So I'm reading that controversial book.

UPDATE (March 2013) - I finally did the rest of the review on this book... even if it is two years later! Better late than never, right? Go and read it now!

Love Wins by Rob Bell

I ordered this a while ago and had been waiting in anticipation for it to arrive. "Love Wins: A book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived" by Rob Bell has been causing quite a stir on the interwebs various corners. I'm sure it's not new news to anyone who listens and watches these things that a few major church leaders quite openly condemned this book and its author because of its subject - before it had even been released and read!


Anyway, old news. What I want to talk about is what I have read so far. Right now I am half way through the book and still I'm not really sure what the controversy is about. All the nay-sayers were ranting about Rob Bell now being a "universalist" and that he'd thrown out hell and all that. Well I just read the chapter on hell and here's a quote from it:

"There is hell now, and there is hell later, and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously." (pg. 79)

So... where's the controversy? In that he says all the injustice, pain, torment, hate, tears, and death that we experience now in this lifetime is just as equal to hell being now as hell being a future place of such things? That when we give up all things good, humane, decent, moral, divine, that we have in some form or other just created a type of hell on earth scenario for people to live in?

I don't really see anything so controversial about that.

Jesus calls us to do the opposite of these things in the here and now - to bring justice, righteousness, peace, love, morality and goodness to this world now in the form of the Good News, as bringing the Kingdom of God to people around us right now in our very actions. Our actions bring a little bit of heaven and its principles and realities to this reality in this time.
Is it then so hard to think that the opposite can be true? That a little bit of "hell" can be brought to this present reality by our actions that remove those Kingdom principles?

Take a look at the world around us and ask yourself that question.


I'll write more once I've finished the book.