“I felt that I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”

Jude 3

My sister Gina likes to send me podcasts and videos that she expects me to watch and then comment on, and as her faithful little brother I dutifully comply. If I don’t I am afraid of the repercussions especially if I fail to respond in due time. I still am haunted from the memories of my childhood when she would baby-sit me. On one occasion I was told by her that I had to do the dishes after dinner and I unwisely refused, so her and my other sister Stephanie ganged up on me and proceeded to chase me around the house. When they finally caught me they pinned me down on a kitchen chair, and then wiped cat food on my face until I agreed to do the dishes. So I have learned quickly over time that when Gina wants me to do something, I do it.

Yesterday she sent me a podcast called, “Chatty Broads: Rob Bell is Back” and she told me to listen to it that day because she wanted my opinion. So I dropped everything I was doing – driven by nightmares of Nine Lives Tunafish Blend being smeared across my mouth –  and I immediately tuned in. 

I wish I didn’t. 

It sparked in me something akin to what Jeremiah experienced in writing his book of prophecy, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him or speak any more in his name, his word is like a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.’” (Jeremiah 20:9)

Gina, this post is your fault, I blame you!

First things first: Oh Rob Bell, the thorn in modern evangelical’s side, the lurking master of doubt always creeping behind the shadows to confuse the hipster who is searching for some nugget of truth in this bewildering world. Enter stage right: the smiling, sure, sardonic court-jester of postmodern theology is ready to strike again!

In full disclosure, my respect level for Rob has never been too high. Even though he is an extremely talented man, my disenchantment with Rob all started before he became a popular nationally known preacher. I personally met him way back in 1996. He worked for a punk-rock band named Big Phil out of Grand Rapids and I was a newly hired youth pastor in a rurban community north of the city. His band came to sing at an outreach at our church after a High School football game. Punk rock is meant to be in your face, but there was something about his screeching voice that set my teeth on edge, as did the silly mosh pit that started by the front of the stage. After his screaming rendition of “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” and a strange discordant if not nauseating punk song called, “Swing Me Over Hell on a Cornstalk”, I realized Rob and I just did not see things eye to eye. 

Soon after that experience, I learned that he was newly hired as the pastor of the Mars Hill experiment. It was a nondescript church plant that exploded like napalm on the evangelical scene. From an original group of 800 people, it swelled to over 10,000 attendees in just a few years. Rob’s sermons were creative, masterful, but always scraping orthodoxy’s edge as he constantly looked for new angles on how to interpret and then communicate the word of God. His shtick, or as they say in marketing circles, his brand differentiation, was to always ask questions. Questions, questions, and more questions. Where most pastors tried to give answers, Rob always asked questions because he taught and thought that was the surest way to truth. 

And he was comfortable living in the goo of unknowing. In fact he thrived in it because it was where he could re-imagine a new reality. He is a master at making sandcastles in the sky.

His singular genius is his ability to prop-up the evangelical straw-man in his Sunday sermons that he quickly and valiantly knocked down. He would bemoan the old church he grew up in by describing them as stiff traditionalists who believed in clunky orthodoxy, while painting himself as the white knight who has come to bring a new emergent theology that was sure to set hungry spiritual hearts free. People loved him for it. This brilliant approach to Christianity drew many disenchanted evangelicals to his church like the Pied Piper compelled rats out of the alley. The beauty of his preaching was capitalizing on half-truths.

Needless to say, many older evangelical pastors warned the curious crowd of his nefarious plans. Yes, many of the hard-edged ministers were bitter when they lost members to Mars Hill, but more of them saw in Rob and his brand of salesmanship nothing but a new brand of snake oil. He was a cooler, hipper Joel Osteen.

But not to worry, Rob had his army of defenders. Many people around the evangelical world declared that his new kind of Christianity was just what the church needed. Instead of seeing doctrine as stiff bricks that were starting to crumble under the weight of science and postmodern thought, it was time for Christians to have the courage to imagine new doctrines and bible interpretations like a kid jumping merrily on a trampoline learning to do flips and twists from Rob the master acrobat.

At first Rob only skirted the line of orthodoxy, bringing speculative thrills with unconventional textual conclusions was his forte, but usually he ended up landing back on solid theological ground. However, over time his hunger for the new and novel led him to ultimately cast off the restraints of dogma altogether and forge ahead with new and exciting scriptural interpretations. In his quest for theological adventure he cast aside proper exegesis and hermeneutics, as they say, “the best adventure is when you go off road.” If anyone criticized his methods and free-wheeling approach to church he would use his magic “straw-man” wand to recast the critic into a mindless ogre or troll. So the Pied Piper kept playing and the rats kept following.

I myself warned many in my church, especially the college students who fell under his spell, to be careful not to be sucked into the Mars Hill carnival ride. I said that in no uncertain terms that his “gospel was being hid.” And Rob’s “ear tickling” was sure to only last for one brief moment in time. But Rob’s promise of a new orthodoxy was intoxicating to young minds. Join the band, follow the music, and dance the spiritual dance. “Did you know Baptists don’t allow dancing?” But Rob did.

Over time his early theological clarity morphed into fuzzy therapeutic sentimentalism. The sure and certain gospel became a generous ooze. Jesus of Nazareth was traded for the Christ Spirit within each of us. Oprah went from afternoon talk show entertainer to his soul-guru and best friend. 

