Rob Bell will be back at the church he founded this Sunday.
Bell will speak at the 9 and 11 a.m. services at Mars Hill Bible Church this Sunday.
Maybe he’ll make reference to his newest video promoting his new book. In the video, he suggests “for a growing number of people in our modern world, God is a bit like Oldsmobiles”. According to an article on MLive.com, in the 3-minute clip he questions long-held tenets of the “tribal church” including damnation of gays, prohibition of women in leadership and insistence on a literal 6-day creation in the face of scientific evidence.
Bell quote:
“What I’ve seen again and again is people with a growing sense that their spirituality is in some vital and yet mysterious way central to who they are as a person, and yet the dominant perceptions and conceptions and understandings of God they’ve encountered along the way aren’t just failing them but, in many cases, are causing harm… Is God going to be left behind like Oldsmobiles? I don’t think so. Because I believe there are other ways, better ways of talking about God and understanding God.”
“It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about asking the right questions…It’s not about long lists of regulations and things you can’t do. It’s about saying a giant yes to the world… I believe God is the one throwing the party and everybody’s invited and that includes you.”
Thoughts?
 |
 |
Bell says, “It’s about saying a giant yes to the world…”
The Bible says, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” James 4:4.
Bell says, “I believe there are other ways…”
What better way could there possibly be than the way God made for us??
If Bell had not of written Love Wins, I bet we’d probably all interpret this completely differently because we’d likely look at it in a more objective way. It’s hard to analyze his quotes out of context (i.e., without reading the rest of his book).
It turns out I agree with some of his points: the church has focused inordinately on the sin of homosexuality. Nuff said. Statistics will show that most Christian men who are so against homosexuality (and are reading this) are probably themselves watching porn on their computers. No difference. You need to get off your high horse and repent. We’d be best to start judging our own and stop judging the world, to paraphrase Paul.
As far as women in leadership, how is he defining this? Women aren’t to teach or have authority over a man. But in my church, a woman can still be a leader over women and children. They can lead the welcome team. That is still leadership. We have great women leaders in our church. My wife is one of them.
Regarding a 6 day creation, I have a PhD in biology and am still a believer in a literal 6 day creation. But there are good Christian scholars who would still object, or at least question the literal interpretation based on compelling scientific evidence. Is a belief in a literal 6 day creation necessary for salvation?
Lastly, as far as God throwing a party for the world, Bell is simply expressing his Armenian views supported by John 3:16-17. Again, there are many good and intelligent people on both sides of this issue. I see evidence for both sides. I’m obviously not alone as this debate has been ongoing for 500 yrs. If one side had overwhelming evidence for their argument, it would have been settled 499 yrs ago.
So I guess what I’m saying is, let’s not flat out convict and hang him simply on these few quotes without hearing his whole story. While I certainly don’t agree with everything he has to say, I do believe that he preaches a significant amount of truth that is relevant to our generation today (and if you try to refute me on that last statement, I would ask you if you’ve ever said ANYTHING that isn’t the truth, even on accident. None of us are perfect in our theology according to God).
That’s all! I have no idea why I felt compelled to write this, other than I know many of us have a knee-jerk reaction to anything Rob Bell says or does. If he’s truly heretical, then we must judge him, and pray for him to repent.
I’m just concerned that most will judge him, and forget the latter…
Thanks, Brian, I like your perspective. We can read people like we read our Bibles: with preexisting biases. And this often insures we don’t actually get it completely right.
On a similar note, I’ve found that God is as much concerned about the attitude and spirit of our hearts as He is the actual tenets of our dogmatics. God can bless a humble, surrendered heart – even if there is some theological error. Because that person will grow and change as he/she encounters more truth. But someone who is proud and unteachable, and possibly doctrinally very accurate, might in the end be unusable by God. I’m not sure which direction Bell is going in this regard.
Finally, I disagree a bit with you on the homosexual issue having “no difference” from porn problem. I get the point that all sin is serious. But today nobody is suing counselors for promoting recovery from porn. Nobody gets excluded from Presidential prayer breakfasts because they think men should change and not look at porn. But it’s becoming a crime to suggest people need to recover/refrain from homosexuality. Somehow I think there is a real difference here.
I am sure you mean Arminian, not Armenian