Rob Bell- “The Gods Aren’t Angry Tour”

Last night I attended the Orlando stop of Rob Bell’s latest speaking tour. I have enjoyed his first 2 books, and I regularly listen to his podcast, so I was anticipating hearing him speak in person for the first time. I was, however, determined to listen carefully and do my best to discern what he was saying and compare that message to what I know scripture to teach.

I do that for a couple reasons. First, I don’t think I’ve ever listened to someone speak about God and agreed with 100% of everything the speaker or preacher said, so I enjoy listening in a way that makes me think. And Rob Bell does make me think about my faith, so I was looking forward to that. Secondly, enough people that I trust and respect have expressed caution about some of the doctrinal beliefs that Rob puts forth, so I wanted to think and hear for myself and see what God revealed to me. I’ll share what he spoke about, and then I’ll end each section with my problems (biblically) with what he said. My thoughts are in bold.

He spoke from a stage that wasn’t decorated or lit, save for the large pseudo-stone altar in the center. This was the lone prop, and it was probably 7 or 8 feet long per side, and around 3 feet tall with stairs leading up both sides. This prop was obviously going to be central to what was spoken about.

He began with a story about a cavewoman who discovers the life cycle of a plant in relation to the ‘ball of fire’ (sun) and the water that falls from the sky. And then the ball of light at night (moon) and it’s correlation to her female cycle in length. He was basically speaking of the ‘forces’ that seem to be so high above us and how early humans interpreted those forces. He continued the story with a caveman and his hunting adventures, and the idea that the success of the hunt was somehow linked to a spirit.

The logic he presented was that man somehow, through primeval feelings of guilt, shame, worry, and stress, began on their own this belief system of the forces being representations of gods that were either pleased or angry, depending on the success of man. This logic progressed through the forces being labeled as gods, who then needed offerings of the crops or the livestock to be appeased, and then places for the sacrifices for those gods began becoming centralized (altars and high places), leading to the ritual of regular sacrifices to keep the gods from getting angry.

Depending on the god or goddess you were trying to keep happy, you could be offering anything from crops to herds, or even cutting yourself or sacrificing your children. The problem with this whole system, he stated, was that it was never ending. You never knew where you stood with the gods-they were aloof and not interactive with humans.

It’s at this point that he brings in the first biblical text of Genesis 12, where God (Yahweh) speaks to Abraham, who was in the midst of the Sumerian culture of all these gods and goddesses. He claimed that this was a turning point in human history, and his claim was based on his ‘fact’ that for the first time a god spoke in an intimate way with a human and wanted to have a relationship with them.

I found myself having 2 main problems with the premises he was putting forth in this part of the talk. First was his premise that man discovered religion and created it on his own, and somehow came up with these ideas of sacrifices and offerings on his own, instead of it being something that was originally set up by God, revealed by Him.

My second problem was that he absolutely ignores God’s involvement in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. He claims that Genesis 12 was the first time that God has an intimate relationship with a human and actually steps into the space and time that man inhabits. This seems to fly directly in the face of a God who creates the world purposefully and places man in the midst of this creation (Gen. 1-3). This also ignores God’s intimate relationship with man any earlier than Abraham, such as Adam, Cain, Enoch, and Noah. Instead of suggesting that these religions were perversions of what God originally intended, he concludes that religion was started by man, and after the system got messed up, then God steps in. I suppose that he has forgotten the blood sacrifice that God makes on Adam and Eve’s behalf (Gen. 3:21), or the offerings (grain and blood) that Cain and Abel made to God (Gen. 4:4-5). I suppose he also has forgotten about God having intimate relationship with men before Abraham. He spoke with Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:8-22), Cain and Abel (4:6-15), and had a close relationship with Enoch (Gen. 5:24), and Noah (Gen. 6:9-13). But, back to the story……

Bell states that in Genesis 12, God calls Abraham out of the Sumerian culture (out of his father’s household) and to a new land. Then in Gen. 14, God uses the stars as an analogy of how numerous Abraham’s descendants will be. He states that this is divine sarcasm, since stars in ancient cultures usually represented the gods, and this God uses them as a comparison to children.

