The Bible or Flesh & Blood Relationships?

Rob Bell is at it again.  The former megachurch pastor and author of such controversial books as “Love Wins” (advocating that there is no Hell) is now proposing that churches who choose to stand against homosexuality are going to be irrelevant.  Citing his belief on Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen network, Bell has suggested that a church that relies on “2,000 year old letters” as their best defense over “flesh and blood relationships” is a church that is moving quickly toward irrelevance to our culture.

Once again, Bell is making the fatal error of putting human desire and fulfillment as the moral guideline for all behavior.  In other words, if what I want conflicts with what the “2,000 year old letters (the Bible)” say, then what I want always wins.

The problem this presents is pretty obvious.  If we do not consider these “2000 year old letters” authoritative, we have nothing on which to build the church.  I would argue that the quickest path to irrelevance is not accepting the standards set forth in the ancient record, but rejecting them as the Word of God.

His argument, further, is that most of our culture and many of our churches have already accepted homoerotic behavior as a normative lifestyle that is not to be judged or rejected as sinful or wrong.  In other words, everybody else is doing it… we may as well give in and join the party!

But how do we live as “salt and light” in a decaying culture if we simply echo what the culture is saying and doing?   Rob Bell has found a new home serving as a spiritual advisor to Oprah Winfrey.

I certainly pray he isn’t yours.

“Former Megachurch Pastor Rob Bell: A Church That Doesn’t Support Gay Marriage Is ‘Irrelevant’, The Huffington Post,  February 20, 2015.