Hell: A pastor argues that it doesn’t exist

What if hell doesn’t exist? That’s the provocative question posed by Michigan mega-church pastor Rob Bell in a book that has “ignited a new holy war in Christian circles and beyond,” said Jon Meacham in Time. In Love Wins, Bell argues that the concept of a fiery pit into which all non-Christians will be thrown is theologically rigid, outdated, and dangerous. What kind of loving God, he asks, would only save those within the confines of His church? Would He really throw Gandhi into everlasting fire because he was a Hindu? Instead, Bell suggests that “the redemptive work of Jesus may be universal,” and that every soul might be guaranteed a place in heaven. Not surprisingly, evangelicals have erupted in outrage at Bell’s “universalist” treatise, accusing him of heresy and blasphemy. One Christian blogger dubbed him a “tool of Satan.”

Evangelicals have every right to be furious, said Janice Shaw Crouse in The Washington Times. Bell may think he’s trying to modernize Christianity, but he’s actually undermining it. How can a Christian leader argue that accepting Christ is unnecessary? “When everyone is free to make up their own theology, the church becomes both impotent and irrelevant.” Believing in “universal salvation” may fit with the modern world’s anything-goes ethos, said Ross Douthat in The New York Times, but if we are guaranteed a place in paradise no matter what we do, then what use is free will? Without hell, all our actions are “like home runs or strikeouts in a children’s game where nobody’s keeping score.”

Bell isn’t opposed to keeping score on people’s actions, said Richard J. Mouw in The Christian Post. He simply wants Christians to question the “stingy orthodoxy” that says that billions of our fellow human beings will go to hell because their beliefs differ from our own. Bell contends that everyone is worthy of God’s love, if they do not explicitly choose to reject it. And for what it’s worth, said Krista Tippett in The Washington Post, Bell does in fact offer a vision of hell in his book. It’s just not the primitive notion of a netherworld of wailing sinners. Instead, it’s a symbol of the evil and chaos that comes from moving away from God—the “hells on earth” that we see in war-torn and violent societies. The real hell is all around us, he says—and it’s time we Christians stopped ignoring it.

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