When the video promo for Rob Bell’s new book “Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Everyone Who Ever Lived” hit the internet, it sparked something in the Christian world, whether they were mainline protestants, evangelicals, reformed charismatic, or whatever else you might align yourself with. And it wasn’t necessarily pretty. We publicly decried, and began to slander a man for something we hadn’t even had in our hands yet, let alone read a word of. If the Christian community at large had not had such a knee jerk reaction, it is possible that this issue would not have made it in to mainstream media the way it did. Don’t get me wrong, people who don’t claim Christianity knowing about and reading this book isn’t bad. Because it begs a question that most of us, Christ follower or not, have had for a long time, but we don’t really discuss at length. It’s GOOD for this conversation to be had. What we did though was confirm what a lot of people already think about us: If we can’t disagree with and love each other well through disagreement? Why the hell would they want anything to do with us? And for that? We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. We can disagree, we can have different ideas, and we don’t have to spit hate at each other because of it. Should we come along side brothers and sister who appear to have driven off the path that the Bible lays out? Yes. This can be done in love, and can be done outside of the public eye. This doesn’t just apply here, or to mega church pastors, or Christians who are well known to the general public…it applies you and your friends, it applies to the leaders of your local church.

As for the book itself? Bell makes two compelling argument:

1. “Does God get what God wants”? He devotes an entire chapter to the subject. He argues that what God wants is relationship with everyone, and everyone with Him in heaven. I agree with this. I don’t however believe that God then negates His claim that without a relationship with Christ, you don’t get in to heaven. I believe it is what God wants, and it saddens Him that this is not the case.
2. “You can have all the hell you want”. In the last few months I’ve had several conversations with people, and been able to teach about the Kingdom of Heaven as it is here on earth. I believe that the Bible teaches that when Christ came to pay for our sin, He began ushering in the kingdom. So it is here. It is now. It is in how we as believers respond to His call on our lives to live differently than the world. While I’d never considered this, Bell says that the opposite then is also true. Hell is also here. Hell is also now. Hell is in rape, murder, genocide, adultery, and the list could go on and on.

In the end though, I see no real theological framework for Bell’s opinion that in the end, you get another chance to choose heaven because, if you’re not a believer, when you realize all along that you were wrong there’s not a chance in hell that you’d choose this “hell” that may or may not be a real physical place. In the end, I see that Rob Bell has made a new definition of “Universalist” for himself so that he doesn’t have to publicly call himself one. In the end Bell has written a book that makes faith in God and salvation through His Son Christ “palatable”, as so many others have put it, for the unbeliever, or those who don’t want to sign their name next to some of the more “extreme” claims that Christ makes about Himself. And that is something that the Christian community at large cannot condone.

In the end a God who has said that the only way we can spend eternity with Him heaven, whenever, and wherever, and whatever that might be, and does not adhere to that is not God at all, but is a god we’ve made up. A god we’re more comfortable with. Lovingly, God has told us how to follow Him, what that means, and how we are to live as His followers. Lovingly, those who refuse that (NOT those who’ve never heard, or do not comprehend) spend eternity separated from Him. And that should scare the hell right out of us.

In the very end Love does indeed win.

Grace and Peace,

David Stippick

(I strongly encourage anyone who is thinking about reading this to get your hands on a copy and do just that. I didn’t agree with most of what Bell had to say, but I believe he began a conversation that the church cannot ignore having with unbelievers)

This is what grabbed me the most,

In the so-far-printed 13 issues, Carey has managed to incorporate fantasy, horror, nationalistic literature, children’s literature, medieval epic, Dickens, Kipling, Twain, Milne, Wilde and Shelley (Mary, not Percy), which is fitting since The Unwritten is a story about stories.

I’ll let you check out the rest of the article here. Maybe you’ll get as hooked as I did…

-Stippick

It is an excellent book.

People told me fore the last several years that I “had” to read it, because they know that I “like to read, and they don’t so if they read it, it must be good, and it totally changed their life”. That is precisely why I did not read it. When there is a ton of hype of about something, I tend to not be very interested in it, because if it’s attracting the masses who don’t normally like that kind of thing…that could mean it’s not that good. I’ve done the same thing with The Shack (which I plan to read this year), and The Twilight Saga (which I plan to read if there is a gun to my head). Anyway.

Blue Like Jazz wasn’t my first Miller book. “A Million Miles In A Thousand Years” was. Also a good book. I read that because he was coming to our church on his book tour for it, and I decided I wanted to hear him speak and if I was going to hear him speak, I should know a little bit about what he was going to speak about. I loved the book and was sold on the guy.

Blue Like Jazz was Miller’s breakout book. It is, as he himself says, about Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. And most of the thoughts he shares are fairly nonreligious (Good job Don…(I call him Don because we have a picture together)).

What I loved most about it is that it is honest. There is not a whole lot of that in christian writing. There is a lot of “How you can be a better Christian”, “Use this formula to be joyful in Christ”, and things like that. But Miller makes it a point to show how he came about doing those things. And that he still struggles with it constantly. That is my kind of guy.

I am also a big fan of the way he writes. It’s very “train of thought” like. I actually know a few people who don’t like his writing because of that. But when I am thinking…I’m thinking in my train of thought. I like to read that way (I also like to write that way, in case you didn’t notice).

Here are some of the topics he covers:

Magic

Faith

gods

Church

Romance

Community

He uses a lot of stories from his sometimes cooky past to illustrate what God taught him about those, and other things, and where that has put him today, and how God is still changing how he feels about some of those things.

Those are just a few. Head over to your favorite bookstore or your local library and pick this book up, it is well worth the read.

The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose

I got this book on Saturday, and finished it earlier today. I could not put this thing down. I decided that since I like to read a lot, I may as well start to review the books I read here for any curious book seekers.

I think what I liked best about this book is how Roose does an incredible job of being open minded in his unfamiliar setting. As a Sophomore at Brown University, Kevin Roose takes off  to study abroad at the famous (or infamous, depending on who you are) Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia for a semester, so that he can gain an understanding of a culture he knows very little about, young evangelical Christians.

Although Roose was ‘raised as a Quaker, he has never identified himself as a Christian, and saw them a ultra-conservative, homophobic, closed minded, and prudish. During his time at Liberty University, he does encounter some of these things, but for the most part, his stereotypes are challenged if not shattered.

From an almost relationship with a Liberty girl, to some personal time spent with Dr. Jerry Falwell (that results in very mixed feelings about the man he is publicly vs. the man he is privately) just before his 2007 death, he will help you understand the God Gap that this generation is experiencing from the very inside of the ‘Ultra-Conservative Right Wing Evangelical’ training ground.

Though the book is 315 pages, it is a pretty easy read, and I would give it a strong recommendation to anyone from the right wing conservatives he set out to understand to those athiests who hope Jerry Falwell is in a hell they refuse to admit exists.

5 out of 5 stars.