Love Wins?

This week I finally got round to reading Rob Bell’s ‘Love Wins’.

I’m not usually a fan of non-fiction and, other than the bible, I find most Christian literature dull. Bell’s book was different. It is both gripping and fascinating. Perhaps because it is the first Christian book I have read that makes potentially dangerous points, asks questions that cut deep and makes statements that verge upon heresy.  It doesn’t work within the ‘Christian structure’, it questions it.

There is no doubt that his book has had a profound effect upon Christians worldwide. Just typing ‘Love Wins’ into Google produces a ridiculous amount of webpages that attempt to discredit Bell’s arguments.  His book attracted the attention of both CNN and Time Magazine, and sparked several high profile books that argue against his ideas. Rob Bell was famous within the Christian community; ‘Love Wins’ has made him infamous.

I don’t necessarily agree with all that he is written. He has, however, opened the debate on what happens at the end of the world in a massively public way.

He suggests that: the ideas passed down through the Christian faith, ideas that many of us were taught as fact, should be reconsidered; that the current concepts of heaven and hell are unbiblical; that in fact, we have no idea who is going to be ‘saved’ or ‘unsaved’ by God at the end of the world.

He suggests that most of us got it wrong; it is not just Christians that get into heaven, far from it.

I was taught that only those who pray a specific prayer get into heaven; those who do not will go to hell. This, I always thought, was backed up by Romans 10:9 which says that 'If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.'

Questioning this was to question a ‘truth’ of the bible. Questioning it would mean questioning God, and, by extension, one of the fundamental principles of Christianity.

Bell’s book says that it is okay to question this; I think that that is the true reason why it stirred up so much debate. Not the points that he was making, but the fact that he dared suggest that this part of the bible was up for discussion. Once you start to think that people who do not live like you do, or believe the things you do, also experience eternal salvation, you may start to ask yourself why you bother being a Christian. The scare mechanism has disappeared: you can no longer retain Christians through fear of the end.

Reading ‘Love Wins’ made me feel ashamed. Until now I had accepted that most of my friends would go to hell. Until fairly recently I believed that Hell was a physical Dante-esque horror show, and this did not upset me. I accepted that my God would exclude; that a God I believed to be loving, gracious and kind was also capable of mass torment upon those that I loved. Does this not go against everything else we are told of God? Who are we to define ourselves as the group that emerged unscathed from his judgement?

Rob Bell placed this issue on the table. He made me question one of the very things that I was so sure that I believed. For this I am very thankful.