I felt excited to read a book that is causing so much controversy in the Evangelical Christian world. It's nice to feel "current."

After watching Bell's trailer for the book and watching the Nooma video style of the presentation, I was looking forward to seeing how he would flesh out his ideas about heaven and hell in the book. It was disappointing to find out that the first chapter of the book was nearly word-for-word the trailer that I had watched on the internet. The entire book is written like an overlong Nooma video - short sentences that often end in question marks, pauses for thinking (space on the page), and a few comments that lead to near-conclusions and then just hang there in the empty space on the page. This works really well in a Nooma video. In a book, I was hoping for something more. The wide margins, extra space between the lines, and the occasional shift to free verse form make the book seem a lot thicker than it is. And I guess this is my chief criticisms: it's just too thin.

The idea of a loving God sending some/many of his creatures to eternal suffering is a major problem (sorry fellow evangelicals!), and thus it deserves a major examination. Instead, we have Rob Bell presenting only a glancing of an alternative scenario to the end of times, using specific parables and passages from the Bible. It makes me wonder if I have made the mistake of thinking that I am the target market of this book - it must be aimed at people who aren't ready to embrace the gospel of Christ because they can't reconcile this strange doctrine of judgment. I am coming to this book having embraced the gospel but knowing (and struggling through) the passages that have led to the conclusions of the general church, and I was hoping for an in-depth analysis of these passages. Instead, I felt like I was reading a book written by a nice guy who is hopeful that things will turn out better because of a different reading of a few passages, but he isn't quite ready to deal with the toughest parts of scripture.

There also seemed to be a need to stay current. In the midst of his musings on heaven and hell, Bell references his experience at Eminem's 2010 comeback concert in Detroit:


"...It was then that I noticed something fascinating.

Eminem was wearing a cross around his neck.

Now, we see crosses all the time,
that's nothing new.
They're around somebody's neck,
on a church building,
on a sign at a sporting event.
It's an icon,
a sign,
a sculpture,
it's on someone's arm as a tatoo -
the cross is everywhere."

(Is Rob Bell is trying to present his musings as found poetry - just because your prose may sound nice, I don't think it needs to be presented in verse form.) It's unclear to me why he needs to reference Eminem except to let me know that he can handle the modern rap concert experience. What is clear to me is that Eminem wearing a cross is NOT fascinating, since his next comments are that it is utterly predictable and ubiquitous. By the end of the short chapter (they're all short), Bell muses more about whether Eminem has found the truth and maybe that's why he wears a cross. It feels like a forced youth pastor move to me.

There are some strong parts of the book, particularly the second last chapter that examines the prodigal son story. Here, Bell is finally taking strong steps towards developing his theology, even challenging the prevailing atonement theory (Jesus rescues us from God). If only he wrote the rest of the book in this fashion!

Rob Bell certainly has the best of intentions in writing this book. It's been awkward watching him get kicked around during the Love Wins press tour. He keeps saying that he wants to begin the conversation. Hopefully, there will be others who will say more. There already has been some thought-provoking books on this subject. Brian McLaren does far more with this topic in "The Last Word and The Word After That," actually covering everything Rob Bell touches on. Clark Pinnock's (out of print) "A Wideness In God's Mercy" asks the same question and examines the scriptural passages very closely (and it ends humbly: "If I'm wrong about this, God has enough mercy to forgive me."). The best of the bunch would be N.T. Wright's "Surprised By Hope" - it's scholarly, readable, and expansive.

Oh, yeah - there's also a guy named C.S. Lewis who wrote an imaginative and thoughtful story called "The Great Divorce." Rob Bell mentions this and N.T. Wright's book in his recommended reading section. If "Love Wins" can lead all of its readers to these two books, then it is certainly not a waste of time - it's just a brief beginning to a rich conversation.