Whether it was a brilliant marketing strategy or just a sad reflection of the charged atmosphere of Christian dialogue these days, one cannot deny that Rob Bell’s latest book Love Wins has stirred up a load of controversy before it has even hit the shelves. As a book claiming the daunting task of being “A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived,” the uproar was understandable although disappointingly cruel at times. For some reason many Christians hold to the notion that where we go when we die is the most important aspect of our faith and thus get rather up in arms when people even dare to open that topic up for conversation. Bell deftly addresses the need to re-prioritize what is central to our faith, but more on that in a moment. Let me first get the controversial stuff out of the way.

Does Bell believe in hell? Yes. Does Bell believe in heaven? Yes. Is Bell firmly rooted in Christian Orthodoxy? Yes. Does Bell think that Jesus is the way? Yes. Is Bell a universalist? If by that we mean that God is reconciling all creation to himself and that we shouldn’t assume that God will fail at this, then yes, Bell is a universalist. If that’s all you want to know so that you can judge, label, dismiss or whatever, then you can stop reading now. But if you are curious about what the book is really about and the hope-filled message of transformation it contains, then I invite you to keep reading.

At the most basic level, Love Wins is a typical Rob Bell book. Which is to say that he writes like he speaks and so what the reader encounters is an easy to read yet powerful narrative that speaks straight to the heart. Bell’s gift is to take tremendously complex theological concepts and translate them so that they are not just understandable to all but also blessedly practical. People can complain that he is too popular or over-marketed, but it is this gift that makes him resonate with so many people. At the same time, those who are versed in history and theology can clearly see the conversations of Christians through the centuries behind the ideas Bell expresses. He is not espousing anything new in this book, simply making accessible the rich tradition of Christian thought for believers today.

And what he is saying is powerful. Bell gets at the heart of what Christians believe about God and isn’t afraid to challenge the implicit assumptions about God that are at the core of some Christians’ belief systems. Central to that message is the suggestion that our relationship with the God of the universe is a dynamic and not static reality. Jesus’ work on the cross isn’t just an historical event, but an ongoing narrative of redemption and reconciliation. Our faith isn’t just about going to heaven when we die, but about entering into a relationship and partnership with God now and for eternity. Heaven and hell are real for Bell, but are not simply places we go when we die. They are connected to who we are in Christ now. We are called to accept the gift of a transformative life that can endure even death. This life is a gift from a God who truly desires life on earth to be like it is in heaven, both now and for eternity, and who lets us serve as partners in this work of reconciling a world that God loves and will never give up on.

This message that God loves his creation so much that God refuses to give up on us, forms the core of Bell’s book. Bell points out, that since the early church fathers, Christians have held that since God’s central essence is love, it is reconciliation and not eternal suffering that brings God the most glory. What we believe and how we act are vitally important, but in the end upholding and glorifying the essence of God is most important. And when we insist that people who think differently than us, or who haven’t had the same revelation as us, or who said a different prayer than us will be eternally separate from a God the scriptures say works for and longs for the redemption of all things, we are stripping God of his power and denying him glory.

At the same time, Bell doesn’t deny that love involves freedom. We are free to deny God and to refuse to live the ways of God’s kingdom. God cannot abide injustice or greed or hatred – such things have no place in the world to come and have significant consequences in the world now. Suffering exists and God cares about those in pain, yet God loves us enough to allow us to continue to live in the hell of our own choosing. Hell is real, but it is a place we create for ourselves as we reject the gift of life God offers to us. But in the scriptures judgment is always connected to restoration. God essence is love and that essence can never change. The gates of heaven never shut, for even as God will not abide injustice and sin in his realm he by nature is always desiring the reconciliation and restoration of all things. God can never stop being God which means that in the end, love has to win.

Love Wins is not a book about who is in or out. That sort of talk is too small. It is a book that invites people to remember the life God is offering them and that encourages them to thrive as they joyously participate in that life. Bell challenges theologies that seem to have forgotten what it means to live this life and moves the conversation back to a placed where Christians have the freedom to say yes to the gift God continually offers. Christianity isn’t about being right or wrong, it’s about living joyously and transformativly for Jesus – and that is a message we can all benefit from being reminded of.

It’s hard to ignore the children. As voiceless as children are in our world, when we hear stories of injustice being inflicted on children it is hard not to be moved. There is something about hearing the stories of six year old girls being kidnapped and forced to be sex slaves or young boys trafficked to work in cocoa fields that push us beyond the confines of our political opinions to offer help to the hurting. Politics can often obscure human rights issues as it did in our country with the early labor movement. It took revealing the horrors of child labor to get those opposed to reform to enter the conversation. For even when we can ignore or even support injustice against adults, most decent human beings innately know that it is wrong to harm a child (or fail to stop the harming of a child). We hear stories of such and the mama bear instinct kicks in – a child’s life is too precious for us to allow it to be terrorized.

