A couple of weeks ago, I mocked the trailer for Rob Bell’s latest book. It was a self-indulgent farce that begged for ridicule. Yesterday he released another trailer. This three-minute video actually hints at what the book’s about. Too bad it’s not orthodoxy.
Here’s a summary: personal story, criticize traditional Christians, personal story, personal story, personal story, criticize traditional Christians.
In this video, Bell compares Christianity’s view of God to an old Oldsmobile. Fine for its time, but too antiquated for the contemporary world. His message is so heartbreaking that I can’t even mock this video. It’s just too sad.
Bell is setting himself up as a prophet who will reveal new things about God. He’ll tell us who God really is. It seems pretty clear that his version of progressive revelation is similar to the core teaching of the Bahai faith and has little to do with the Christian doctrine of revelation.
As for me, if Bell is a new prophet, I’m going to have to see some miracles confirming his new ideas about God.
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Reblogged this on COLLIN GARBARINO.
What I get out of the video is that he’s a very imprecise thinker who has recognized some very real patterns but only generally. At the same time, because he has hit on these real patterns, he thinks he is a much more precise thinker than he is. Now, he is going to reveal to us the secrets of the universe.
It really is ludicrous (in my opinion) when someone tells a well-qualified woman that she can’t teach because it’s “not Biblical” or that belief in something other than 6-day creation means you have to throw out the rest of the Bible. That doesn’t mean, though, that Rob Bell now has the answers.
Chris, I think you have a point about his imprecision. I’m also afraid that he’s more faithful to an ephemeral cultural than he is to eternal truth.
There seems to be more than a hint of strawmanness in his personal stories.
The imprecision seems to run rampant in more than just his work. There are a lot of people who might fall more into line with common evangelical thinking who seem to believe they have suddenly unlocked the deepest mysteries of theology, and now they are here to reveal them to you.
Case in point, I was reading an article on Relevant on how we should interpret the “imago Dei.” The article ran thusly: “Theologians have argued for centuries, there’s an ongoing debate, but here! I have solved the puzzle. Interpret it *this* way.”
Each and every one of us needs a healthy dose of humility regarding these matters (myself included).
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