Exciting News!! I changed my blog name

Taking a Walk...meh. Sounded kind of cheesy to me. So I changed it. Stuff Kyle Says. Also dumb, but more descriptive and less euphemistic. Maybe I'll get really popular and people will refer to my blog as SKS, like "Hey, did you see that sweet article on SKS?" That's awesome. And highly unlikely.

Response to "Then All H–ck Broke Loose"

Below is my reply to an article (Then All H–ck Broke Loose) that the founder of my organization Orphan Justice Mission Tim Stoner wrote recently. It's a great piece and adds to the discussion regarding Rob Bell's new book Love Wins.

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Tim, well done. I always appreciate your sense of historical context and it's a reminder (which Rob mentions also in his piece on Good Morning America's website) that we are just another link in the long chain of sinners and saints who have for ages been wrestling with God over these big questions. Is there an older one than "Can a good God allow suffering?" (isn't Job the oldest book in the Bible?).

I respect Rob. I spent time at Mars when I was in G.R. and I learned a lot from him. My main take away was the repetitive teaching that Christianity is not about tickets to heaven, but about God's transformative work in our lives now, that He's Lord now, not just someday but here, in this moment. This was a powerful motivation in my effort to get involved with Orphan Justice Mission (as we discussed at that first meeting in the M-6 Panera) and still informs my Christian worldview. I've also known he's been theologically controversial in the past, and I have given him grace, knowing that all of us, like it or not, get something wrong, possibly even our strongest convictions. Yet what I witnessed during my time at Mars was a sincere love of Christ, an appreciation for the scriptures and call for faith-based action (and some of the best worship I've ever been a part of).

That being said, this one has me worried. I think it's extremely difficult to argue that Hell is not Hell (even if you rely on the faulty assumption that God some how changed between the Old and New Testaments). God is not clear on everything, much to the surprise of my more fundamental friends. I have always appreciated Rob's emphasis on the discussion, or the "white space" surrounding the black characters on the pages of scripture, as he calls it. This is not saying there isn't truth or that somethings can't be known for sure, but the very fact that God has decided to entrust his record to stories, poetry and letters says that he's okay with us having questions, with having to dig and debate and wrestle to find truth. Hell is certainly one of those topics in which we are given only small snippets of and we ought to be careful not to claim we know all there is to know about it. What the scriptures do make clear, however, outside of hyperbole or metaphor, is that it exists, it will suck and is for those who have rejected Jesus Christ. Hard, yes, but that's the Bible, so I appreciate your point that God defines God, not man, and He has decided to show us all of his qualities, Love and all the other traits that help us understand what holy love is. I will read Rob's book and hold onto my hope that he's not going where everyone says he's going. I remain indebted to much of his teaching, but if he has become a universalist, well, that's lame and shows a blatant disregard for core teachings of scripture.

Just a few left over thoughts:

I think your position that Rob can't conceive of a God who causes, engages in, is present during suffering is faulty. I have not read his book Drops Like Stars, but I think that's the whole idea, that God actually uses suffering in our lives to create beauty. Mars Hill has also used Lent in a very orthodox sense as a time of reflection on human suffering and the Passion narrative.

Also, for those railing Rob and triumphantly, boldly, cockily celebrating the existence of Hell out of a sense of pious scriptural orthodoxy, I would say be careful (not talking about you here :) ). One of my greatest frustrations with Rob's opposition is their arrogance. For example, I once heard John MacAurther on the radio essentially insulting Rob, not just his theology or his teachings, but him personally. And the now famous tweet from John Piper "Farewell, Rob Bell." Rob's teaching may be dangerous, but the posture and behavior of some of our best evangelical theologians fits easily into the definition of hypocrite. The write well about the Spirit of Christ in our lives, but don't present it well in public. The one thing the universalists may have going for them is that they have a more complete understanding of the terribleness of Hell, and more love for those who would be/are doomed to such a fate than those of us who so boldly talk of the judgment of God because we believe we are protected from it. They simply can't hold the tension between love and holiness and so remove it rather than allowing God to remain above a perceived paradox. Evangelicals may have it right by acknowledging God's judgement, but I would love to see those who fight so vehemently for Hell's existence work just as hard keeping people out of it. And that takes way more than just clean cut doctrine.