From the Bible passages that remind us that true religion is to care for orphans and widows to Jesus’ command to welcome the little children, there is a strong biblical mandate for caring for the least of these. While loving our neighbor (no matter our politics) should be at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus, it often takes hearing the stories of the children who suffer and need our care to mobilize the majority of people to extend mercy and justice.

That is why I am grateful for Melissa Del Bosque’s fantastic article this week in The Texas Observer, Children of the Exodus: What becomes of kids who are deported without their families? The article tackles the polarizing topic of immigration, but does so through telling the often tragic and heartbreaking stories of the children caught in the political mire.

She situates her story in a Mexican Immigration office where children who have been apprehended and deported by U.S. Border patrol have been delivered. These are kids desperate to join their parents in the United States after the death of their caretaker grandparents, the babies and young kids whose mothers died of exposure in the harsh desert crossing, and the kids the drug cartels have kidnapped and use as drug smugglers. Their stories are complex, as complex as the tales of adult immigrants, but they strike us more poignantly because they are children. And these children are suffering.

On paper, the officials say that all children who are deported back to Mexico can only be claimed by a relative with proof of relation. Yet documents are often forged and there is little to no follow up of the children once they are released into the hands of “a relative.” Officials who desired to remain anonymous out of fear reveal that often (with the police’s knowledge and aid) the children end up in the hands of the drug cartels to be trafficked or used for smuggling drugs. But beyond that well known “secret,” even the government admits that not all the children are claimed and are left to fend for themselves. As the article states, “In 2008, a Mexican congressional committee reported 90,000 children had been sent back by U.S. authorities to border cities … At least 13,500 were never claimed.” For when parents live in the U.S. or die in the crossing there is no family to come claim these children. But when governments of either country don’t want to be bothered with these kids, there are vultures waiting to snatch up weak and innocent.

What these children experience – injustice, trafficking, kidnapping, separation from family – has to be part of the story that gets told as part of the immigration debate. We can argue the legality of the immigrant’s decision or from our place of plenty question what parent would ever leave a child to go try to make a better life for that child until we are blue in the face, but meanwhile the children suffer. If our debate doesn’t make room for caring for these children, then we truly have lost our way as a nation.

I appreciated how the author called for immigration reform at the end of the article with the needs of these children in mind. She first suggests ways that both the U.S. and Mexico could actually follow the laws already in place to protect children by doing things like setting up a simple database to monitor these kids and not let them slip through the cracks. She also called for U.S. immigration reform that helps reunite families not punish them for trying to do whatever they can to help each other. And finally, most importantly, she asserted that until the underlying problems like poverty are dealt with these children will continue to be caught in the middle facing this pain. For when people are pawns in lofty government economic programs, they will continue to be pushed to seek out a better life in order for their family to survive. Justice is needed here on all levels. And maybe with the telling of the story of these children even the hardest of hearts will be opened to loving the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner sojourning in our land.

A truth that I’ve repeatedly been reminded of this past year is the utter inappropriateness of basing one’s identity on the belittling of others. What it means to be a man of integrity cannot be defined through the mocking of Asian culture. What it means to be a Real Man cannot be defined through the debasement of women. And what it means to be a real 21st Century Christian cannot be defined through the dismissal of the entire Western church.

So I am having a hard time with Soong-Chan Rah’s and Jason Mach’s article on the emerging church, even as I believe they are addressing a vital issue. Let me say upfront that racial reconciliation needs to happen in the American church, and that to be healthy the church must start listening to all of its diverse members. I have no quarrel with that message in the article, I just don’t understand why Emergent must be the sacrificial lamb in this conversation. After reading Rah’s chapter on the emerging church in his book, The Next Evangelicalism, I, with others, wondered at the caricature he presented of the emerging conversation. In order to support his thesis that the white western captivity of the church must come to an end, he presented a picture of the emerging church as a bunch of trendy looking white guys who deliberately exclude racial minorities. A portrayal that resembles no part of the emerging world I have ever seen. I know he was repeatedly called out on this very issue, so I had hoped that in this article there would be a bit more journalistic integrity. But once again, we have the same skewed stereotype of emergents (even as the article exclusively quotes women and racially diverse emerging leaders who are seemingly counterexamples to its thesis). This inaccurate portrayal thus functions as a straw man that can easily be attacked and dismissed as standing in the way of a more global and diverse emerging Christianity.

