Rob Bell and the New American Christianity
I JUST STUMBLED onto the whole Rob Bell thing in the past few weeks. Before that, I knew the name, and I vaguely associated it with some headlines about the founder and pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan becoming evangelical non grata for writing a book, Love Wins, in which he said some thought-provoking things about the afterlife.
That was it. Then, while researching something else, I watched the new documentary The Heretic (directed by Andrew Morgan, available on Amazon and iTunes). I was astounded. A 40-something guy was on stage, alone, dressed in what seemed like an ill-fitting hipster costume: Cropped pants, shoes with no socks, and a weirdly undersized jacket. He held just a wireless mike and talked, to a theater filled with 500 or so paying customers, about Jesus and the Bible and what it all really means. This apparently happens all over the country, and all over the English-speaking world. This was a revelation to me.
Rob Bell, via Rob Bell's Facebook page
"Can we watch a video with that guy who has the weird hair and the dark rimmed glasses?" -Member of My Youth Group
"Love wins the in the sense that God’s will is the reconciliation of all things—the soul, the body, the earth, the cosmos, and everything in it." -James Wellman, Rob Bell and a New American Christianity, 59.
American Christianity is experiencing a theological shift. Many have tried to explain it, sometimes making the shift far more confusing than it actually is. Fortunately, the shift can be explained quite simply, and while it may be new to American Christianity, it is actually very old. Indeed, it dates back 2,000 years. The shift boils down to the two theological axioms of the New Testament, both found in the letter 1 John:
“God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (1:5) and “God is love” (4:8 and 16).
Those statements, while simple, are far from simplistic. John was bold in affirming these statements. He knew he had to give it to us straight – probably because he and the other disciples had a hard time understanding what Jesus meant in his teachings and parables. So, John cut to the chase and simply claimed that Jesus reveals, “God is love and God is light. There is absolutely no darkness within God.”