No Sweet Sound of Amazing Grace Coming From Mars Hill Church
Did you see the recent TIME magazine article announcing the coming of age of Pastor Rob Bell of Michigan's Mars Hill church's? The article says he has come to a new realization of faith. He says has come to realize that the Bible teaches there is no hell. According to the article Bell sees the concept of a God who would send people to hell because they have rejected Christ was an invention of intolerant fundamentalism and shows a convoluted view of God. The prominent evangelical leader, Dr. John Piper, responded, "bye bye Rob Bell". What he meant was Bell's affirmation is nothing more than an abandoning of the faith. He has apostatized.
Let me make it very clear: I like and respect Rob Bell. There are few churches in the world that have been as effective at renewing their communities, helping individuals solve their personal crises more than Michigan's Mars Hill Church. Rob Bells video's and books have been especially effective at bring a skeptical generation X back to the church. I have family members who have benefited from the church's ministry. However, none of those things make the church Christian nor do they validate his views of heaven.
In a post-modern generation some will say, "so what." If he's helping people and naming the name of Christ who cares if it is theologically correct?" In other words, in the world view of many Rob Bell's followers, his success gives credibility to his views. It really doesn't matter whether they are true. The problem with that view is that the gospel message is the foundation of Pastor Bell's church. IT is what empowers it. If the foundation falters the church will eventually lose its unique ministry. There are helping people and organizations everywhere that are not evangelical some are secular Bell's confession makes his ministry unexceptional and takes it outside the Christian fold. The difference between a spiritual solution that an orthodox church provides and one that a universalised institution provides is substantive. Counselling or self-help programs may help a person manage stress better. They may even help the person further along to health, but they do not change the character and habits of the person. Bells change of heart deflates his church's redemptive power and merely makes them another self-help organization. There is nothing Bell provides that one couldn't get from listening to Dr. Phil or Dr Laura Schlessinger.
There is a second danger to being unconcerned with truth content, and that is the source of the experience is important if an experiences has value as means of spiritual transformation. In other words, the credibility of any subjective experience is entirely depend on the validity of the objective truth behind it. What we believe is equally, if not more, important than how we behave? Jesus made this very clear in Matthew 26. There "a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask," a very expensive oil that was usually used in embalming. She pored it over his head.Notice the reactions:
"And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying 'why was this wasted? For this could have been sold for a huge sum and given to the poor.' But Jesus aware of this, said to them, 'Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing. For you will always have the poor, but you will not always have me?"
This is a strange passage. It upset our expectations because we assume helping the poor and healing the sick was Jesus priority, and that anyone who puts anything ahead of that is dishonoring Jesus and not being loving. We would expect Jesus to say, to the woman, "Nice, beautiful gesture, but it really doesn't matter what you belief or how you worship, but whether people are helped." Yet Jesus clearly says helping the poor was of lesser importance than this act of worship,recognizing his death. Jesus came to restore the divine authority to people's lives they had lost at the fall. His death and resurrection were the means to that end. Anything that did not contribute to that end was really not part of his purpose. It might make people feel better about their lives, but it did not change them. So it is the objective purpose of salvation that determines whether what we do is God's will, not the result of it.
Let me give you another example, I used to struggle with a severe speech impediment. Therapy never helped. What if I had invented a magic potion, drank it, and suddenly no more stuttering? If I had discovered some magic potion that would have made me fluent people would have asked me "how did you do it?" If i told them I drank the magic potion, instantly I would have created a market for the magic potion. People would have wanted that potion for some friends or family member? But whose to say it was the potion that solved the stuttering. Even if thousands of people drank the potion and it helped them, the question would still be was it the potion, or some reaction in their lives to the potion that engendered healing? We would need to study those whom the potion did not help in order to find out the secret. What I have discovered is that therapy does not produce fluency. Until the stutter understands the root issues in their own lives that cause stuttering they will stammer. Therapy can help a person understand those issues, but there is no magic potion. This is what Jesus is saying to those upset by the woman who anointed him with oil. Despite how altruistic your motivation there is no magic formula, or program to end poverty. You do not help the poor by just giving them money. You help the poor by understanding factors in society and issues in their own lives that contribute to their poverty and redeeming them. Since the Bible and Jesus taught that all personal problems and social issues are directly connected to how one relates to God, worship is a higher priority for the church than eleemosynary pursuits. The objective question about whether Bell is correct is far more important than whether his actions are helpful, because only the truth sets us free, counselling and altruism only enable us to manage our lives in the present. They do not transform people.
