My “e-friend,” Darren (I think we would be personal friends if we were to ever meet in person 🙂 ), has posted a nice summary of the various responses to the Rob Bell drama that has recently ensued. I was just going to post a link to his post (and still will), but I wanted to copy and paste a section of that post here; since I think Darren does a commendable job in describing the kind of attitude one should carry to this whole polarizing debacle (caveat: I’m one of those who disagrees with Bell’s approach and theology). Here’s what Darren had to say on approaching Bell:

• The first response to potential heterodoxy — even that which we consider profoundly important and in danger of influencing many thousands of people — ought to be charity and thoughtful engagement.  Not tweets and Zopharic laments.  Love may or may not “win” in Bell’s sense, but it should season all Christian conversation.
• Bell may indeed be heterodox in what he says in the book (though, based on reviews from my own trusted sources, I think that’s probably a gross over-reaction).  But it’s probably more the case that his way of putting the hard questions, and the places in Christian theology where he chooses to place his emphases, simply aren’t the same as those who are condemning him.A corollary: Not doing theology, history, or exegesis especially well (“Hell is where we are now”) is not the same as heterodoxy.

  A secondary corollary: It may, however, be bad scholarship.

• Systematic theology and pastoral theology are not the same discipline.  This does not permit us to excuse bad theology because it is pastorally useful, nor does it excuse systematic theology from lack of pastoral thoughtfulness.  The two are accountable to one another, the former as much to the latter as vice versa.
• A doctrine of salvation that pits God’s justice against God’s love and mercy — what Karl Barth called a theology of “God against God” — is bad theology.  This posits a rift in God’s being and preaches a God that is inauthentic to the “good news” of Holy Scripture.  This is not to deny that wrath and judgment are vital aspects of Christian soteriology.  But we have to make sure that (in Barth’s words, again) we are not proclaiming that the No of God is the first word or the last word to men and women.  God’s word to sinners is Nevertheless …
• As I intimated in a previous post, theology in the church of Jesus Christ — and in the Reformed tradition in particular, by its own self-definition — is to be always open to reform, always eager to hear anew the Word of God in Scripture. The theological victories of the past should be (critically) defended, yes, and those who oppose the one gospel of Jesus Christ ought to be opposed. But the church and those who defend its ideals must live in a posture of humble receptivity, always ready to subject their own beliefs to that fresh hearing of Scripture, open to the possibility that they and their forebearers may have misstepped a few paces back. The Word of God in Scripture, and not codified doctrine, is the standard for right belief in the gospel. To set aside the former (apart from our well-worn proof texts) in favor of our confidence in the latter is to cease to be Reformed.The problem with the Bell debate, then, has largely been a failure to recognize in humility that Bell and those who support him are conversation partners and not opponents. (for full post go: here)

I think this should be my last word on anything Bell, at least for the foreseeable future (let’s hope so).