What’s the Message?

Faith, God, Life, Truth 0

Some Christians believe and often repeat that all that matters is whether or not a person is going to heaven. Is that the message? Is that what life is about? Going somewhere else? If that’s the gospel, the good news — if what Jesus does is get people somewhere else — then the central message of the Christian faith has very little to do with this life other than getting you what you need for the next one. Which of course raises the question: Is that the best God can do?

— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 6

The Jesus Story

Faith, Forgiveness, God, Joy, Life, Love, Truth, Universalism 0

This love compels us to question some of the dominant stories that are being told as the Jesus story. A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance of anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.

— Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. viii

Doubts

Faith, Truth 0

To the wise, doubts can be the best credentials of another’s heart; they are worth ten times the faith of most. For it is truth, and higher truth, such honest doubters are always seeking.

— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 145

Abolishing Sin

God, Truth 0

Let me start out right here with a protest against the totally false view that Christian Universalists have lax views of sin or doctrine. No view so effectively proves God’s hatred of sin as this view that teaches that He cannot and will not tolerate its existence forever!

— Thomas Allin and Mark T. Chamberlain, Every Knee Shall Bow: The Case for Christian Universalism, p. 17