Unfortunately, Bells views are incorrect; therefore his ministry is discredited. It is no more effective at transformation than what a person might find at a mosque, or in the use of some illicit drug.As I understand Bells argues that the Scripture does not teach that a hell exists. but a place of eternal bliss where everyone will go because Jesus paid for every one's sin. He just doesn't think a loving God could send people to hell.
First let's address the question of God's character. Does the Bible teach that God is one who condemns? How can a loving God judge? There is no question that the God of the Bible is holy and just and that he exercises retributive justice. In Exodus we are told of a Pharaoh who becomes threatened by the number of Hebrews in his land began slaughtering Jewish male children under 2. After that God providentially protects one young Hebrew, who of all things becomes the adopted grandson of the infanticidal maniacal Pharaoh, through a strange series of adventures offers the Pharaoh the opportunity to rid himself of the despised Hebrews. The Pharaoh rejects God offer because it would necessitate recognizing some one's Divinity other than his own. God rejects him and Divinely judges him and his people, killing Egyptian children in retribution for his own infanticide. There are places where Go commands the slaughter of nations. The Old Testament book of Nahum is a declaration of God's intended judgment and destruction of Nineveh. Yet the Old Testament God is loving God, forgiving Samson, David and others, restoring and delivering a people who are not always appreciative. Yet some will argue that the New Testament God is more loving.
There is no doubt there is a greater emphasis on grace in the New Testament and Law in the Old; the love of Christ is redemptive, while the Old Testament' Jehovah is retributive. But the New Testament is not without judgment or retribution. What about Jesus cursing of the fig tree (Matthew 21:18 & 19). It was an important symbol of the Jewish Nation and Jesus curses it. Or what about Peter pronouncing judgment on Ananias and Saphira, who both fell over dead (Acts 5:1- 11). Jesus appears to give the church moral authority over its members lives (Matthew 16:17-20; 18:18-20;John 20:19-20). Paul makes it clear that it is the church's responsibility to pass judgement on the moral acts of it members:
" For what have I do with judging outsiders [non-Christians, secular people]? Is it not those inside the church whom you [fellow Christian] are to judge]. Purge evil from among you."
The Bible clearly teaches that love and justice are corelative. One cannot exist with out the other. A parent who loves one child will not allow another child whom they love equally to abuse the first. It is inconceivable. Several years ago we lived in an area where a serial arsonist was loose. He was eventually found because his parents identified him from media reports went to the Police and initiated actions that lead to his capture. I was amazed at how the media covered the event. The treated parents who had acted to stop their child's heinous actions as an anomaly. Would it have been loving for them to have ignored the obvious? Should they have mounted a defense and protected him? Was it loving for school officials and parents of the Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, perpetrators of the Columbine High School mas acre, to ignore the warning signs the kids were in trouble? Which was more loving: for the parents of John Hinkley Jr, attempted murderer of President Ronald Regan, tp hire a high profile defense attorney who secured an acquittal for their son; or for George and Barbara Bush to leave their oldest son in jail, in the hands of a public defender, when he was arrested for driving under the influence? The Bible describes love as "not rejoicing at wrongdoing?"
When Rob Bell and other universalised folk say a loving God could not send people to hell, they show a convoluted understanding of both love and justice. They are corollaries. Jesus said a loving God was both redemptive and retributive:
"For God so love the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal live. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe in him is condemned all ready " For God to send his Son to the ignominious horror of death by crucifixion merely to excuse people from sin, would have been neither loving nor just. Only a loving God would provide a means of redemption that satisfied the need for retribution. It is Bell and his ilk who do not understand the love or justice of God.
Bell also erroneously asserts that The Old Testament does not teach a concept of afterlife and that the New Testament only treats hell incidentally. A person with the academic and theological credential of Bell who says that is simply ignoring the passages that make him uncomfortable for an illusion. Nothing could be further from reality.
The Old Testament view of the afterlife is somewhat ambiguous. This really is no surprise. But heaven and hell are both there in incipient form. The place where the dead go after life in the Old Testament is most often called "Sheol." It can have both a concept of a blissful paradise and a place of torment and anguish.
