The truth about fast food

nuff said

How heresy helps us

Rob Bell's latest book has been stirring the emotions of bloggers and commentators worldwide. Get a flavour for it here.

The explosion of words and emotions over Rob Bell's latest book remind me of other, past experiences with a similar flavour. Steve Chalke and the cosmic child abuser. The Shack and representations of God as a woman. And so on back to my time as a theological undergraduate when we were anxiously clutching copies of The Myth of God Incarnate, and arguing intently in corners of the common room.

And, of course, the story repeats itself back through Christian history, right into the pages of the New Testament as Paul argues passionately with the Corrupt Corninthians, and false teachers of all kinds get a lambasting from Peter and the Lord Jesus himself.

Our greatest fear is that popular, articulate teachers who have a big following after establishing their  will lead the weak and vulnerable astray into "another gospel" that has no power to change or sustain.

But there is a good side to heresy. Many will default to lining up behind their own Christian guru, and declaring Bell "offside" without engaging with his writing themselves. But others, we hope will take the opportunity to step back and think again about this important foundational doctrine. 

It is true that an unexamined faith is no faith at all. And many of us cruise through our Christian lives never really questioning large parts of the doctrine that we have received from those who taught us. And because they are unquestioned and unexamined, they bound to be held less passionately.

And Hell is a good case in point. If it is really true that our friends, family, work colleagues and neighbours face an eternity of torment without Christ, and we really believed it, we would walk over broken glass to bring the gospel to them, and them to the gospel.

But the fact that our evangelism is so sloppy and irregular, and our prayers for them so half-hearted shows that we do not really believe it at all.

The controversies of the early church gave us the creeds. The controversies of the reformation gave us back the right of private interpretation. Maybe this controversy over hell will make some of us go back to our Bibles, and start to really believe what we read there.