Earlier today (well, yesterday, I guess), I read a Rob Bell update on CNN. And now, for some reason, I'm pretty angry.It's not because Rob Bell is a heretic, of course, and it's not even because fundamentalists are giving Rob Bell crap for being a heretic. Actually, I'm not sure where the angry is coming from. Maybe it's because even edgy Rob Bell doesn't have enough balls or brains to embrace the label "universalist".
Or maybe it's this bit:
Bell would not be surprised if he saw Gandhi in heaven. “Jesus was very clear. Heaven is full of surprises. That’s central to Jesus [sic] teaching.”
HOLY F#@$. YOU MEAN THAT HEATHEN GANDHI MIGHT BE IN HEAVEN WITH ROB BELL? How about this instead, you pretentious MORONS?
Bell would be mildly surprised if Gandhi saw him in heaven. "I don't really think I'm on the same moral plane as someone like Gandhi," Bell said, "But who knows? We can hope, right?"
12 comments:
Never mind your insertion of [sic]. At least Gandhi’s name was spelt correctly in the bit you quote from CNN. Or perhaps this is a symptom of your anger?
Yes, probably so. Wrote quickly, failed to edit. The point stands.
A few years ago, this probably would have made me angry, too.
But I was just talking with my wife about this...how sad that so many Christians are so angry about the fact that some people think Hell might not be quite so full of wailing, weeping teeth-gnashers.
@GKB
Normally it wouldn't make me angry either, which is why I think my reaction is kind of strange. Probably stress- or ego-related somehow.
Spelling nitpickers - now that's what really makes me mad. It's like you spelt your milk, and as if that wasn't bad enough, you get called on it.
Ghandi never would have done that.
Good 'ol Gandhi.
OK, I just reread and now I see what you mean. Sometimes it’s hard to get the emotional side of words in print.
Yeah... it's so condescending for Bell to be surprised that Gandhi just might possibly be up there in heaven along with all the good Christians.
It reminds me of a radio interview I heard a couple years back. A leading fundamentalist whose name I don't recall had won the applause of like-minded believers but appalled others when, give a chance to meet briefly with the Dali Lama, he tried to convert him!
At first my jaw dropped to hear of such amazing ignorance and then I found it enormously silly.
@Paul
Yes, my fury obviously made me incoherent. I just couldn't get over the assumptions implicit in that statement. How absolutely /arrogant/ and /ridiculous/ it is to suppose that generic Christian X would be somehow as fit (more fit!) for heaven than a moral paragon like Gandhi.
I guess when you equate a verbalized doctrinal formulation with absolute and ultimate truth, you can no longer recognize the provincialism and chauvinism of your outlook – whether you imagine that those who don’t see it your way are going to hell or just that they’re necessarily your spiritual and moral inferiors. Because to your mind, it’s not that they don’t see it “your way” it’s that they don’t see it “God’s way.”
God, conveniently enough, becomes a Person who thinks about things exactly as You do. You and God speak the same language (American English), You and God share the same thoughts. Of course, you leave out the capital “Y” in your writing from out of humility...
PS Maybe this is a stumbling block that goes all the way back to the gospels, where Jesus is often portrayed as identifying his finite self – his personality, even his literal body – in a special and particular way with God.
>I guess when you equate a verbalized doctrinal formulation with absolute and ultimate truth, you can no longer recognize the provincialism and chauvinism of your outlook
That's the way I understand it too, I guess. The thing that hacks me off my suspicion that at some level Bell knows better, but taking the plunge into sanity would compromise too many things that he wants to keep. And the threat is obviously real: look at the angry response he's getting for espousing this insipid version of conditionalism.
What makes me mad are the people who want to keep hell but want all the pople in there to have gone of their own free will. What happened to the teeth gnashing?
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