The sad story of religious liberalism in my generation.

If you haven't been following along, Rob Bell, the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Michigan, has caused a bit of a stir with his new book, titled Love Wins. In the book, he denies... well... here it is in his own words:

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 for anything better…. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.

I got that quote from Tim Challies, who offered up the first review of the book that I could find. I would attempt to offer up some thoughts on the book myself, but I haven't read it yet. I did find this interview of Rob Bell from MSNBC to be extremely interesting and revealing to Rob Bell's beliefs.

I don't know about you, but watching that video just made me sad. A while back I was a fan of the Nooma videos that were produced by Rob Bell. There is still some good stuff in those videos, but seeing this departure from the truth was disheartening. I begin to understand what Christians from previous eras felt as they saw Christian leaders and institutions give way to liberal theology.

There are some men who are much smarter than me that have offered up their critiques of this book. Here is a short list, in case you are interested.

Tim Challies book review on challies.com.

Albert Mohler's review of the book from his blog. I found this one to be quite interesting.

Christianity Today has a review of the book.

Ligon Duncan has some thoughts about hell and how we should talk about it.

Aaron Armstrong offers some thoughts as well. He has a blog called Blogging Theologically.

Josh Harris shows his concern and shares some quotes from Denny Burke.

USA Today has an article with some revealing quotes from the book.

CNN has a blog post highlighting some of the details.

Kevin DeYoung, a blogger with The Gospel Coalition, offered one of my favorite reviews of the book.

Carl Trueman offers up some extremely enlightening thoughts on Rob Bells ability to support his claims. I found this post to be one of the most helpful.

Most of this was brought to the table because of Justin Taylor, another Gospel Coalition blogger.

There are more blog posts and tweets out there, but these would keep anyone busy for a little while. One of the most interesting aspects of all of this is the compassion that I get from most of these Christian leaders that I have spent the last few years following via their blogs. They are concerned about truth, but they are also concerned about Rob Bell. To me, that is astounding.

The Seed and The Soil of Education (New Learning Project Part 1)

(This is my entry for the first part of my project for my New Learning course that I am taking.) Introduction Corn Fields in Illinois I have lived the majority of my life in the Midwest: mid-state Illinois to be specific. Where I live, farming is everywhere. My grandparents and great-grandparents on both sides of my family were farmers. My dad grew up on a farm and owned farmland, well into my own adulthood. But, even if it wasn’t in the family, I still would have been surrounded by farming. You can’t go more than a mile outside of my city’s limits without encountering miles and miles of fields. Most of our highways, and even interstates, are located between acres of farmland.

The Minnesota Crime Commission wrote:

Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He's dirty, he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children but all children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.

This too shall pass...

Gam zeh ya'avor (Hebrew) "This Too Shall Pass" Welcome! According to Google Analytics, this is by far the most visited post that I have ever written. If someone comes here from a search engine, most of the time they are looking for " this too shall pass quote " or simply " this too shall pass " on Google or one of the other search engines. I am sure that most of the time visitors are looking for the originations of this quote, but I have to wonder, why is this quote on people's minds? Why are they pondering the passing of events? Here is my thought: It is probably because most of us have realized that the adult life is much harder than we ever imagined it to be. There is more pain and more sorrow than we had ever imagined as children, but we have learned that time keeps ticking. And as time continues to flow things pass. In fact, even the really big things and the really hard things will still pass. If you are here because you are thinking ...

HARMLESS THOUGHTS

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