Pastor Rob Bell Catches Hell From Conservatives | (A)theologies | Religion Dispatches.
Thanks to Rachael Held Evans (check out her blog) for tweeting this brilliant essay on the attacks on Rob Bell regarding the condemnations by certain conservatives without even reading the book. Eric Reitan points out better than I did in my podcast today the visceral response is driven by fantaticism and humility, not any solid biblical evidence but the conviction that your opinion is most certainly God’s opinion. Here’s a quote from the essay.
Fanatics, on this understanding, are those who combine two things. First, they embrace an unquestioning submission to God’s word rooted in the idea that what appears foolish to mere humans may, from a divine perspective, not be foolish at all. To question God is arrogant, displaying too much faith in the power of the human intellect to discern the good. Out of humility they therefore refuse to question what they take to be God’s word.
This disposition of humility does not become fanaticism, however, until it is paired with arrogance: the refusal to recognize that their beliefs about God’s word could be wrong. The fanatic treats a challenge to their own beliefs as if it were a challenge to the word of God.
John Piper, Justin Taylor, and others like them …. stand unswervingly in a pair of convictions: first, that the Bible is, from cover to cover, the inerrant self-disclosure of God; second, that the Bible clearly teaches their theology, including the doctrine of eternal damnation for some of God’s creatures.
I could not have put it better. Their fanaticism to make their views God’s views and appoint themselves the arbitors of salvation and true faith is appalling and, frankly, plants them firmly in the same camp of the Pharisees and Sadduccees of Jesus’ day, who were equally certain they were God’s true spokesmen and Jesus was not.
Take the time to read the entire essay and save it.