What if the story of heaven and hell we have been taught is not, in fact, what the Bible teaches? What if what Jesus meant by heaven, hell, and salvation are very different from how we have come to understand them?
Author, pastor, and innovative teacher Rob Bell presents a deeply biblical vision for rediscovering a richer, grander, truer, and more spiritually satisfying way of understanding heaven, hell, God, Jesus, salvation, and repentance. The result is the discovery that the "good news" is much, much better than we ever imagined.
In two days the United States will celebrate its independence as a nation. Fireworks displays, parades and of course, everyone's favorite: Nathan's Famous 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Contest when we get to see "highlights" of "professional" competitive eaters chowing down hot dogs and buns soaked in water. We do so because tasting and truly experiencing freedom is a memorable thing. In some cases it's an event that deserves special recognition on an annual basis, if not more frequently.
In honor of this most cherished American holiday, I'd like to spend the next few posts celebrating some authors (Rob Bell, Brian McLaren and Krista Tippett) who truly helped set me free. Their books ignited my quest with words I couldn't stop reading or thinking about for weeks, months and years after I finished the last pages. These three authors changed my intellectual life and stirred my passion and curiosity for what a ministry of informed faith and critical thinking looks like. While authors like Peter Rollins and Joseph Campbell and Bart Ehrman helped formulate new thoughts and perspectives on religion and scripture, they definitely came during phase 2 of my faith-shifting.
Love Wins rocked my theological world in a really, really good way. Questions that had been percolating for years were now being tackled from one of the most engaging writers I'd read up to that point. Just as I had perfected the craft of skimming and reading a book "cover to cover" in seminary, along came Rob Bell's take on heaven and hell and I found myself reading every single word. It was quite the controversial material at the time of its release, especially with fundamentalist Christians, but anyone who truly read his book had to have come away knowing Bell had done his homework and didn't skimp on the biblical scholarship. Authentic, bold and inquisitive, Bell quickly became known to me and some of my friends as "Rabbi Rob."
"Jesus did not use hell to try and compel 'heathens' and 'pagans' to believe in God so they wouldn't burn when they die. He talked about hell to very religious people to warn them about the consequences of straying from their God-given calling and identity to show the world God's love...Jesus talked about hell to the people who considered themselves 'in,' warning them that their hard hearts were putting their 'in-ness' at risk..."
If you read nothing else out of this book other than that, you would have enough to chew on for awhile. Bell also interprets portions of the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) that discuss life and death, even though life after death in the Old Testament isn't very articulated or defined. Apparently Hebrews were far more interested in the ethics of and ways of living this life--so any references to 'Sheol' were truly about the actual, literal grave or experience of death.
This book freed me from having to defend a concept I was never entirely comfortable with nor certain about. I am still unsure (and probably always will be) about what awaits a person upon breathing their last. I try to stay open-minded when speculating about this topic with others and theorize all the weird stuff that has been documented regarding death. What I can say with certainty is that there isn't any part of me that agrees with the practice of threatening eternal hell upon people. I like to believe that whatever happens to us when we die isn't up to us, for better or for worse.
"Jesus calls us to repent, to have our minds and hearts transformed so that we see everything differently. It will require a death, a humbling, a leaving behind of the old mind, and at that same time it will require an opening up, loosening our hold, and letting go, so that we can receive, expand, find, hear, see, and enjoy. This invitation to trust asks for nothing more than this moment, and yet it is infinitely urgent...Whatever you've been told about the end--the end of your life, the end of time, the end of the world--Jesus passionately urges us to live like the end is here, now, today."
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