If God wants everyone to be saved, does God get what God wants? If not everyone gets saved, does this imply that God has failed? These are the questions that set the stage for a chapter in which Rob Bell does bring up the idea of universalism. Now, before I go any further, let me be very clear. Rob Bell does not promote universalism in this chapter. Despite what you might have heard from the likes of Piper and Graham and others, Rob does not, in this chapter, say that everyone goes to heaven no matter what and everyone, in the end, gets saved. Rob does not make a definitive statement. Instead, Rob does what Rob does best, he asks questions and provides the reader with different possibilities that could happen in the future. I suppose if you are the kind of evangelical who really doesn't have a purpose or an identity apart from conflict, then you might want to start a fight with Rob Bell where no fight exists. I suppose if it makes you feel better about yourself, about your evangelical opinions, then pick a fight with Rob Bell, lots of other people have. The only problem with that strategy is the fact that Rob Bell is not advocating a position that you can fight against. He is merely asserting that there may be different possible solutions and outcomes to the age old problem of how Christians who believe in a loving and merciful God can also believe that this same God tortures people for all eternity in hell. All Rob does is stretch your mind a little bit. I guess for some people that is too painful and they would rather condemn him has a heretic. What does that say about their own narrow-mindedness? If Rob Bell wants to free God from some small man-made box, these evangelicals want to keep God firmly encased within this little box that they have constructed.
All of this doesn't mean I agree or disagree with Rob. This chapter did stretch my mind more than the others have.
Rob argues on pages 110 and 111 that as Christians we are all about telling good stories. He says a story where God punishes most people in hell for all eternity is a bad story. A story where God saves everyone, where everyone enjoys God’s world without shame is a better story. He also admits that there are lots of objections to this story, but that as Christians, shouldn’t we at least long for it to be the true story? I have no problem with this line of reasoning, other than to ask Rob if the good or the bad stories that he suggests include "truth" - whatever truth is in this case. Where in this analogy does the “true” story fit in? Is the story just about good and bad from our human perspective? I wonder if "telling good stories" is really an argument at all? I don't know - I like to tell good stories. But more importantly, I like to tell true stories. I just want the true stories to be good stories, and I think Rob does too. Telling stories about God ordering the Israelites to kill every living person, including women and children, in Jericho is not a good story, but it is a true story.
In order for the true story to be a good story then, God, in Rob's reasoning, would need to not condemn anyone to hell, but instead, allow them all, at some point, to enter heaven. So, what about people who die without ever knowing God, or even worse, deliberately rejecting God? Rob wonders (as did Martin Luther) if God gives people the chance to turn to him after they die. This would mean that regardless of the life we live while we are alive, when we die, if we end up in hell (which Rob does affirm is a real state) do we still have the opportunity to realize our mistake, accept the mercy of God, and "get out of hell free" so to speak?
This argument, while it might also flirt with universalism, makes me think about the Catholic idea of purgatory. We get punished until we are purified and ready for heaven.
Rob continues this thought by stating that people choose to walk away (from God’s plan and design for them) all the time. That impulse lurks in all of us. So, he asks, will those who have said “no” to God’s love in this life continue to say “no” in the next (114)? This asks a fundamental question about what we believe happens after we die.
My question for Rob, at this point, is this: If we are free to choose to accept God and “get out of hell” are we also free to reject God in heaven and voluntarily (or involuntarily) end up in hell, even after we have been “saved” and have spent a million years in heaven?
Rob would say "yes" since he argues that the picture of heaven in Revelation says that the "gates of the New Jerusalem" are never shut, meaning that people are always free to come and go. My evangelical background wants to reject this idea. My Christian background says "God is bigger than me and I like a picture of God who allows us free will, even in the next life." I'm just not sure that I can handle another life of free will given how poorly I have handled it in this life.
For all of you who have read this blog, or perhaps read Rob's book, and have determined that he is indeed a heretic, that he should be kicked out of the evangelical circle (whatever that means), and that he is somehow eroding the Christian faith, PLEASE READ THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH.
As he concludes this chapter, with all of its questions and suggestions and arguments, Rob says something so traditional and so conservative that it makes me wonder if the haters closed the book before they got to this point and refused to read any more. If they had, they would have missed this:
"Will everyone be saved, or will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices? Those are questions we are free to leave fully intact. We don’t need to resolve them or answer them because we can’t" (115). On the next page he writes
"the question isn’t if God gets what he wants, but rather if we get what we want. The answer is “yes” (116). If we want hell, we can have it. If we want a lifetime of separation from God, we can have it. Its just that God doesn't want that.
Rob is saying that God wants everyone to be with Him in heaven. He'll do anything He can to ensure that outcome. Even if some of His strategies mystify us and confuse us. But I am o.k. with that God. I'm O.K with a God who is a bit of a rebel and goes against what conventional human wisdom thinks is best. I absolutely need a God like that to save me.
