Symptoms of a Sickness

When a patient visits a doctor and describes certain symptoms, the doctor prescribes something to make the patient feel better.

This is how I perceive Rob Bell. I don't disagree with his description of some of the symptoms of the church, but Bell's ideas are a misguided way to address the cause. Though the medicine Bell prescribes may make people feel better temporarily, it creates worse side effects than the symptoms themselves. God is the one who heals. Astute observations don't necessarily correlate to right answers.

Also, to wrap up the analogy, Rob Bell is not the Great Physician. Truth resists what is false by stating in unequivocal terms, It is written... The enemy of the soul raises questions such as, Did God really say...

God understands much better than we do what underlying conditions have created wrong-minded churches containing people who think God is out to do them in. The answer will certainly never be found in cutting the church off from its moorings, the trustworthiness of Scripture. That can easily poison the water and lead to apostasy.

Everyone, from Gandhi to Buddha, from Mohammed to Malcolm X, from you to me — all of us are plagued by the same, deepest need. It's the need for a Savior to save us from sin and its consequences, not to save us from God, but rather His wrath stemming from His unquestionable justice, and to renew our connection to Him as our origin, to save us from death in ourselves, eternally suffering existence (absence of light and life) apart from God.

Jesus shared our humanity and understands our deepest needs and longings. He lived His everyday life pleasing to God, to show us what it's like, so we can all live in right relationship with God. He pleased God in every way. That's why we can completely trust Him to lead us to please God as well.

Jesus even died for us, shedding His own blood, to convey to us the height and depth and width of the love of God. His resurrection was God's way of attesting to the fact that Jesus was His Son, pleasing to Him in all respects, and we must listen to Him.

Again, God gave us Jesus so we could know what it is to walk pleasing to our heavenly Father and enjoy fellowship with the only Creator of the universe. Jesus has shown the way and is the only way to do so. This is why He gave His Spirit — to reveal to us all He has given to us.

The wonder has nothing to do with God sending people to eternal punishment, a place where people are forever separated from all that is good, all that comes from God. The real wonder is that people will reject God and the true life He offers. How can anyone who understands all that Jesus has done in love and obedience in a Son's love for His eternal Father persist in relying on their own ideas of goodness apart from trusting the inerrant words of Messiah?

Followers of Christ recognize His voice when they hear it and will not follow another, just as sheep know the voice of their shepherd and respond with obedience.