Love Wins.

So, I've been eagerly awaiting for over a week now the delivery of my very own copy of Rob Bell's latest book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. I can't believe the controversy swirling around this latest book, but then again, what do you expect with somebody flying as high on the radar as Bell? He's an individual that intentionally uses provocative language to stimulate deep discussion, because if we don't discuss, challenge or question our faith then it really isn't our own. Bell is easily my all-time favorite apologist, quite possibly the most influential Christian leader in the 21st century. I would wager that an overwhelming majority of his critics are such mainly because they're jealous, there's some bitter angst deep within the recesses of their hearts and mind towards pastors who 'get it' better than they do. Christians who have caught onto something that they haven't, who perhaps has a slightly tighter grasp on what it truly means at the deepest levels of our being to follow Jesus. Naturally, when someone feels painted into a corner they lash out at the one with the brush. Bells rightful insistence that "love wins", God's love for His creation trumps everything, is a stark contrast to the very western, very American "black and white" view of God that ultimately boils down to a negative perception of who He really is.

America, especially those that come from traditions originating (or rather, very influential) in the Bible Belt, seems to wholly misunderstand the vast implications of Christ's resurrection. He died for humanity, yes, but it doesn't end there. His resurrection means that everything; people, trees, mountains, great white sharks, panda bears, dirt clods, snow flakes--everything living or not--is redeemed and restored. Brought out of the broken and fragmented fallen creation that Christ entered into, and led into a wholly new creation that will be finished in it's entirety at Christ's return and the resurrection of the dead.

Bell quite brilliantly employs a theatrical phrase when he says "we've lost the plot". We have. Western culture, and specifically America, has deviated so far off the intended course of things by devoting our entire focus on the wrong things, and sometimes things that the Scriptures never say. An example first of one of those things is the American born and bred theology of Dispensationalism. It didn't arrive on the scene until the mid 19th century, yet it's a theological concept that has worked it's way to the core of a majority of American Christians. I quote Britt Merrick, a pastor from southern California, who I heard say once "our theology shapes our behavior". This couldn't be more true. What we believe to be true about God in the end brings us to what we believe to be true about how we should live out our faith. What kind of person do we believe Jesus to be? Those in the ultra-conservative camps of Christianity who believe the aforementioned "Dispensationalism" would have you believe that Jesus was an angry, sword-wielding zealot that marched around verbally shredding people he disagreed with. As a result, we have a large sect of American Christianity that walks around still toting the "turn or burn gospel". The reality is far less grim and entirely more beautiful: Jesus in his travels encountered endless crowds full of every variety of people you can imagine, and he poured out his love on all of them. His compassion is and was unequaled.

I believe we're called to do the same. I like how Bell put it in a recent interview, about works he said "You’ll do good deeds, not for what you get, but out of the awareness of what you’ve already gained." Now, works won't save us, but that's not the point. The point is that when we grasp the notion that we have a part to play in the drama of the new creation unfolding in the midst of the old one, and it looks like loving orphans and widows, defending the helpless and the oppressed, standing for social justice and in general constantly seeking to show loving acts of compassion and generosity. Christ told us that when we love the least of these, we love him. That's what teachers like Rob Bell, N.T. Wright and others like them are getting at: we need to ditch this deeply engrained notion of the "individual" that we Americans have and realize that to follow Christ is to love humanity and the creation we inhabit and to strive in every way possible to show it.

Again, I'm looking to reading Bell's new book and perhaps submitting my review of it on here. I know many that oppose him have already done so despite the fact that they haven't actually read it. And we all know that carries tremendous weight, right?