Hell isn't place of eternal torture Written by
Bob Smietana
THE TENNESSEAN Hell, it turns out, may not be like the Hotel California. You can check out anytime you like. And you can always leave.
A new best-selling book by evangelical megachurch pastor Rob Bell claims that the "turn or burn" approach to Christianity, which claims people have to accept Jesus or face an eternity burning in hell, is wrong.
Bell, who will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Belmont University's Curb Event Center, contends God won't torture people in hell forever.
"A God who does that can't be trusted and is not good," he said.
Bell's controversial views sent his book Love Wins to second on the New York Times best-seller list for hardcover advice and sixth overall in books at Amazon.com. But conservative Christian critics, including leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention, claim the book is heretical. They say Bell offers a softhearted God who never gets angry. And they claim he has become a universalist — a person who believes everyone is saved — a view they say undermines Christianity.
"At the heart of it, there is a disdain and contempt for the doctrine of God's wrath," said Denny Burk, associate professor of New Testament at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. "The cross is not a place where God punishes his son in the place of sinners. That is an enormous revision of evangelical theology."
Bell, who leads the 3,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Mich., is not the first to claim that God gives people in hell a second chance.
Origen of Alexandria, a third-century writer, claimed that everyone, including the devil, eventually is saved. In his 1945 novel, The Great Divorce, British writer C.S. Lewis depicts souls from hell going on bus trips to heaven. If they want to stay in heaven, they can. Lewis also wrote that people choose to go to hell because they don't want to go to heaven.
Bell makes a similar argument. He said people can make their lives a hell on Earth. "God gives us what we want, and if that's hell, we can have it," Bell writes.
The main message of Christianity is choosing heaven by allowing Jesus to save you, Bell said, and his belief on that means he's not a universalist.
Bible says little about hellThe Bible speaks very little about hell. Bell said Jesus used the Greek word "gehenna," which referred to a garbage dump near Jerusalem where trash was burned, to refer to hell. Bell doesn't say whether there is a fiery hell or if the devil wears red tights and has horns — that's all speculation, he said — but God does punish people at times for their own good to purify them.
"Fire — in the Scriptures — is about refinement," he said. "You heat the metal in order to shape and to form it. Fire is how you burn away the chaff."
Andrew Smith, an English instructor at Tennessee Tech, has been a fan of Bell's for several years. He bought the book and plans to hear Bell on Tuesday at the free event. Smith said he grew up going to church, left organized religion for about 20 years and then began attending a Presbyterian church a few years ago.
He agrees with Bell's view. Smith said that no human parent would torture his children for being disobedient. So he doesn't believe God would torture people in hell forever.
"We don't want to imagine a God who is less compassionate than we are," he said.
Liz Knowles also plans to hear Bell on Tuesday. She has been a fan for a number of years and bought Love Wins as soon as it came out. She thinks Bell's critics have taken him out of context.
"People choose heaven and hell every day," said Knowles, a Nazarene. "God wants to give us a choice — if we deny him and choose hell, he's not going to say you are damned forever."
The Rev. Gene Mims, pastor of Judson Baptist Church in Franklin, thinks Bell meant well in his book, but its premise is wrong.
Bell "is not the devil people are making him out to be," he said. "I think he is as wrong as he can be. He's not holding evangelical thought or historic Christianity."
The Rev. Judy Cummings, pastor of New Covenant Christian Church in Nashville, said Christians have debated the details of the afterlife for centuries.
"There are endless speculations about what happens in the afterlife. Tension in the Bible leaves room for varying perspectives in the Christian faith," she said in an email.
'There is a battle right now'Scot McKnight, a New Testament professor at North Park University in Chicago and an influential blogger about evangelicals, said Bell's book is controversial because he is popular with younger evangelical Christians.
Bell is best known for a series of popular videos called NOOMA — a derivative of the Greek word for "spirit" — used by youth groups around the country. The videos are sold in Southern Baptist Convention's LifeWay bookstores, as is his previous book, Velvet Elvis. LifeWay doesn't plan to stock Love Wins through stores but will special order the book.
As a megachurch pastor, Bell has drawn a lot of attention, McKnight said.
"He's been saying things over the last few years that have gotten people irritated," he said. "Once you put it all in print, people have something to latch on to."
Bell's church draws about 5,500 adult worshippers on Sundays. About 7,000 attend Mars Hill's programs in a given week.
McKnight said that Love Wins has exposed a power struggle among evangelicals. In recent years, the so-called New Calvinists, who stress God's holiness and wrath over sin, have become more prominent.
"There is a battle right now over who is truly evangelical," he said. "Some people are intent on saying who is in and who is out."
Bell says he is too busy caring for his parishioners and raising money for causes such as providing clean water in poor countries to worry about his critics. He hopes to use some of the proceeds from the book for charitable work.
