Monday, October 03, 2011

Rob Bell - Part I

It may be all parts, not just Part I.  But just in case.

I was tempted to call the post Sniveling Sells to make fun of his book title Love Wins.  But that would not only be childish of me, it would not be accurate.  The book is at least better than that, in general.  It has moments of sniveling, and I do not think they are unfortunate stylistic accidents that a good editor could have removed, but central to Bell's style.  He is clearly young, full of himself, and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.

He is nonetheless still more right than wrong in what he is trying to accomplish, and irritating as he is, he deserves attention.  First, the preface is excellent.  It is not flawless, but it bears a message to evangelicals that they need to hear, and it is done with kindness, and earnestness, and even a fair bit of wisdom.  If you can get ahold of the preface and nothing else, I suggest you read it and contemplate it.  My guess is that your contemplation of the legitimate issues he brings up will be more valuable than what he writes.

I think that the garden must be weeded before we can judge how this crop is doing.

Bell's style of rapid-fire questions is not merely stylistically irritating.  It reveals an unfairness, even akin to dishonesty, in his entire approach.  He does not merely question, imitating Jesus's return questions to his critics, as Bell claims.  These are different questions, not at all like Jesus's.  We have seen this before, and I have mentioned it in a post about Chesterton last year, A Note of Interrogation. Or, you may pick up the thread of this by reading Bell, not from the perspective of a like-minded accuser trying to get general evangelical authorities to listen, but from the POV of a person who is hearing the questions and attempting to answer them.  Very quickly one understands: Oh, I get it, it's not just impatience that prevents you from waiting around for attempts at an answer.  It's that you don;t want answers.  You want to tell me answers.  Got it.  I get the impression, and perhaps it is an unfair leap on my part, that from the perspective of  Mars Hill, some people get to ask questions and others don't. 


Nor is it just a device in the first chapter to set out all his questions at once.  He's still doing it by page 103.  These are not bad questions.  In fact, nearly all of them are excellent questions.  They are just not being honestly asked to elicit discussion.

Second, two psychological bits that most readers are going to miss, but need to be pointed out by the few of us who have the necessary experience (not much wisdom needed) to notice.  Bell uses an image in the preface of black letters on a page, while he and others read into the "white space."  As if that is a good thing.  It sounds like a clever image, whose only flaw might be being too clever by half.  But "reading the white space" has a very specific, and not very complimentary, meaning in the Rorschach.  It refers to a person being unnecessarily oppositional, often in a showy way.  It is one of the most accurate bits of interpretation in that much-maligned projective test.  When the psychologist tells you "He saw four pictures in the white space, three different cards," diagnoses of personality disorder begin to float into the conversation as possibilities. One, maybe, but it better be pretty offhand.  It's not a good thing.  I'm not suggesting personality disorder, much less diagnosing it, in Bell.  I am noting that he is showing one symptom.

Also in the psychological sphere is his early quote of Renee - I intentionally do not mention her last name -  who has written a book, and in it are accusations that her father sexually abused her while reciting the Lord's Prayer, and such like.  Bell clearly takes this at face value in part of his accusation of evangelicals.

How does one put this nicely?  People with Borderline Personality Disorder sometimes make accusations that are poetically true, but not literally true.  Taken that way, there are indeed evangelical children who have had their perpetrator's Christianity as an inseparable part of their victimization.  I looked up the woman's name, went to her website and read extensively of her story, and found much to like about her.  I don't doubt she experienced horrible abuse, and has done well building some kind of reasonable life out of the broken pieces.  But her romance with victimhood, and how it still rules her and gives her a club of self-righteousness to bring to her social and political beliefs, remains obvious.  It's very typical.  Setting oneself up as a defender of the oppressed is a pretty good response to one's own history of oppression.  Except you can then never see the victim as having any part in their fate, nor the "system" that oppresses them as being any sort of a balance or compromise between goods.

Why then, would I object at all?  Isn't it true enough?  (See how my questions can be sly and unfair?)  Because it's a lie, and I have seen people ruined by accusations from people with that diagnosis, who will admit when in therapy that they aren't really sure what the reality of their past is and what people mean now, and that's part of their problem, yet are still quick to accuse.  I say this as one who counts well-recovered individuals of this type as among my favorite patients, most admired people, and even sometimes friends, as much as we can allow that in this business.

It was an unlikely accusation, wouldn't you have thought?  If you were going to use it to prove your own point, wouldn't you have wondered, just for a moment, whether you should perhaps make some effort to find out if it's actually, uh, true?

Of course not.  You need the victim to be a victim.  Case closed.  So by page 7 I am not only irritated by Bell's style, but I don't trust his judgement and honesty.

And yet.  And yet there is still much in this book that is wise.  It deserves to be noted that the criticisms of Bell have often been less Biblical, and display less ability to listen, than Bell does himself.  I wish someone else had written the book.

10 comments:

  1. I haven't even looked twice at Bell's book.

    From your description, it seems he pulls the sleight-of-hand of telling a very sad story, and trying to paper over his assumptions with the emotional weight of the story.