With the book “Love Wins” and the “Zimzum of Love”, Rob fell off the edge of mainstream evangelical Christianity for good and decided to take his show to bigger and better places. He traded Grand Rapids for Hollywood, Midwest restraint for West Coast surf and suds. He went from pastor and preacher, to life coach and entertainer. Orthodoxy was cast aside, and new age Richard Rohrerian self-help spiritualism took center stage. Questions triumphed over answers. Curiosity became the new god.

Fast forward ten years…and the podcast my sister thrust upon me.

The forum is a show called the “Chatty Broads”, it is a podcast that features two post-evangelical female Californians who talk about anything from sex, candles, astrology, to new age spirituality. One of the hosts of the podcast once was a star contestant on the hit television show The Bachelor. The other host happened to attend my sister’s church in San Clemente because she is married to the ex-worship pastor who is the son of the current lead pastor. I know, it is all very confusing. But my sister listens to the show because she is curious how a person she knows well can go from being married to a leader in a large evangelical church to a new-age commentator who openly embraces all of our current cultural experimentation with glee.

Strange days indeed.

This is where Rob Bell fits. Both of the “Chatty Broads” have embraced Rob’s brand of salt-water taffy theology and found in him a spiritual giant and mentor. So they try to get him on their show so they can fawn over his beautiful words of nothingness. I can remember tuning into the first time they had him on and it was nothing new, his teachings were things I heard him utter from his days in Grand Rapids. But for some reason, these two “Chatty Broads” think everything he says has never been thought of before. It must be all the sushi they admittingly eat. So in their first podcast I listened with half-hearted attention.

But then this last podcast with Rob was different because this time Rob’s son came with him. His protege. His pride and joy. I personally wondered, what beliefs and world-system did Rob pass to the next generation? Teaching people in a church audience or on a live stage show when the lights are on is one thing, but what does he truly think when he is at the dinner table or tossing a ball in the backyard? What the son believed would reveal what was really, as Rob always loves to say, “caught and taught.”

In the interview three things jumped out from his son’s statements:

1. No one really knows anything for sure, and the only thing you can know for sure is you can’t know anything for sure.Throughout the interview with the “Chatty Broads”, Rob’s son Trace was clear in his conviction that “the idea that a book like the Bible is truth is absurd, and those who are atheists, convinced there is no God, is equally absurd.” The reason Trace – a young twenty-something – knows this is because his intuition tells him it is so. Even Rob, his dad, is proud of his son’s deep speculative wisdom. He calls Trace an “old soul”, as if he was born with insight the average person did not have. Rob kept saying that his son disliked church because he “innately understood” what it took most of us a long time to arrive at, that what matters most is the adventure, not the goal. The son in smug confidence considers himself to be a “happy agnostic.”
2. All that matters growing up is fostering curiosity. Time and time again Trace kept saying how objective truth is what caused rebellion in children, but allowing people to explore, think for themselves, and arrive at their own conclusions is proper parenting. “Just let them be,” he said, “and they will find their own path to truth.” He kept insisting it doesn’t work to force truth down your children’s throat precisely because there is no real truth to force down, that is except that person’s own intuition and understanding. So all that matters is curiosity, if your child keeps asking questions that is the end goal of being human. I wonder where he got that from? 
3. Jesus and his name is suspiciously absent. Not once in the whole interview did Trace acknowledge that a person named Jesus mattered or really existed. One of the “Chatty Broads” asked Trace what he remembered about growing up at Mars Hill church and listening to his dad preach, and he said, “I was totally indifferent. I didn’t love it, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to be feeling.” There it is, feeling! Intuitive knowledge follows feeling, not objective truth and proven experience, but how the person in the moment is feeling now. And Jesus can’t be allowed because his life was a historical reality…in other words, objective truth.

You may be wondering why this matters to me. For one reason: When Rob first started building a following I would often ask, what is the basis of his following? Was it scripture? Was it a search for some objective truth? Was it the glory of God in the person of his Son Jesus Christ? No, Rob built a following from his own artistic abilities and personality. People liked him. They went to see him. They loved his new insights and novel scriptural renderings. 

But Jesus and his Gospel, that is an old dusty story. No fun.

And therein lies the tragedy for his son. Instead of having an unchanging constant to build your life on, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), he let his son go adrift on his own intuitive and short lived experience. Rob was interesting when he burst on the scene because he was still speaking to people that understood and respected the Gospel, most still saw Jesus as the North Star. But to the second generation, the North Star was removed and there is now no way to navigate through life.

I share this story because it is tragic. While Rob and his son celebrate the joy of “curiosity” I only see sad confusion. While it is easy to say that people who believe in objective truth are stuck in their old ways and not willing to change as the culture changes, they fail to realize that being anchored to the promises of God are the only thing that gives a person hope.

Listen to Hebrews 6:16-20…

“People swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”

My profession is the Gospel ministry. That means I am accountable before God on what I teach and how I talk about his Son, the only hope in this world. Our culture is no longer satisfied with tradition, we want new things, we want to experiment, we like intuition and curiosity. But it has to end somewhere. I am worried that if you are not anchored to God through his Son and the Word of God you are never going to be satisfied or hopeful. Sure you can sound positive, but you can never be sure of what you are positive about.

I am grieved for Rob and his son. He is a gifted man who has so much potential to affect this world for good. But if all he can do is bring us to himself, a flawed human like the rest of us, he is to be pitied and no longer respected. A person who preaches to itching ears will be “Numbered, Weighed, and Found Wanting” when Jesus returns. That won’t be a good day.

My last word is this: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Jeremiah 6:16) And Gina, if you are reading this, put the can of cat food down! I did what you wanted!