The Old Testament often speaks of "Zion," which refers to the mountain on which the town of Jerusalem is built. It is sometimes used in this geograhical sense. However, it usually refers to the dwelling place of God, which is seen as a place of beauty and love. The 84th Psalm describes the journey of the covenant believer through life ultimately ending in a lovely dwelling place of God.
Bell says the Old Testament does not teach there is a hell. Yet we do see the concept of an eternal dwelling place of evil people where God's retributive justice is applied in some of the passages describing Sheol, most notably Psalms 49 and 88. There Sheol is described as a pit from which no one can be ransomed, a place where wealthy and poor are equal, an eternal dwelling, a place where those who put foolish confidence i themselves go, where men perish like beast, where we carry nothing after us. In Psalm 88 it is a place where God does not hear us, where the sole is troubled, where God forgets us and does not extend his hand to help us. It is a deep, dark, pit. A place where there are no companions or relationships, a dungeon that can not be escaped, a place of affliction and terrors, where God's wrath sweeps over us. It is one hell of a place,
So the concept of an eternal conscious dwelling where God's retributive justice is meted out exists in the Old Testament in incipient form. The New Testament is quite clear. There are descriptions of heaven and hell and people who return from the other side. Jesus and the New Testament writer speak much more often and clearly of hell than they do of heaven, describing it as a place of "weeping and gnashing of teeth.' In Luke 16:49-30 Jesus tells a story of two people who apparently lived in the Old Testament period, one is prosperous and happy in this life the other poor and wretched. In the after life their fortunes are reversed. This is an important passage because it is Jesus describing his view of how the Old Testament presented afterlife as a precursor to his own on heaven and hell. It is clear that Jesus believed in heaven and in hell.
Along with Dr. John Piper I must also very regretfully must say "bye, bye," to Rob Bell. He has denied what is a very obvious teaching of scripture: Fundamental to the nature of God himself is the concept of a corelative love and justice. Good and evil do exist in the world. If there is a personal Diety, he must either be good or evil. He must be a dispenser of love and justice. It makes no sense in a present life where good and evil are so evident every day that in the afterlife there would not be some system of redemption or retribution.
When I look at the world around me and my knowledge of God's holiness I stand on the opposite side of Bell. I do not ask: How is it possible that a loving God could condemn, rather, I wonder how is it possible he could redeem? I have a greater problem with the existence of heaven then I do with the existence of hell. I understand that I and every other human being is deserving of retribution, what I find perplexing is redemption. What Bell either does not understand or has perverted is the concept of grace. It is grace that resolve the mystery between love and justice retribution and redemption. It is grace's sweet sound that save wretches like me.
Let me make it very clear: I like and respect Rob Bell. There are few churches in the world that have been as effective at renewing their communities, helping individuals solve their personal crises more than Michigan's Mars Hill Church. Rob Bells video's and books have been especially effective at bring a skeptical generation X back to the church. I have family members who have benefited from the church's ministry. However, none of those things make the church Christian nor do they validate his views of heaven.
In a post-modern generation some will say, "so what." If he's helping people and naming the name of Christ who cares if it is theologically correct?" In other words, in the world view of many Rob Bell's followers, his success gives credibility to his views. It really doesn't matter whether they are true. The problem with that view is that the gospel message is the foundation of Pastor Bell's church. IT is what empowers it. If the foundation falters the church will eventually lose its unique ministry. There are helping people and organizations everywhere that are not evangelical some are secular Bell's confession makes his ministry unexceptional and takes it outside the Christian fold. The difference between a spiritual solution that an orthodox church provides and one that a universalised institution provides is substantive. Counselling or self-help programs may help a person manage stress better. They may even help the person further along to health, but they do not change the character and habits of the person. Bells change of heart deflates his church's redemptive power and merely makes them another self-help organization. There is nothing Bell provides that one couldn't get from listening to Dr. Phil or Dr Laura Schlessinger.
There is a second danger to being unconcerned with truth content, and that is the source of the experience is important if an experiences has value as means of spiritual transformation. In other words, the credibility of any subjective experience is entirely depend on the validity of the objective truth behind it. What we believe is equally, if not more, important than how we behave? Jesus made this very clear in Matthew 26. There "a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask," a very expensive oil that was usually used in embalming. She pored it over his head.Notice the reactions:
"And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying 'why was this wasted? For this could have been sold for a huge sum and given to the poor.' But Jesus aware of this, said to them, 'Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing. For you will always have the poor, but you will not always have me?"
