not hear . . . even our grace conversations are tainted with judgment.
Scot McKnight, in his multi posting review of the book made one statement that really hits home. It shows he was trying to at least give Rob a fair hearing and not just write him off. Scot wrote: “I quite agree with Rob that it is an odd truth that some people, who are most concerned with having a nice afterlife, don’t much care about hell on earth in this life, don’t much care about foreshadowing where all of creation is going, here and now. And this is wrong. It involves a truncated purely other-worldly Gospel, which is more Gnostic than Christian. I agree with Rob this is not the real Gospel Jesus preached.”
I prayed for Rob Bell today. I prayed for his encouragement. I prayed for folks to come along beside him to love him as Jesus would love him. I prayed that he would not feel injustice as he seeks to comment on it where he thinks he sees it.
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