Bell’s Hell

The buzz in theological culture has been about Pastor Rob Bell‘s take on the future in his recently published Love Wins.

But it seems that the buzz in the broader culture has been Nebraska pastor Todd Burpo’s take on the future titled Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back.

Judging from his released promotional video, Pastor Bell’s concern is hell. Judging from the title, Pastor Burpo’s concern is heaven. So far, according Amazon.com stats, heaven is winning. It is #1 in sales by the online service. Hell is lagging behind at #4, but is no doubt creeping slowly upwards.

I have read neither book, and tend to avoid investing precious reading time in books that prove, when the dust settles, to have been fads. In this regard, Rob Bell will prove to be the least faddish. His following is tremendous and his influence substantial.

But apart from the similarity in content, I wonder if both books are drawing their communicative power from caricature. Caricature sells better than truth.

Heaven Is for Real is the account of a little boy who recovers from surgery with stories of having been to heaven. The family claims that he emerged with details of family members of which he should have had no knowledge, proving to them that he had really met these people in heaven. (How did they know, by the way, that it was heaven? Perhaps “Purgatory Is for Real”.)

According to the publisher’s blurb,

“He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how ‘reaaally big’ God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit ‘shoots down power’ from heaven to help us….[the insights show that] Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle.”

Caricature? Sure. Whether the little boy simply projected onto his memory palette the imagery from his Sunday school classes infused with a vivid imagination or not we cannot say. But it is curious that what he sees corresponds to popular religious imagination.

The popularity of this suggests that for many of us, the revelation of Scripture, with its breadth and depth and, yes, ambiguity regarding the future is insufficient. My experience as a pastor tells me that there are those, perhaps many, who read such books to confirm their stereotype of the future and are then unable to hear a more nuanced and carefully constructed vision taken from the pages of Scripture and rooted in solid theological tradition.

We often prefer caricature to truth.

And that may explain the popularity of Rob Bell’s presentation. Bell has been charged with challenging the historic Christian teachings on hell and judgment and eternity. He has been accused of universalism, a charge he has denied. I can’t interact with the charges, not having read the book, though Martin Bashir of MSNBC does a standout job of challenging him to be specific about what he believes.

In Bell’s online promotional video of his book, he raises intriguing questions, beginning with this one:

“Will only a few select people make it to heaven and will billions and billions of people burn forever in hell?”

He presents the question in such a way that we are led to imagine that he is indeed presenting the orthodox, historic, Christian position. If that is what he means, it is a caricature. And caricatures are easy to deflate and overcome.

Just as there are those who promote the simple view of heaven ‘seen’ by Pastor Burpo’s son, there are Christians who teach that the central Christian message is that God sends people to hell. There are Christians who insist that heaven will be populated by only a few, rather than a number greater than the sands on the sea shore or the stars in the sky.

Such caricatures are to be lamented, confronted, and corrected.

I understand Bell’s desire as a pastor to present a message that can be heard and comprehended in a culture which seriously questions Christianity. This past Sunday I preached on a subject which required me to address the subjects of sin and wrath and judgment and hell. We had a number of visitors. I have wondered since, “Is there another way I could have said what I said which would have communicated to the unbeliever or to the jaded in a more effective way.” And I have wondered whether those who were there would be back and, if not, if the specific message preached would keep them from returning. But I have not been asking whether the message I was communicating needed to be re-imagined.

The jury is out as to whether I’ll pick up Bell’s book and read it. I probably will. But one question he asks in the promotional video is one that I can endorse enthusiastically and with great passion:

“What we believe about heaven and hell is incredibly important because it exposes what we believe about what God is and what God is like.”

That is precisely what makes these questions so critical, and makes any misrepresentation or caricature, whether innocently by four year old boys or knowingly by fifty year old pastors, so troubling.