This is a strange passage. It upset our expectations because we assume helping the poor and healing the sick was Jesus priority, and that anyone who puts anything ahead of that is dishonoring Jesus and not being loving. We would expect Jesus to say, to the woman, "Nice, beautiful gesture, but it really doesn't matter what you belief or how you worship, but whether people are helped." Yet Jesus clearly says helping the poor was of lesser importance than this act of worship,recognizing his death. Jesus came to restore the divine authority to people's lives they had lost at the fall. His death and resurrection were the means to that end. Anything that did not contribute to that end was really not part of his purpose. It might make people feel better about their lives, but it did not change them. So it is the objective purpose of salvation that determines whether what we do is God's will, not the result of it.
Let me give you another example, I used to struggle with a severe speech impediment. Therapy never helped. What if I had invented a magic potion, drank it, and suddenly no more stuttering? If I had discovered some magic potion that would have made me fluent people would have asked me "how did you do it?" If i told them I drank the magic potion, instantly I would have created a market for the magic potion. People would have wanted that potion for some friends or family member? But whose to say it was the potion that solved the stuttering. Even if thousands of people drank the potion and it helped them, the question would still be was it the potion, or some reaction in their lives to the potion that engendered healing? We would need to study those whom the potion did not help in order to find out the secret. What I have discovered is that therapy does not produce fluency. Until the stutter understands the root issues in their own lives that cause stuttering they will stammer. Therapy can help a person understand those issues, but there is no magic potion. This is what Jesus is saying to those upset by the woman who anointed him with oil. Despite how altruistic your motivation there is no magic formula, or program to end poverty. You do not help the poor by just giving them money. You help the poor by understanding factors in society and issues in their own lives that contribute to their poverty and redeeming them. Since the Bible and Jesus taught that all personal problems and social issues are directly connected to how one relates to God, worship is a higher priority for the church than eleemosynary pursuits. The objective question about whether Bell is correct is far more important than whether his actions are helpful, because only the truth sets us free, counselling and altruism only enable us to manage our lives in the present. They do not transform people.
Unfortunately, Bells views are incorrect; therefore his ministry is discredited. It is no more effective at transformation than what a person might find at a mosque, or in the use of some illicit drug.As I understand Bells argues that the Scripture does not teach that a hell exists. but a place of eternal bliss where everyone will go because Jesus paid for every one's sin. He just doesn't think a loving God could send people to hell.
First let's address the question of God's character. Does the Bible teach that God is one who condemns? How can a loving God judge? There is no question that the God of the Bible is holy and just and that he exercises retributive justice. In Exodus we are told of a Pharaoh who becomes threatened by the number of Hebrews in his land began slaughtering Jewish male children under 2. After that God providentially protects one young Hebrew, who of all things becomes the adopted grandson of the infanticidal maniacal Pharaoh, through a strange series of adventures offers the Pharaoh the opportunity to rid himself of the despised Hebrews. The Pharaoh rejects God offer because it would necessitate recognizing some one's Divinity other than his own. God rejects him and Divinely judges him and his people, killing Egyptian children in retribution for his own infanticide. There are places where Go commands the slaughter of nations. The Old Testament book of Nahum is a declaration of God's intended judgment and destruction of Nineveh. Yet the Old Testament God is loving God, forgiving Samson, David and others, restoring and delivering a people who are not always appreciative. Yet some will argue that the New Testament God is more loving.
There is no doubt there is a greater emphasis on grace in the New Testament and Law in the Old; the love of Christ is redemptive, while the Old Testament' Jehovah is retributive. But the New Testament is not without judgment or retribution. What about Jesus cursing of the fig tree (Matthew 21:18 & 19). It was an important symbol of the Jewish Nation and Jesus curses it. Or what about Peter pronouncing judgment on Ananias and Saphira, who both fell over dead (Acts 5:1- 11). Jesus appears to give the church moral authority over its members lives (Matthew 16:17-20; 18:18-20;John 20:19-20). Paul makes it clear that it is the church's responsibility to pass judgement on the moral acts of it members:
" For what have I do with judging outsiders [non-Christians, secular people]? Is it not those inside the church whom you [fellow Christian] are to judge]. Purge evil from among you."
