Love Wins by Rob Bell

This book was one that certainly makes you think. The problem with theology books of any type is that like most things to do with religion everybody has their own take on what they think they read in the Bible.

I have loved the books of Gary Wills because Wills attempts to get to the true history of the Jesus movement and isolate what was said from what has been interpreted in later times.

Rob Bell is a fairly controversial preacher and his most recent book Love Wins will add to that. Simply put Bell offers an explanation of heaven and hell that is in direct disagreement with most fundamentalist views. Stating that heaven might well be on Earth in the future and offering many Bible phrases to back up his beliefs Bell makes a compelling case.

Of course he is just one man, and it seems that we will always have countless opinions about what happens next and the truth is, no matter your faith and the strength of it no one will know until they die. Sometimes I think reading the Bible is like the telephone game kids play. The message at the start is never the same at the end and no one really knows what the message at the beginning was supposed to be.

Still this book offers some unique insight and perhaps in it's most compelling way asks us about if the reason people turn away from God is that because the God they have been told about is not the God. A God that offers everlasting love and peace and then if you choose wrong sends you to hell for eternity. A vengeful God. A loving God. Bell questions whether the two fundamentalist visions of God can coexist.

This book is well worth the read.