The article asserts – “In truth, the term “emerging church” should encompass the broader movement and development of a new face of Christianity, one that is diverse and multi-ethnic in both its global and local expressions. It should not be presented as a movement or conversation that is keyed on white middle- to upper-class suburbanites. … If the label of the emerging church is to have a future, then the term needs to be reclaimed and disassociated from the specific brand of Emergent, and applied much more broadly to the church around the world”

Here’s the thing, every emergent and emerging Christian I know would agree with most of that statement. We know this is about a broader, global movement and have no delusions that white suburbanites are its center or future. And almost all of us agree that we need to intentionally listen to and learn from a wide diversity of voices within the church. We are part of the same team, working towards the same goals. Of course, Emergent is not perfect or above critique. Of course, it isn’t the sum of the emerging conversation. No one ever said it was. Emergent serves to network and resource the emerging conversation, doing its imperfect best to make this shared vision a reality. So why throw us under the bus and say we need to be kicked out of the conversation?

The thing is, I get where the small kernel of truth in their stereotypes came from. Over the past 15-20 years, the church has been attempting to make sense of the shift worldwide to a globalized, post-colonial, post-modern culture. Although this shift manifests differently around the world, we are all too interconnected to not be affected in some way. Early on in the contemporary Evangelical church these shifts were seen as simply a generational phenomenon prompting discussion on how to make church relevant to young people. Many churches jumped on the bandwagon of how to do trendy church, and yes, publishers attempted to capitalize on it as well. Since the money in the evangelical world in America historically supports charismatic white men, they became the poster children of the conversation. But as the conversation matured, others realized that what was emerging in the world was far more significant than generational trends, and so started to ask questions about how the church is held captive to culture and modern philosophies. Dialogues across diverse Christian traditions helped begin to heal wounds caused by racial and denominational divisions. These new relationships blurred boundaries both in and out of the church, making it impossible to quantify the number of churches participating in the conversation.

These emerging conversations and relationships brought renewed faith to some, but frightened or didn’t go far enough for others. Many of those (including publishers) who were simply riding the waves of cultural trends jumped ship and moved on to the “next big thing” (New Calvinism anyone?). This rejection of what was emerging worldwide was often rooted in a rejection of the very outside perspectives and theologies now beginning to be heard from women, racial minorities, and Queer believers. The reality is that the conversation is diverse (imperfectly so, but diverse nonetheless), and to dismiss it as being all about hip white males is hurtful to the rest of us contributing to the conversation who don’t fit that stereotype. Pretending we are invisible simply perpetuates the myth that we don’t exist at all. Sure, it is still a daily struggle be heard in a world that often clings to the vestiges of patriarchy, racism, and bigotry, but our voices are still there (even if marketplace Christianity isn’t throwing money our way).

I am Emergent and I don’t fit their stereotype. I am about the most un-hip person in the world. I might be white and youngish, but I am also physically handicapped and female. I am not one of the pretty people, I have no sense of style, I don’t listen to cool bands, my hair is a disaster, I am awkward, introverted, and a total bookworm. In most emerging communities I have participated in, I am generally one of the youngest people there. My friends are culturally, racially, generationally and theologically diverse and are (mostly) as uncool and imperfect misfits as myself (sorry guys, you know I love you, but it’s true). But we care about what God is doing in the world. We care about justice, we care about racial reconciliation, we care about making sure we listen to previously marginalized voices (and we continue to fight for them when they are not heard). Some of my friends have never heard of the term “emerging church” and some of us volunteer our time to help support this conversation through the network of Emergent Village. We have a lot to learn and a long way to go. I know that none of us desire to cling onto power for the sake of white western culture, but we also feel no need to utterly reject and condemn that entire culture. Healing and emergence in the church will never take place through the silencing of voices we don’t like or the caricaturing of those we don’t understand. There are wounds dealt to persons of color, to queers, and to women that the church universal must work to heal. But if we share the same dream of healing those wounds, why can’t we stop fighting amongst ourselves and figure out this emerging thing together?

I’ve long been interested in archaeology, particularly biblical archaeology. So it caught my eye when the Jerusalem Post reported this morning that the oldest known example of written Hebrew was discovered about eighteen months ago and recently deciphered. Written on a piece of pottery shard, it was dated to the 10th century BCE, the time of King David.

Prof. Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa, who deciphered the text and determined it was an ancient form of Hebrew, explained that “This text is a social statement, relating to slaves, widows and orphans.” While not definitively determined as a biblical text, the inscription certainly could be. Prof. Galil’s reconstructed translation reads:

1′ you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2′ Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]3′ [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4′ the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5′ Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.

I’m not surprised to learn that this three-millennia-old inscription links worshiping the Lord to pleading for the poor. From the earliest days of humanity writing down God’s instructions, worship and justice were linked. It was true then, and it is still true today.

Duane Shank is the senior policy advisor for Sojourners.