Then he continues to Gen. 22, where Abraham is asked by God to offer his only son, which Bell declared to be absolutely normal for someone who grew up in a culture where the gods were so demanding that often they would ask you to sacrifice what is most important to you, which often was a child. He did fail to mention what he had just used to make a point 5 minutes earlier, which was the fact that this God had called Abraham out of that culture and asked him to leave it all behind.

Of course, Bell continued on and spoke of the drama of Abraham offering Isaac, and then just at the last minute, God stops his hand and provides a ram for the offering. One thing that I did enjoy was that Bell did draw more attention to God at this point in the story than most do. As he stated, most people praise Abraham and his faith and devotion to offer even his only son, but what was really incredible was that the deity (God) provided a sacrifice Himself. I love when we do everything we can to bring more attention to God instead of man, so I’m glad he took this angle.

But at this point, he said a phrase, which I found troubling as well. At the end of this drama, which God allows to carry out to the last minute before He steps in, he said that this God had an attitude that no deity had ever seemed to have before. Instead of the deity always wanting the humans to bless them, for the first time a deity wanted to bless humans.

I do understand that God was interested in a relationship with Abraham, and that through a covenant (of a blood sacrifice-Gen. 15, which God demanded) and another covenant (of circumcision and blood-Gen. 17), God was interested in blessing Abraham. But it wasn’t only the deity wanting to bless man. It was a two way street-this was the covenant-humans did have to keep their part to keep the deity happy (see Gen. 17:9 ff). But God had been interested in blessing men before this, which seemed to be why He showed grace and mercy on Noah and his family, saving them from destruction (Gen. 6-7).

At this point, Rob begins the journey through the Hebrew Scriptures and their altars and sacrifices. He spoke of the 5 types of sacrifices in Leviticus, and then ties that into the sacrificial system in the Temple.

This system became corrupted, and the Sadducees (who he stated were temple workers, priests and Levites, who got to keep a portion of the sacrifices, thereby making them wealthy) created a military-industrial complex where their wealth was linked to the sacrificial system continuing as it always had. And it was into this scenario that Jesus was born.

Jesus came into the Temple and declared, with all this as the backdrop, that there is one greater than the Temple. He also declared that if you destroyed this temple, in three days it would be raised up again. This, of course, threatened the entire system and the wealth of the Sadducees, so they killed him.

And because Jesus had spoken of this new way of life, this new way of having a relationship with God, one that according to Bell was peaceful and actually was contrary to the violence and bloodshed that the previous system was based upon, Jesus had to be a pacifist throughout the end of his life. This was why He never fought back, and which is why Jesus told Peter to put away His sword, because according to Bell, if at any time Jesus resorted to fighting back or violence, then how was His way different from the old violent way?

I would like to interrupt to remind the reader of Jesus speaking out and fighting back in a very open way of the corruption of the Temple. He was angry and pushed over tables, but of course never sinned in that anger. I don’t know if Bell would say that this was non-violent since there was no blood in the destruction of personal property, but I would love to ask him that question.

This is the point in the talk where Bell finally stood on the altar prop on stage (the only time during the night that he stood on top of it-all other times he only walked around it or up the stairs). He declared the moment that Jesus died on the cross as the “culmination of the ages” and it was at this point that God stopped all the bloodshed. All the animals that were being sacrificed in the religious systems, all the rituals, those were all done.

He began stating the primeval feelings that humans had battled since the ancient times, these feelings of guilt and shame, worry and stress. Today these same problems have new names. He shared a story about a girl who cut herself because she said her dad hated here, and that was how she dealt with the pain. He shared a story about a young man who tried to commit suicide by throwing a toaster into a hot tub after he slashed his wrists-all this despair was because of gambling debts. He also told a story about the Masi tribe in Africa, and how their community had expelled someone for doing something wrong, and that person had to live on the fringes of the village because the Masi didn’t have anything in their culture that would allow that person to be redeemed, to make peace with the tribe.

