Rob Bell: Public Teaching Should Be Open to Public Critique

Rob Bell is all the talk these days, partially because of his most recent publication Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived and partially because he keeps making things worse every time he talks about it — and it seems that he talks about it all the time. I and my fellow pastors here in Brownstown will be reading and discussing that book over the next couple of weeks and I’ll journal about it here. After all, that’s all this blog is: my journal. I’m not trying to convince people of anything, just working through my thoughts, trying to structure them, and remember details about issues I’ve wrestled with.

I am, however, writing this on a blog. It’s open to the public. I understand the rules of the game. I know I’m opening myself to public comment. And that’s okay.

That being said, Pastor Bell disdains blogs that question his teaching. He refuses to read any of them, he says, yet he attributes all kinds of negative motives to those who write about their questions and concerns. He says he just doesn’t have time to deal with that kind of stuff because he’s too busy loving people, and with his own church, and doing what his study of Scripture tells him he’s supposed to be doing. I would agree with him — if he was doing his writing and speaking for his church’s consumption alone. Were we to comment on that, we would be intruding. But he’s not, so I take issue with him on that. Yes, he’s a busy pastor, but he’s writing books for mass consumption and he’s doing nationwide speaking tours (and don't think he isn't being compensated well for them). He wants to teach in the public forum, but he doesn’t want to hear the critiques of that public. If he doesn’t want to be criticized by the public, then he shouldn’t teach in the public square. The end.