Taking on Rob Bell

Ok, the title isn't what it appears, but these days everyone else is doing it so... nevermind. I really like Rob Bell. I think he's taking a bad rap for some things he's said. Here's a quick story for you, regarding my experience of his objectors:

I spent the first two weeks of April on a road trip with my brother down through California. We were going to visit our friend who is attending Calvary Bible College, in a small town not far from LA. Naturally, I asked about the kinds of things he was learning, and he said "man, you should have been here last weekend! They did an expose on the emerging church! They totally cut Brian Maclaren and Rob Bell to shreds!"

My interest was piqued.

If you know my story at all, you know that through university I probably would have lost my faith entirely if not for these two. Their ideas, conversations and exemplary lives as humble Christians concerned with social justice inspired me to not give up entirely while I immersed myself in Nietzche and Heidegger while listening to way too much Radiohead.

Hence, I like Rob Bell, and I like Brian Maclaren. I've even met them both, and they've been very cordial to me.

So I chased down the man who led the expose, (I guess I shouldn't name names) and had a conversation with him. His objections were all quite vague and he didn't seem overly concerned with any one facet of the so called 'emerging church' - frankly I was surprised he could pin down enough points to make a case against it, because it seems to me a very hard thing to define.

He did have one interesting quote to share with me, a quote which seems on the surface very questionable, from Rob Bell's work Velvet Elvis.

The quote is something along the lines of "heaven is full of forgiven people, and hell is full of forgiven people."

I never realized Rob was such a stirrer of the proverbial pot.

Hell is a very tricky issue. But what did Rob mean by this? I had to do some research, and it has a lot to do with interpreting Jesus' words about hell, salvation, and the meaning of the atonement - A little too much for one blog post, if you ask me. So I've decided I will spend some time, soon, reading up on and offering my humble opinions on the subject of hell. We'll call it 'Hell' month, or something.