“Whatever objections a person might have to this story, and there are many, one has to admit that it is fitting, proper, and Christian to long for it.”
This, in the end, is Rob Bell’s strongest case for his dance with universalism known as Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lives.
It is also the book’s fatal flaw.
Yes, I’m late to the commentary party. In fact, enough time has passed for articles and blog posts to give way to book-length responses. (I’m looking forward to Mark Galli’s God Wins and Francis Chan’s Erasing Hell. Early reviews for each book here and here.) But sometimes it takes a while for a book to route through your public library system, and so here I am.
Bell’s contention is that God will continue to pursue people beyond the bounds of this life until all are won to him. (Or maybe just until all are won who want to be won to him, since Bell holds out the possibility that some may choose to resist God’s advances forever. Which sort of just pushes the point of no return from earthly death to somewhere in the next life, thus keeping love from quite winning after all, eh?)
He acknowledges that there are many objections to this story, but whatever they are, “one has to admit that it is fitting, proper, and Christian to long for it.”
Or, as he responded to a critic on a radio interview I heard: “Don’t you want it to be true?”
This is the book’s strongest emotional punch and also its most fatal flaw.
Oh, there are other critiques I could make of the book, but Kevin DeYoung has already performed that service admirably.
What struck me upon finishing this short book, though, is his assumption that it is “fitting, and proper, and Christian to long for” this version of reality. One “has to admit” this, he says.
No, one does not have to.
What is fitting, and proper, and Christian to long for is the way God has ordered things. If we do not long for this, then we repent, and we reflect on God’s Word until we long for it. Really, actually, long for it.
In other words, I want to want what God wants.
I don’t always want what God wants, but I want to want what God wants.
Bell invites us to imagine with him a different scenario for the universe than the one we’ve known in traditional Christianity. “Don’t you want it to be true?” he asks.
It is not enough for Bible readers to reply, “Sure it’d be nice for the universe to work that way, I’d like it to be that way, but Scripture says something different.” That reaction exposes how we acknowledge some aspect of God’s truth rationally but we are not aligned with it emotionally. In that case, we need to reflect on God’s truth until it is not just understandable but altogether compelling. In every aspect of God’s truth, we aren’t simply to submit to it but to be awestruck by it.
1 comment:
However in this newest book he has espoused and ideal that can only be defended by using verses out of context and not providing a full picture of God who has other characteristics besides love - and all of them perfect including perfectly just.
If you read this book, read every scripture quoted in the larger context (usually the complete book) in the book in which it was written.
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