Love Wins, Chapter One: What About the Flat Tire?

In this chapter, Rob Bell seeks to do two things. The first thing he tries to do is to clarify the "traditional" doctrine and examine the consequences if the doctrine were true. He articulates the consequences in such a way that makes each possible way of understanding the doctrine seem unacceptable.  If we believe that some few people will live forever in happiness in heaven and all the others will spend forever in anguish, what kind of God is it that arranges such a system? If this is true, how can we make sure that we are in the first group and not the second? Does it depend on how persuasive a pastor we had growing up? Or now?  What is the age of accountability? What if someone never heard the Gospel? What if we heard the Gospel from someone who was vicious and cruel?  Bell reminds us that there are quite a variety of ways in which Jesus might be presented, not all of them are true or reflect God. Some Jesuses should be rejected, Bell claims.

Bell recounts having heard a woman talk about the funeral of her daughter's a friend, a high school student killed in a car accident. Her daughter was asked by a Christian whether the boy was a Christian. She told him that he told people he was an atheist. The Christian replied, "So there's no hope, then."  Bell goes on to ask, "No hope? So is that the Christian message? " 

Bell suggests a variety of criteria for getting into heaven, but readily finds that they lead to patently unacceptable conclusions. He examines the proposal that to get to heaven one needs to have a "personal relationship with God through Jesus." He points out that this wording does not occur in the Bible nor in the whole history of the Christian faith until about a hundred years ago.  He goes on to have an interesting but brief discussion about whether believing or accepting is an act. If believing/accepting is an act, how can salvation be grace?

Second, Rob Bell refers us to a number of passages in the Bible that helps the reader to see that the "traditional" doctrine does not fully engage much of what the Bible teaches. It relies on a selective reading.  Bell takes us to Luke 7 where a Roman centurion has greater faith than Jesus has seen in all of Israel; Jesus promises eternal life to a thief in Luke 23. In John 3 Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born again; in Luke 20 Jesus speaks of those considered worthy to take part in the age to come.  These various stories do not give us a consistent picture of salvation. He goes on to effectively multiply examples of a variety of things that people do that seem to lead to salvation. There does not seem to be a consistent biblical path. Demons believe, but are they saved? (See Matthew 8, Luke 4, Mark 1, James 2 and many other places.)

The chapter closes with Rob Bell saying that Love Wins is a book of responses to the questions he raises in this chapter. I believe that the purpose of this chapter is to try to get us to look more carefully about salvation, heaven, and hell. It is designed to make us uncomfortable with easy answers and invite us to a more comprehensive look at the Bible and what it has to say about God's saving love.

Here is a video link to Rob Bell delivering the opening paragraph of the book and some other introductory thoughts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODUvw2McL8g .  

Some questions to think about:

1. What question in this chapter really made you think?
2. What passage in this chapter surprised or confused you?
3. Did anything Rob Bell said in this chapter bother you?

[To join a conversation on this book go to http://groups.google.com/group/lovewinsdiscusstion.]