Does God get what He wants? From Scripture we learn that God’s desire is that all peoples, and all nations receive salvation and everlasting life.
What disturbs Bell is the notion that not all people will be saved, apparently presenting a contradiction between what God desires and what God actually gets.
So, if God desires that all be saved, and it ends up that all are not saved, then is God powerless, and is God impotent and unable to bring about his purposes?
Sometimes it is hard to figure out what Bell actually believes because his writing style is to throw out questions. It is in the questions as they are articulated that we find a clue to what he believes. Here is an example…
“Is God our friend, our provider, our protector, our father—or is God the kind of judge who may in the end declare that we deserve to spend forever separated from our Father? (Bell, Kindle, 51% location)
It is now easy to see the dilemma he poses…God cannot be friend and judge at the same time. God cannot be provider and judge at the same time. God cannot be protector and judge at the same time. God cannot be father and judge at the same time.
Bell is subtly (sometimes not so subtly) pushing hard for a universalism where all are saved. Here are his questions…
“Will ‘all the ends of the earth’ come, as God has decided, or only some? Will all feast as it’s promised in Psalm 22, or only a few? Will everybody be given a new heart, or only a limited number of people?”
Finally, as Bell appeals to various Christian thinkers over the ages, he concludes with this (which I assume is his belief)…
“At the center of the Christian tradition since the first church have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God.”
For Rob Bell trying to reconcile the notion of free will and choice with the biblical teaching about hell ends up this way…
“Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God’s ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.” (Bell, Love Wins, Kindle location 57%)
In short, this entire chapter is an attempt to say that since God is so loving, and God is powerful enough to get what he always wants, then the only way to explain hell is that it is of one’s own making here and now. This is because in the end a new heaven and new earth will be free of evil and we can enjoy God’s love.
Several things in this chapter that the author is right about, and causes one to ponder seriously-how each of us create our own hell here on earth, the passionate pursuit of God for sinners, God’s desire that all be saved, the reward of new heaven and new earth that we are looking for, etc.
The New Testament writers are unanimous with their witness…salvation through Jesus Christ rescues and saves us from hell, but saves us FOR the love of God with a life lived sacrificially for others. Hell, the lake of fire and brimstone, Tartarus, etc. are all appropriated in the New Testament as places or realities where the devil, demons and unbelievers reside forever separated from God. Interestingly, in the book of Revelation this is used as a motivation for persecuted Christians to remain faithful.
I understand the driving desire to want to say that everyone in the end will be saved and end up in God’s presence forever. There is one catch…not everyone will respond to God’s gift of Jesus on the cross. Therein lies the problem!
In Christian love, Curtis
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