Rob Bell's "Love Wins" review

first, let's get a couple things straight

To dispel some rumors about the book/Rob Bell

1. "Love Wins" DOES NOT claim that everyone goes to heaven in the end.

2. Rob Bell's books are FULL of Scripture

-somebody told me that they "heard" Bell doesn't Scripturally back up his claims in his books. That's 100% untrue, stop spreading lies people! Haha. This will be the second Bell book I've read. They've both had Scripture references and expounding on every single page.

3. Rob Bell is definitely a Christian, and nothing else

Now to let you know a little more about my stance in this blog

1. This review is slightly bias, I admit it. I like Rob Bell

2. I read this book like I thought he was a heretic

3. Don't take my word for it. Read the book for yourself

So, to start the review I wanna try to summarize Bell's take on Heaven from the Scriptures. The key passage Bell expounds on about heaven is Jesus' words to the Young Rich Man (Matthew 19:16-28 NIV). The man asks Jesus how to reach eternal life, but Jesus doesn't give the answer that most modern day evangelicals would of think he should give. In fact, Jesus tells him how to "enter life". Jesus and the man weren't talking about heaven as we think of it when we die, they were talking about the "age to come". So the man's question of "eternal" doesn't mean exactly the same as we often think it does. Jesus talks about this "age to come" in Luke 20, Mark 9, Luke 21, and Matthew 28 as well. The greek word for it is "aion", which refers to a period of time with a definite beginning and end. So there is the age Jesus was in, and there will be an "age to come" after it.

This age to come is spoken about by the prophet Isaiah as "The Day of the Lord" where everything will be restored, and there will finally be peace on earth. You can find the beginning of his words on it in Isaiah 2:12-18. Biblegateway.com those verses real quick...don't they sound like perfection? Paul also briefly talks about this time in 1 Thes. 5. I know things always get a little fishy in interpreting the OT, but i think it's obvious at least in that passage that Isaiah is talking about the future, a time of perfection on earth through God. So heaven at that point won't be "up there", it's gonna be down here (according to Scripture). Heaven is gonna be God cutting away the divisions and merging with earth and bringing it into his perfection. It checks out pretty well.

Now, the attempt to summarize Bell's thoughts from the Scriptures on hell. In his book, he references and deals with every mentioning of the word "hell" in the Bible, and even some of the words/passages people think are referring to "hell" (kudos to him, that's good persuasive writing right there). Scripture clearly states that hell is suffering, because you are choosing to be separated from God's incredible love, but how long you will be separated seems to be the question.

An important thing about hell Bell notes,The greek word we call "hell" is really the English word "Gehenna". Gehenna is a real place, that basically was the Israelite trash dump. They stuck their trash there and burnt it, dogs fought over scraps and their teeth made horrible gnashing sounds while fighting (sounds familiar?). I can see where we got our image of Hell from, but it's not necessarily underground and reigned by Satan. Jesus related to torment of separation from God to a horrible place nearby of people he was talking to.So it feels to me that the image most of us get of hell isn't from the Bible, it's from Dante's Inferno (gosh I hated that book, i read the whole thing in high school).

One of verses that kinda makes that idea real is Ezekiel 16:53-58, God through Ezekiel says "I will restore the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters...return them to what they were before...". Wait, what?!?!? God is gonna restore Sodom and Gomorrah? We all remember how bad they were, but God in the future is gonna give them a second chance? So....maybe even God's judgement of separation isn't forever...

Still on hell here, but look up these verses please

-Zephaniah 2:6

-Micah 7:19

Bell lists a whole page full of verse just like these. Those probably a several dozen more continue to talk about God's redemptive desires and extreme love for all his people. That's God's desire, to bring EVERYONE back to him. Don't get me wrong, Bell asserts that the ONLY way to get back to God is through Jesus (pg. 155 of Love Wins), but do you think even after "The Day of the Lord" and all is renewed, God is gonna lock the door on his love to those who honestly come in repentance for it? The Day of the Lord idea leaves out where people go who aren't with God, i can't remember if Bell addresses that, i'll re-read to look, but they are somewhere having a miserable time probably. But if they run to the limits of God's area and scream and cry in repentance, do you really think God is gonna say "sorry, if you had come maybe like....5 minutes earlier I could do something for you, but you're late. So you can no longer have my love". That doesn't sound like the God of those verses above and the rest of the NT, does it? I've kinda been convinced it doesn't.

So now you're probably kinda pissed or confused at this point. When I was talking to Maria about this she then brought up the question, "Well then what's the point of living for God now if you can get another shot at it after you die?" When she asked it we both stopped and came to the next point Bell makes. If being a "Christian" for you is mostly about a "ticket to heaven", then odds are you probably aren't going...rough isn't it? Well, I struggle with that to. In fact, the majority of the time when Jesus was talking about "hell" he was talking about it to the very people everyone for sure thought weren't going there! If i remember correctly, Matthew 25 (Sheep and Goats parable) fits that description. Being a Christian is about taking the invitation God gives us through Christ to be apart of his restoring of all things. Yes, heaven is a benefit of it, but it's not the main point. God wants us to be a part of his stuff, and to take joy in it. Yes, there is suffering involved (Paul tells us about it the best in 2 Timothy), but in the end there is JOY! There should be some deep rooted joy! That convicted me hard, because often i'm bogged down by how "hard" my life is. All of this "Jesus work" I gotta do. I gotta feed the poor, i gotta mentor youth, i gotta preach. Poor poor me. If you're like me in that, we're missing out. We need to revamp our feelings for God. He's not a slave-driver, he's a love and joy giver.

The best example of this idea is found in the Prodigal Son parable. We all know the story. The younger son comes back thinking the dad is gonna punish him, but he gets love instead. The older son is pissed about the party for his jerk of a brother, but he's always had love, dad tells him to celebrate. Both boys thought their fathers love was dependent on something or another, how good or bad they were. But it doesn't, their dad's love just.....IS! Isn't that great?!?!?!?! God's love for us just is. It's UNFAIR, it's UNDESERVED. IT. IS. GRACE! So yes, the fact that anybody can possibly just come to God at anytime in this age or next and get love is extremely unfair, but I really feel like i'm ok with that. And that's basically the book. In the end, LOVE WINS.

There are of course downsides to this book, but they aren't really even worth talking about I feel. The general message overshadows them.

The key phrase for his thoughts in the book are on pg. 115. Bell says:

" Will everybody be saved, or will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices? These are tensions we are free to leave still as tensions. We don't need to resolve them or answer because we can't, and so we simply respect them, creating space for the freedom that love requires"

Thanks for reading this, it's waaaaay too long i know. But i left out a lot of stuff that would be really helpful in explaining his view. Bell totally expounds the "Lazarus and Rich Man" story, his full explanation of the Prodigal Son story is brilliant, and so so much more. But for time and practicality I stop here. I might blog about those other pieces later. Please feel free to leave comments below and we can discuss more there.

My advise is to please read the book, I think it'll be something special for ya. Amen? Amen.