The Bible clearly teaches that love and justice are corelative. One cannot exist with out the other. A parent who loves one child will not allow another child whom they love equally to abuse the first. It is inconceivable. Several years ago we lived in an area where a serial arsonist was loose. He was eventually found because his parents identified him from media reports went to the Police and initiated actions that lead to his capture. I was amazed at how the media covered the event. The treated parents who had acted to stop their child's heinous actions as an anomaly. Would it have been loving for them to have ignored the obvious? Should they have mounted a defense and protected him? Was it loving for school officials and parents of the Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, perpetrators of the Columbine High School mas acre, to ignore the warning signs the kids were in trouble? Which was more loving: for the parents of John Hinkley Jr, attempted murderer of President Ronald Regan, tp hire a high profile defense attorney who secured an acquittal for their son; or for George and Barbara Bush to leave their oldest son in jail, in the hands of a public defender, when he was arrested for driving under the influence? The Bible describes love as "not rejoicing at wrongdoing?"
When Rob Bell and other universalised folk say a loving God could not send people to hell, they show a convoluted understanding of both love and justice. They are corollaries. Jesus said a loving God was both redemptive and retributive:
"For God so love the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal live. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe in him is condemned all ready " For God to send his Son to the ignominious horror of death by crucifixion merely to excuse people from sin, would have been neither loving nor just. Only a loving God would provide a means of redemption that satisfied the need for retribution. It is Bell and his ilk who do not understand the love or justice of God.
Bell also erroneously asserts that The Old Testament does not teach a concept of afterlife and that the New Testament only treats hell incidentally. A person with the academic and theological credential of Bell who says that is simply ignoring the passages that make him uncomfortable for an illusion. Nothing could be further from reality.
The Old Testament view of the afterlife is somewhat ambiguous. This really is no surprise. But heaven and hell are both there in incipient form. The place where the dead go after life in the Old Testament is most often called "Sheol." It can have both a concept of a blissful paradise and a place of torment and anguish.
The Old Testament often speaks of "Zion," which refers to the mountain on which the town of Jerusalem is built. It is sometimes used in this geograhical sense. However, it usually refers to the dwelling place of God, which is seen as a place of beauty and love. The 84th Psalm describes the journey of the covenant believer through life ultimately ending in a lovely dwelling place of God.
Bell says the Old Testament does not teach there is a hell. Yet we do see the concept of an eternal dwelling place of evil people where God's retributive justice is applied in some of the passages describing Sheol, most notably Psalms 49 and 88. There Sheol is described as a pit from which no one can be ransomed, a place where wealthy and poor are equal, an eternal dwelling, a place where those who put foolish confidence i themselves go, where men perish like beast, where we carry nothing after us. In Psalm 88 it is a place where God does not hear us, where the sole is troubled, where God forgets us and does not extend his hand to help us. It is a deep, dark, pit. A place where there are no companions or relationships, a dungeon that can not be escaped, a place of affliction and terrors, where God's wrath sweeps over us. It is one hell of a place,
So the concept of an eternal conscious dwelling where God's retributive justice is meted out exists in the Old Testament in incipient form. The New Testament is quite clear. There are descriptions of heaven and hell and people who return from the other side. Jesus and the New Testament writer speak much more often and clearly of hell than they do of heaven, describing it as a place of "weeping and gnashing of teeth.' In Luke 16:49-30 Jesus tells a story of two people who apparently lived in the Old Testament period, one is prosperous and happy in this life the other poor and wretched. In the after life their fortunes are reversed. This is an important passage because it is Jesus describing his view of how the Old Testament presented afterlife as a precursor to his own on heaven and hell. It is clear that Jesus believed in heaven and in hell.
Along with Dr. John Piper I must also very regretfully must say "bye, bye," to Rob Bell. He has denied what is a very obvious teaching of scripture: Fundamental to the nature of God himself is the concept of a corelative love and justice. Good and evil do exist in the world. If there is a personal Diety, he must either be good or evil. He must be a dispenser of love and justice. It makes no sense in a present life where good and evil are so evident every day that in the afterlife there would not be some system of redemption or retribution.
When I look at the world around me and my knowledge of God's holiness I stand on the opposite side of Bell. I do not ask: How is it possible that a loving God could condemn, rather, I wonder how is it possible he could redeem? I have a greater problem with the existence of heaven then I do with the existence of hell. I understand that I and every other human being is deserving of retribution, what I find perplexing is redemption. What Bell either does not understand or has perverted is the concept of grace. It is grace that resolve the mystery between love and justice retribution and redemption. It is grace's sweet sound that save wretches like me.
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