Chad Holtz lost his job as pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina after he wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls. Two days later, Holtz was told complaints from church members prompted his dismissal from Marrow's Chapel in Henderson.
He says he doesn't think 'justice' means an eternity of torment. In his book, Bell criticizes the belief that a select number of Christians will spend eternity in the bliss of heaven while everyone else is tormented forever in hell. He says 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. Bell says that for Jesus, a 1st-century Jewish rabbi, where you go when you die wasn't the most pressing question. Probably not. The question was how can you enter into shalom and peace right now.
Holz, Bell and I would probably still disagree on many theological, philosophical and scientific issues, but enough for now to say about the idea of a 'hell'. . . to hell with it.
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