    Whenever I try to outline the argument for or against the doctrine of Hell, I find an unstated assumption that either makes or breaks the case. That assumption is either
    (A) It is wrong for God to condemn people who I think shouldn't be condemned to eternal punishment, or
    (B) God, in his authority and wisdom, can condemn disobedient humans to an eternity of punishment

    If Bell doesn't clearly state which of these things he assumes, then he isn't arguing honestly.

    If he does state the assumption, then he can finish his argument in less than 5 pages after stating it.

    It is useful to ask whether Bell is arguing honestly.

    It is also useful to ask whether he shows signs of a disturbed mind.

    And it is useful to be reminded of the failings of some church members, if only for humility's sake.

    (Random aside: does Bell explicitly state that even those church members who abused the young woman will end up in heaven? If he does, he has an intestinal fortitude that surprises me. If he doesn't, I'm not surprised at all...)

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  2. I'd like to think that the people who have jammed themselves into the deepest and most inaccessible corner of Hell can nevertheless be rescued by some astonishingly merciful, creative, and vigorous act of redemption. Who could have guessed that God would incarnate Himself and suffer death to bring about the redemption of even one soul? What should we imagine He is or is not willing to do or risk to achieve this goal for the worst person we ever dreamed of, of for ourselves?

    Nevertheless, I don't know and can't know whether salvation will be universal. If free will means anything, it may mean that some souls will choose to be lost. Also, I class this as one of the questions God apparently doesn't think I need to know the answer to in order to go about my duties to the best of my ability. Jesus spent almost no time laboring to clear it up for us, apparently judging that He had other, more urgent messages to impart.

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  3. Your last sentence is spot on.

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  4. (Random aside: does Bell explicitly state that even those church members who abused the young woman will end up in heaven? If he does, he has an intestinal fortitude that surprises me. If he doesn't, I'm not surprised at all...)

    Yes...but how is this any different than those who extend the same privilege if someone "repents properly"? To the victim their repentance probably rings hollow and superficial. Any discussion of forgiveness has its moments of required intestinal fortitude.

    I think your A and B could use some tweaking. It isn't so much repulsion that God could issue judgement, but that sometimes that judgment, as portrayed by some, seems awfully capricious. He could forgive a terrible abuser at the drop of a hat and condemn someone else who never hurt a fly.

    Catholicism tries to deal with this inequity through ideas like Purgatory, but Protestantism is left with little more than a binary thumbs up or thumbs down.

    I think most of the current discussion about Universalism, at least in Evangelical circles, comes from this bare choice of yes or no, especially in light of the Protestant focus on salvation as a "faith alone" act.

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  5. But in the end isn't it necessarily binary? We either opt for God or against Him. Whatever mortal or venial sins get in the way are only as important as their power to alter that final choice.

    I can't get too worked up over the idea that infants are damned if they weren't baptized, or the idea that we may be fatally wrong about some dietary restriction or another. Once people reach the age of choice, though, they know when they've done wrong, and they know when they've truly turned away from the wrong that they've done and moved back onto the right path. That's what repentance is to me -- it doesn't change the fact that we may have done great harm, it only changes the direction we're pointing in. (And it doesn't remove the duty to make amends if we can.) As far as I can tell, the point of redemption is that no stain, however large, is permanent. But the point of free will and obedience is that no sin is too small to be disastrous if we cling to it instead of turning to God.

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  6. I am unduly Lewis-influenced, but I think it is binary only in the long run. We either say "Thy will be done," or God says "Thy will be done." On this side we make educated guesses, and remind ourselves that it is our own selves we should fear for, not others, whose stories we do not know.

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  7. Well...I think the Universalist would say that we don't opt for God, God opts for us.

    Universalism is a form of benevolent Calvinsim, although Universalism existed as an idea before Calvinism. It takes the impetus of God's grace and simply widens the circle to eventually be all-inclusive, whether that happens through some purgatory-like process, or instant transformation, or a burning away of whatever is unworthy in a person.

    In that sense, Universalism doesn't allow for anyone to choose not-God, either through God's willing it to be that way, or the idea that no-one could truly want not-God in the next life when things are presumably more clear.

    Any discussion about the matter eventually becomes complex and mind-entangling. IF everyone is "saved" , then what's the point of being "saved" in this life? Why not do whatever you want and then get a free pass?

    That hardly seems fair. But then there's that parable about the workers working all day getting paid the same amount as the workers who only worked an hour. Conventional fairness isn't always held up as God's fairness.

    On the other hand, you have the parable of talents in which people are rewarded for their work and those who have much will be given more.

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  8. Something like universalism, apokatastasis, was popular in the early centuries of the church. I don't think it was big between 500-1800 though.

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  9. Your analysis of Bell is interesting. I'm still more interested to hear your analysis of his argument. I appreciate your ability (and willingness?) to separate the two.
    I have not read the book. I've only seen the video publicity trailer. I too was a bit set off by Bell's manner while at the same time vibrating with his questions. I am a little disappointed that, rather than address these questions, many evangelical leaders simply dismiss them -- with prejudice.

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  10. I am not too surprised to see Capon, Keller and Wright on his further reading list -- all writers who have been hugely influential on me.

    At root the question is "who's work is salvation? Am I saved because of what Jesus did? Or am I saved by what I do (think, believe, etc.)?"

    While it is clear that some people will NOT be at The Party, I have come to suspect that it will be harder to stay out than it will be to get in.

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