Twitter Wars: Rob Bell edition

Technology is funny.  Some examples:

• I sometimes forget my current car (I'm driving my friends' car while they're overseas) has seat warmers.  Occasionally, about 5 minutes into a drive, I'm suddenly very alarmed that my butt is on fire.
• When my mom's email inbox is empty, she will usually say, "Someone's blocking my emails again."
• I specifically chose a Samsung phone because I'd save money on all the chargers, since I have them from my previous Samsung phone.  Despite the fact that the charger input apertures look identical on both phones, they're different, rendering my old chargers useless and nullifying my entire phone choice.  Ok, this one's not funny.
• When you're fast-forwarding on a DVR and then hit play, it jumps back a little bit from the most recently viewed frame.  This allows for honing one's skills and being able to yell "Now!" when someone else has the remote.
• I took part in an evangelical twitter war the other day without even realizing it.

This last one will serve as the springboard, framework, and any other building/design jargon for today's tangent.

Rob Bell, John Piper, and a bunch of other people

Rob Bell has a new book coming out soon.  It is called Love Wins, and it asks us to examine what we believe about hell.  To generate momentum for the book's release, the publishers gave the public a summary of the book and a video of Rob Bell discussing its contents (both appear on the website linked above).

The summary and video both imply that Bell will suggest in his book that the traditional evangelical view of hell is all wrong and, as far as I can tell, that the only people who will be in hell will be those who eternally demand it even after death.  Obviously this is just speculation based on one paragraph and a 5 minute video.  But obviously a book that will be a best-seller and tells people to not worry because our loved ones will all be with us in heaven (again, I don't know if this book says that) would be very important.

Enter Justin Taylor.  He's a blogger for a group called The Gospel Coalition, and apparently his blog is pretty popular in certain Christian circles.  He writes a blog post warning people about Bell's upcoming book.  His post quotes the publishers' summary and shows Bell's video, and concludes that this book may be the point at which Rob Bell officially departs from "biblical Christianity" and takes on the label of "false teacher."

Enter John Piper.  If you're a Christian, you've probably heard a couple of his more famous quotations.  If you're a reformed Christian, you've probably listened to a bunch of his sermons.  He's the pastor of a church in Minneapolis.  Anyway, he tweets the words "Farewell Rob Bell," followed by a link to Taylor's blog.

Enter yours truly.  I log onto twitter and see that my friend Chris has retweeted Piper's tweet.  So I click on the link and read Taylor's blog post.  I find it incredibly thought-provoking.  It makes me wonder about hell, God's love, public criticism of seemingly dangerous teaching, false teachers, etc. 

(I honestly didn't find the blog entry judgmental at all; Taylor admitted he hadn't read the entire book and that he was merely speculating.)

So, because I had benefited so from the blog entry, I also retweet Piper's tweet.  Only later do I realize this was the equivalent of throwing a theology grenade.

Enter Matthew Turner, some dude who apparently writes a "Christian left" blog.  Later on twitter I see a retweet of something said by this guy.  For some reason this guy has tons of followers.  He says this: "For a moment I was afraid Rob Bell had died. But then I realized that it was just a few Calvinists hating him into a trending topic."

I'll try to piece this together a little for you, if you're not twitter-savvy.  When Matthew Turner logged onto twitter, he saw Rob Bell listed as one of twitter's "trending topics".  These are the topics being tweeted about the most currently.  He then saw a bunch of people on twitter (and he follows 38,000 peeps, so he probably saw a lot) retweeting the "Farewell Rob Bell" tweet.  Thus the remark about how he thought Bell had died.

But Turner then concluded it was "just a few Calvinists hating [Bell] into a trending topic."  Ok, I have so many problems with which.  First, mathematically that's just not sound.  If only "a few" people tweet something, it's not going to become a trending topic.  Second, he assumes for some reason that anyone who retweets John Piper is a Calvinist.  Third -- and obviously this is his most wretched mistake -- he takes the tweets to be expressions of hatred??

I'm searching my heart, and I find no hatred for Rob Bell.  I retweeted Piper's tweet because it linked to an article I had found to be profoundly thought-provoking.

Enter Mark Batterson.  This is another really famous pastor.  He has read Bell's entire book, and claims that Taylor's blog post is way off the mark in terms of Bell's perspective on hell.  But in the process of defending Bell, he decides to call John Piper's fans "a legion of minions."  Thanks Mr. Batterson.  I am indeed a minion and a proud member of a legion, and it's nice to finally be recognized as such.
***
As the dust cleared, I realized a couple things.  On a specific level, I should have just made my own tweet with a link to Taylor's blog.  Apparently I join a demonic horde by associating with John Piper.  But also, reflecting on Piper's tweet, the "farewell" thing was presumptuous and unfair.  As for more general lessons:


More general lessons

1. The issue of hell will, I think, become increasingly important because of how polarizing it is.  If there are two issues that will drive a wedge further between Christians and non-Christians in the years to come, one of them will be our doctrine of hell.
2. For some reason, Christians think that it's ok to be publicly mean in the name of "truth", "holding a pastor accountable", "defending a pastor against false accusations", etc.  Just because you enter a twitter war doesn't mean you should start throwing around words like "hatred," "minion," or "false teacher."  For the most part, this isn't ok.  Shouldn't our discourse, even over strong disagreements, be characterized by love?
3. We are way too quick to adamantly pretend we have all the answers.  We don't.  I'm not calling into question the authority of the Bible right now or anything, but even that wonderful, beautiful book is subject to flawed, sinful, and sometimes stupid people's interpretations and teaching.  And I don't mean other people.  You and I are flawed, sinful, and sometimes stupid.

As for the actual topic of hell, I think I'll give it its own entry.  But I might wait a month for Love Wins to come out so I can incorporate Bell's thoughts into the discussion.


Twitter and warfare

If you're on twitter and we don't follow each other, let me know.

Have you taken part in any online arguments?

Any thoughts about any of the above "Christian celebrities", the Rob Bell twitter war, or funny incidents with technology?

Love wins.
Jon