Tough Love Wins (Part Three)

First off, apologies that it’s taken me so long to get back to this.  There’s been a lot of visits to the blog and I’m sure some frustration that I haven’t posted as promptly as I indicated.  There’s a nasty stomach bug going around at the moment and it took me down for a couple of days.

An Analysis of Rob Bell’s Arguments on Accountability and Free Will

Early on in “Love Wins” Rob Bell pokes fun at the concept of children reaching ‘an age of accountability’ when they are responsible for their actions.  Picking on the notion that this age might be at 12 years old he writes,

“What happens when a fifteen-year-old atheist dies?  Was there a three-year window when he could have made a decision to change his eternal destiny?  Did he miss his chance?  What if he had lived to sixteen, and it was in that sixteenth year that he came to believe what he was supposed to believe?  Was God limited to that three-year window, and if the message didn’t get to the young man in that time, well, that’s just unfortunate?”

The problem, of course, is that you can use this logic against any concept of a child reaching the stage where they become accountable for their actions.  So, for example, most of us think it would be wrong to treat an infant as if they were an adult in a court of law.  But they do reach a stage where they become accountable.  And quibbling over precisely when that point occurs (is it exactly on their birthday?) does not invalidate the concept.

While making the same point Bell proposes the following argument:

“If every new baby being born could grow up to not believe the right things and go to hell forever, then prematurely terminating a child’s life anytime from conception to twelve years of age would actually be the loving thing to do, guaranteeing that the child ends up in heaven, and not hell, forever.  Why run the risk?”

I’ve heard atheists arguing along similar lines, but I can’t describe how disappointed I am to see this coming from Rob Bell’s pen.  Is this a different Rob Bell from the one I’ve heard in the past?

The Rob Bell I’ve admired teaches that Christianity is about so much more than getting a trip to heaven.  He teaches that Jesus gives us what we neede to be truly human and to live life now.

Developing as a human being made in God’s image is worth any risk!  God doesn’t wrap us in cotton wool to avoid anything nasty happening to us.  This, for me, is the only possible explanation for evil in the world.  The potential of who we can become as people in Christ, people who learn to love, is worth the risk of creating a world where free will exists – a world where betrayal, torture, genocide and child abuse are very real and terrifying possibilities.

I’m a parent myself.  When I brought a daughter into the world (OK, I know, my wife Janice played a part as well ) I did it in the full knowledge that there were risks.  There was a risk that she would get sick and die. When I taught her how to ride a bike there was a risk that she would ride into the path of a truck and be killed.  When I allowed her to travel to College alone then there was a risk that she could be attacked and gang-raped.  When I tried to teach her how to live as a responsible follower of Christ there was a risk that she would reject and throw off everything I ever taught her.

Does this scare me?  Yes, sometimes it does.  Having a child is risky business – ask every parent that has ever suffered bereavement of their child if there is any heartache to match it!  But most of us still choose to have kids.  Why?  Because bringing a real, live, loving human being into the world is worth the risk.  Holding your baby in the hospital delivery room, watching her take her first steps, blowing out the candles on her birthday cake with her because she’s still to young to do it herself, proudly applauding her at her graduation, walking her up the aisle on her wedding day – even the potential of such things make every risk I;ve mentioned worthwhile.

I heard once of a father who played it safe, who kept his daughter safe and avoided all these risks.  He never let her ride a bike in traffic.  He never ran the risk of her being attacked on the way to College.  His name?  Josef Fritzl.  His twisted idea of ‘loving’ and ‘protecting’ his daughter made her a prisoner in a cellar.  He wasn’t a loving father – he was a monster.

Surely, out of all the book titles imaginable, one entitled “Love Wins” should get this truth?  And especially one written by someone like Rob Bell who has for years so eloquently stressed and taught the importance of living a life where we receive God’s love and love Him in return?  Yes, there is a terrible risk that we will misuse our freedom to self-harm rather than to return God’s love.  It is this risk that makes us children of God, rather than being his pets.  And if that risk is of a great danger, even one as terrible as an eternity of shame separated from God, then that does not diminish love – it makes it more precious!

Love Wins!  Hallelujah.  But it doesn’t win by pretending that hell doesn’t exist.  It wins by confronting the risk of hell head on – in the Person of God the Son.  Love is so important to God the Father, so much the very fabric of His being, that He created you and me with the free will to either love Him back or reject Him – even though that carried the risk of an eternal hell.  And the incredible, revolutionary, mind-blowing truth at the heart of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ, on the Cross, endured every pang and pain of an eternal hell so we could get back into that love-relationship with the Father.

When God the Father saw His Son on the Cross, the risk of love became a reality.  It was every father and every mother’s worst fears and nightmares for their children being played out in front of their eyes in graphic and gruesome slow-motion.  The Father’s heart broke (a concept so scary for us that some Christians in the 4th Century classed it as a heresy and instead proposed a bone-headed and profoundly unChristian doctrine called, heaven help us, ‘Divine Apathy’).

And yet, even as we contemplate this broken-hearted God, the Scripture still tells us, “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer.” (Isaiah 53:10).  How?  How can that ever be true?

The answer is that hell is not, in Rob Bell’s own words, a matter of God shrugging “God-sized shoulders”.  It is rather a matter of tears running down God-sized cheeks, while the omnipotent Creator of the universe looks at our baby-steps in loving Him and one another and Father and Son saying in unison “Yes!  This is worth it all.  Love wins!”

OK, it’s 1am in Ireland, and I’m getting so excited about this that I long ago moved from reviewing a book to preaching instead!  I’m going to take a break from blogging and come back to this tomorrow.  My plan of action is:

Friday – We’ll examine some of Rob Bell’s other arguments for his position on hell.

Saturday – I have a long piece ready to post (actually a Chapter for a forthcoming book) that explores the significance of the biblical imagery of flames in hell.  Is Rob Bell correct in seeing this as symbolism?  If so, then we need to ask a further question – is biblical symbolism a bogey-man exaggeration of something else in order to scare us?  Or does biblical symbolism speak of things that are to be heeded more seriously than the symbols themselves?

Sunday Night – Where does all this leave us with Rob Bell?  Since I disagree profoundly with him on some issues highlighted here, does this give me the right to glibly dismiss him with a “Good Bye, Rob Bell”?  Do we have the right to call his views heretical. or to label him a heretic?  Does it negate what he has done for the cause of Christ up till now?  Or does the Cross of Christ point us to a better approach?

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