99.9% of pastors agree with bell

I absolutely love this post by Caleb Wilde, Why 99.9% of Pastors Agree With Rob Bell … I do not have sufficient statistical data but empirically it seems true. And I absolutely love Wilde's conclusion, "Maybe if Rob had spoken his thoughts at a funeral, nobody would have had a problem with it." You see, many, many of us make wrong statements. Many, many, many of use ask misleading questions. Some of us enjoy stirring the pot just to get people to think (or just because we are pot stirrers). And I think most of use, at the point of crisis, extend hope against hope.

Yet I still think Bell went a step too far with his hope. That is, he didn't say, "I cannot judge" or "Let's trust that Joe made the right choices before his final moments." Now I'm not sure what Bell is actually saying, but what it appears to me and his fans that he's saying is that Joe has a choice after death and even better news, Joe and everyone else will make the right choice.

I don't buy that. BUT - if this had been some simple person leading a simple funeral for an another ordinary guy, I probably wouldn't have jumped out of my seat shouting, "hey - wait a minute."

But this wasn't that. This is the rock star of the new christian world and many people are taking his rhetoric to heart. So I thank Wilde for offering some "hey - calm down" medicine but as applied to Bell, I'll take it only as an attitude correction ... not as a "we should cut Bell some slack" measure.