How Mighty is the All-Mighty? - A Review of Chapter Four of Love Wins

I am at camp again.  It's a wonderful, beautiful place and I enjoy being here with the kids.  We are sleeping in tents, sitting around the campfire, hiking in the woods, shooting arrows at the archery range, climbing on the high ropes, and later in the week going on a white-water rafting trip.  It's pretty exciting.

Well most of it.

I spent the morning at the emergency room with a young man who broke his arm.  I told him that he needs to tell the story that he broke it while wrestling with dinosaurs atop a 100 foot cliff because the fact that he fell off the swings is really rather embarassing.  The four hours we spent waiting (and waiting and waiting) at the ER was not the most exciting part of the week.  But it did allow me some time to read.

And now that I have - at least for the moment - some connection to the internets, I want to continue my reviews of Rob Bell's newest book - Love Wins.

Chapter Four - Does God Get What God Wants ? continues some of the thoughts he began in chapter three.  (You can read some of my thoughts about his thoughts here...)  In chapter three Bell described some of this thoughts on Hell -  which, contrary to some of the hullabaloo I heard about the book before I read the book, Bell does not deny. 

Can God make a rock so big that even he can't pick it up? 

It's a frivolous kind of question, I know.  But it's a question about the limits of Gods' power.  How powerful is God?  How mighty is the "all-mighty"?  How great is God?  How good is God?

If we believe that God is all-mighty
and
if we believe that "God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. 2)
is God able to get what he wants?

How great is God?
Great enough to achieve what God sets out to do,
or kind of great,
medium great,
great most of the time,
but in this,
the fate of billions of people,
not totally great.
Sort of great.
A little great. (Love Wins, pg. 97-98)

Hell is there for those who would refuse and reject the love of God, but is that the end?
Is that all? Or does God’s great (all-mighty) love pursue us even there?

Which is stronger and more powerful, the hardness of the human heart or God’s unrelenting, infinite, expansive love? (pg. 109)

Bell observes that Christian history is full of believers who have affirmed that even death cannot contain God’s boundless love, and that the eternity of the hell of separation from God isn’t necessarily forever. 

Bell doesn’t use the story of Jonah, but in my own thinking and my preaching I’ve found the same thought expressed in that ‘fish-story’.   Think of Jonah, that obstinate anti-prophet , who tried to escape the presence of God – even to the point of being thrown into the bottomless abyss of the raging sea.  Jonah even tried to flee from God by sinking down into the depths of death.  But even there he was pursued by the unrelenting hound of heaven.

There is a hell for those who would reject the love and grace of God.  And If Bell and C.S. Lewis and many, many others are correct, the doors of hell are locked from the inside – and those who suffer in hell suffer because they refuse to submit to God.

But is that the last word. Sorry you’re too late.

If we want isolation, despair and the right to be our own god, God graciously grants us that option. If we insist on using our God-given power and strength  to make the world  in our own image, God allows us that freedom. … If we want nothing to do with love, we are given a reality free from love.

If, however, we crave light
we’re drawn to truth,
we’re desperate for grace,
we’ve come to the end of our plots and schemes
and we want someone else’s path
God gives us what we want.

…

That’s how love works.  It  can’t be forced, manipulated, or coerced.
It always leaves room for the other to decide.
God says yes,

we can have what we want,
because love wins. (pg. 117, 119)

If the hound of heaven can follow Jonah into that bottomless pit of death, can’t he do the same for all who would attempt to flee from his presence? 

I think he can.