Bell's Hell
If there is anything that evangelical Christians are good at, it is throwing kerosene on a campfire. More often than not, those campfires - at first only warming the toes of a few folks partaking of random fireside conversations around questions that few take seriously - leap into wildfires that ultimately and indiscriminately consume thousands of acres of thoughtful (and some thoughtless) men and women. But as wildfires are wont to do, they ultimately burn themselves out, leaving significant but temporary destruction in their wake; destruction that in time is all but invisible. Such will be the fate, I think, of the campfire musings of Rob Bell's latest book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived . It may be that there is more readily-available fuel - and a larger gathering of campers - around Bell's campfire than some of the others in my memory ("The Last Temptation of Christ," Proctor & Gamble's sup...