Friday, March 25, 2011

Rob Bell

Rob Bell is the pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church, and is known to many Christians through his NOOMA videos, and the books he has written. I remember watching his videos in youth group and thinking they were very interesting. Videos like Dust and Lump.

Recently he's come under fire by a lot of Christians for the description and accompanying intro video of a book that hadn't even come out yet. This is the intro video for the book, Love Wins:


The people concerned with Bell's theology basically said he is being a false teacher because the video he implies all people will go to Heaven because Love wins, and our Loving God would never send someone to Hell.

Of course I don't believe that myself, and I was ready to blog about how maybe Rob Bell explains that idea further in the actual book, saying God is a loving God but people choose to not love him back and there is indeed a Hell...and that we shouldn't be so quick to judge Bell and assume he is a false teacher.

Then I started researching the issue further, and I came across this post from a pastor named Erik Raymond's blog responding to Rob Bell's earlier book, Velvet Elvis: check it out here

Now I have quite a few friends who own or have read that book...I was planning on reading it myself, but maybe I shouldn't?

A lot of what Raymond comments on makes sense, and I'm wondering what you guys all think?

4 comments:

Breeann said...

Oh man...I just read that article you linked to and now I'm trying to remember what I even liked about Velvet Elvis. I read it for work for our group discussions each week a couple of years ago and I thought I liked it then. Now I'm not so sure...
From all I've read and heard about Love Wins...I don't think it's worth my time at all.

JERM said...

Hmm. Yea, I might end up reading some of his stuff anyway, so I can see for myself you know?

Brandon said...

Rob Bell seems more concerned about his image to me. Maybe I've got him pegged wrong, but there's something about him that rubs me the wrong way.

Also, he has beady eyes and a big head.

Josh Bowers said...

Not sure what you ended up deciding, but I don't think it's wrong to read it at all, but just as anything we read, you filter it through the truth of scripture.

If it doesn't line up with what you know to be truth, we have to throw it out, or at least the ideals. Though I haven't even read it yet, I would suggest if you read or are going to read love wins, I think you should pair it up with Erasing Hell by Francis Chan, we have it and you can borrow it after I'm done with it;)