You can’t argue with spirit but you can argue that Rob Bell has done a remarkable job bringing God's love to life. Yes, love wins in this worthy work of theology and non-fiction, a book I can see some Christians calling heresy or science fiction.
In Love Wins we meet a small cast of characters in a small tome with a big mission tackling the existence of eternal hell or the lack of it according to author, pastor Rob Bell. We meet and greet and spend a lot of time with the greatest wordsmith of the Bible: Saint Paul who predates early Church fathers who filled books with philosophy and logic that changed the course of Christianity in Europe.
Love Wins is a remarkable, easy, interesting read that I am glad I undertook without expectation or previous knowledge of the author.The problems with the book were more editorial and less literary or theological. Perhaps Pastor Bell should have checked with rules for writers which advises writers to avoid short sentences especially when they create fragments. Ouch! I am sure that Bell sought to inspire with poetry and poetic license, but I found it distracted from his central and solid message about God's unconditional love for his creation: man.
Timelines and talk of time fills Bell book; including but not limited to what happens after death and the meaning of time, eon, “foreverness,” time contraction and dilation. Pastor Bell writes beautifully about the impact of time as we know and understand it from pages 57-59 and even waxes Einstein-like in summary on page 59:
We live in several dimensions.
Up and down.
Left and right.
Forward and backward.
Three to be exact.
I get it — but does he mean it or does he just like the way it sounds? Because surely that segment does not hold up to editorial scrutiny — proof when the lines are highlighted as sentence fragments, poetry maybe, sentences never.
Fragments aside, let’s take a faithful look now at Bell’s hammer on the mountain: trust. We are asked to trust that God’s timeline is infinite, so far so good. Not only do we move and have our being in him but God throws in eternity (from page 59):
Eternal life does not start when we die;
it starts now.
It’s not about a life that begins at death;
it’s about experiencing the kind of life now that can
Article comments
1 - Emily Dixon
I loved getting an "outsider's" perspective about Bell's writing. I have not read this particular work but it is on my summer reading list. I simply wanted to add a note about his writing style. If you watch his award winning Nooma videos you will find he writes exactly as he speaks. While leaving his writing stylistically flawed, his oral presentations are beautifully worded. For those of us who were introduced to Bell through the videos, it is impossible to read his books without hearing his voice.
Complete with,
Not neglecting,
His carefully constructed stops.
Starts.
And thought provoking
Pauses.
Making his books feel like a conversation with an old friend not dry pursuit of theology.
2 - Irene Athena
HELOISE! I was interested to see you reviewing a book like this. I am one of those Christians who says, "I HOPE I'm not heretical for enjoying Ron Bell's writing, because some of it really sounds like truth that needs to be broadcast, but some of it is...out there."
As you say, Ron Bell does proclaim the fact that Jesus' merciful pursuit of all of us, even atheists and people who don't know His name yet, continues day after day in THIS life. Grace is a gift we CAN'T earn, it is something He is wanting to lavish on all of us. I sometimes think of us "gotta be a good person" types spraying ourselves with all sorts of semi-nasty perfume to cover up the stink of our selfishness and pride, and God's chasing us around wanting to bathe us with the only thing that will get us really clean: His own blood. Also, Jesus was the type of guy who went to parties and hung out with sinners and other religious misfits, and he got invited BACK.
On the other hand, I wonder what the last line of this exchange, on the OTHER side of death, would be:
God: "Well [fill in name of Aggressive Atheist here], welcome to the judgement seat. You've spent the best years of your life turning people against me, but SURPRISE, I'm going to display my magnificent mercy and let you into Heaven anyway."
[Aggressive Atheist]: "Get lost, God. I still feel the same way."
God: ?
I'm not the one having to do the deciding. Thank God.
3 - Ceska
Weather you agree with Rob Bell or not it's is hard to deny that he has the power to reach an extremely large audience. In his latest book, Love Wins, he uses this ability to ask serious questions that deeply affect the faith of, well "Every Person Who Ever Lived."