Sign in with FacebookAllie's Reviews > Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
by Rob Bell
by Rob Bell
Allie's review
bookshelves: religion-and-spirituality, favorites
Oct 05, 11
bookshelves: religion-and-spirituality, favorites
Recommended to Allie by:
Barnes & Noble
Recommended for:
Christian friends and anybody interested in Christianity
Read from June 06 to 07, 2011
FREAKIN' BEST EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN MATERIAL I HAVE EVER READ.
So I'd recently started John Shelby Spong's Eternal Life: A New Vision (will write about that one when I finish it!), but then...
B&N had this on display.
I sat in the store and read it all the way through.
OMG.
1) This is VERY BOLD for a megachurch pastor. Rob Bell is an open-minded contemporary voice, which mainstream Christianity in this countray has needed for a long time. MAJOR KUDOS.
2) He is eloquent and writes in an easy-to-read format. Lots of line breaks, kind of poetic. Sometimes a lil lame/pastor-y, but I enjoyed the rhetoric. He even gets a lil mystical toward the end. NICELY DONE.
3) He seems well-versed in his church history, which is rare for evangelical Christians. Moreover, he credits all of those thinkers of the past with the ideas that he presents to us.
4) I'm rusty & n00b with teh Bible so I can't critique here. I liked Bell's readings. They're about story-telling and transcendence. They're very rooted in both Jewish and Christian traditions and conscious not only of humanity but also of the world & nature, with death & rebirth being the cycles of life and the universe. Hell, he suggests, is on earth, as is Heaven, and we have the mission not to convert people to our beliefs, but to make the world better. (Some topics he highlights are environmental protection and racism, which I thought was interesting.) Jesus is unconditional love, all-inclusive, so that even if we don't profess to be Christians, we can participate.
It's a compelling synthesis, a vision of Christianity that is generous and optimistic, true to the heart of the religion, and truly universal. Bell asks questions and doesn't tell us what is "right" to believe, but he invites us to consider and to imagine--imagine something bigger, something loving. I am extra delighted by this and by the huge audience that he is reaching.
As a non-Christian, I TOTALLY DIGGED IT. Soooo going to own it and lend it out to my friendz!!
So I'd recently started John Shelby Spong's Eternal Life: A New Vision (will write about that one when I finish it!), but then...
B&N had this on display.
I sat in the store and read it all the way through.
OMG.
1) This is VERY BOLD for a megachurch pastor. Rob Bell is an open-minded contemporary voice, which mainstream Christianity in this countray has needed for a long time. MAJOR KUDOS.
2) He is eloquent and writes in an easy-to-read format. Lots of line breaks, kind of poetic. Sometimes a lil lame/pastor-y, but I enjoyed the rhetoric. He even gets a lil mystical toward the end. NICELY DONE.
3) He seems well-versed in his church history, which is rare for evangelical Christians. Moreover, he credits all of those thinkers of the past with the ideas that he presents to us.
4) I'm rusty & n00b with teh Bible so I can't critique here. I liked Bell's readings. They're about story-telling and transcendence. They're very rooted in both Jewish and Christian traditions and conscious not only of humanity but also of the world & nature, with death & rebirth being the cycles of life and the universe. Hell, he suggests, is on earth, as is Heaven, and we have the mission not to convert people to our beliefs, but to make the world better. (Some topics he highlights are environmental protection and racism, which I thought was interesting.) Jesus is unconditional love, all-inclusive, so that even if we don't profess to be Christians, we can participate.
It's a compelling synthesis, a vision of Christianity that is generous and optimistic, true to the heart of the religion, and truly universal. Bell asks questions and doesn't tell us what is "right" to believe, but he invites us to consider and to imagine--imagine something bigger, something loving. I am extra delighted by this and by the huge audience that he is reaching.
As a non-Christian, I TOTALLY DIGGED IT. Soooo going to own it and lend it out to my friendz!!
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read Love Wins.
sign in »
Reading Progress
| 07/20/2011 | page 3 |
|
2.0% | ""And whenever people claim that one group is in, saved, accepted by God, enlightened, redeemed--and everybody else isn't--why is it that those who make this claim are almost always part of the group that's 'in'?" [ROB BELL I AM REREADING YOUR BOOK, ROCK ON, BROTHA.]" |
Comments (showing 1-3 of 3) (3 new)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Laurie
(new)
-
rated it 5 stars
18. Oktober, 15:38 Uhr
you'll like Spong too. Might try Marcus Borg too if you haven't already.
reply
|
flag
*
Thank you, Laurie!! I just read some Spong and liked it a lot. What do you recommend by Marcus Borg? :)
Bell is not familiar with church history. And he's not really fair with the bible verses he quotes to prove his point. And he's certainly not evangelical (which is fine, I'm not either). This book is really shoddy scholarship based on emotion, not fact (which is kind of Bell's trademark). There are plenty of books on universalism that are written by better scholars and have more fact in them. Seek those out, though I ultimately disagree with the position.