At this point, Rob jumped to Hebrews and began sharing how Jesus’ death was the final sacrifice. That God provided a sacrifice once again (an allusion to Gen. 22) to make peace. He began speaking of the blood that had been shed by all these animal sacrifices as unnecessary-that these weren’t for God, but for men, to appease their conscience. He used Psalm 50:7-15, Micah 6:6-8 to show us that even in the Old Testament, the blood was for us more than it was for God.

I would like to interrupt just to state that humans didn’t come up with the sacrificial system in the Old Testament, God had set it up (as Bell had said in Leviticus). And although there are places in the Old Testament (such as Micah 6 and Psalm 50) where God tells us that He doesn’t need a bunch of dead animals, we are leaving out the part where God set up this system Himself as a covenant. The sacrifices were a sign that man was interested in keeping his part of the covenant and blessing God. It’s not only about the deity blessing the humans, as Bell had previously stated. He unfortunately didn’t speak of Heb. 9:18-22, where the blood was necessary to keep the covenant and that sins aren’t forgiven without the shedding of blood.

But what he said, although incomplete, is true. Heb. 10:11 reminds us that these animal sacrifices can’t take away sins. They were only to keep the covenant with God, and those blood sacrifices were to be a shadow of the perfect sacrifice to come (Heb. 10:1).

Then he began his own personal definition of repentance. Although I couldn’t copy it down verbatim, it was along this principle: repentance is realizing the truth of the once for all perfect sacrifice of Jesus, and realigning your life to reveal that truth. And then he spoke of these rituals we now do, of which he suggested church attendance also was. And he surmised that the main point of the ritual should be to remind you of the reconciliation that happened at the culmination of the ages, which is a fancy way of saying that when believers gather, it should be to celebrate and remember the peace that Christ made on our behalf through the cross.

He began the closing with the need for us to reappropriate the imagery of the altar and the sacrifices. He suggested that no longer do we offer blood sacrifices, but now we do good works for others, living out this truth for the world to see. This is the evidence of Jesus’ new way of life in us. And as he closed, he gave several examples of what that looks like. The music began to swell in volume, he repeated some key lines of the stories of good works and the forgiveness of Jesus, and the night was over.

My overriding thought of the night was that Rob didn’t talk about a couple of the key plot points of the human story. He didn’t talk about the sinfulness of man, and therefore the wrath of God. He did talk about the death of Christ, but not in the way that we know is spoken of in the New Testament. The truth is, God was angry. God is a God of justice, and justice demands payment for wrongdoing. God, as He did in Genesis 22, provides the sacrifice in His only Son, and pours out His wrath upon Jesus. This is what Romans speaks of when it talks about Christ being the propitiation for our sins. Rob loves to say the phrase “Love Wins,” but fails to speak of the great love of Christ for us. I John 4:7-11 tells us that Love did win, and that His love was so great because He died for our sins. Rob only mentioned the word ‘sin’ once the whole night, and it was in a story he was repeating that Brennan Manning put in a book. However, Bell repeatedly stated that the problems that humans struggle with were primeval feelings of guilt, shame, worry and stress. Unfortunately he did not correctly point out that these feelings are the effects of a root cause-our own sinfulness. He stated that sacrifices were our own way of trying to make those feelings go away, which is like the doctor numbing the pain without stopping the blood gushing from an amputated arm.

Did Bell preach Jesus, and His death as the only way to heaven? Absolutely. Did he correctly state the reason Jesus died was because of our sinfulness and because God’s wrath had to be satisfied? I would say probably not. Heb. 9:15 reminds us that Christ died to set (us) free from the penalty of sins (we) had committed. And later in verse 26, Hebrews states that He came once for all time, to remove the power of sin forever by his sacrificial death for us.

For now I will hope the best in Rob, and I will try to give him the benefit of the doubt in much of this. I know that in 90 minutes, no one can truly be completely thorough in biblical doctrine, so I will hope the best in my brother, and believe that he didn’t have enough time to delve into the problem of sin. No matter what, the cross was preached, and Christ crucified as the way to reconciliation with God. And I have no choice but to echo Paul’s words in Phillipians 1:15-18, that as long as the message about Christ is being preached, I will rejoice!