Waiting Wins: McKnight on Bell

There has been much brouhaha and speculation about Rob Bell's soon-to-be-released book, Love Wins. Too much! From my jaded point of view, the firestorm over the book says more about shrewd marketing and the frustrating state of popular Christianity than it does about Rob Bell's theology.

I'll wait until the book comes out and I've read it before writing anything about it. In the meantime, one of the best posts I've read is from our good friend, Scot McKnight, over at the Jesus Creed blog. Rather than stirring the pot, Scot is, thankfully, challenging people to care, think, wait, and love.

Scot writes:
Waiting for Rob Bell 2 (2011.03.07)
I stood in horror watching the blogosphere light up last week, but my horror was not simply over the accusations made against an author whose book was not even yet available nor just over those who were denouncing Rob Bell for what they were absolutely certain was universalism. No the horror was that there was a volley of posts put up about hell. It looked like a tug of war between Love Wins! and Wrath Wins! Is this what we need? the way to proceed? the way to find resolution?

My horror, then, was three-fold: first, the image of God that is depicted when hell becomes the final, or emphatic, word and, second, the absence of any context for how to talk about judgment in the Bible and, third, the kinds of emotion expressed: we saw too much gloating and pride and triumphalism on both sides. I felt like those who watched the sinking of the Titanic and who didn’t cringe at the thought of thousands sinking into the Atlantic to a suffocating death. They were instead singing and dancing to a jig that they were right or had been predicting the sinking all along. . . . Read Scot's entire post.