Here's the truth: we are, each and all, broken and lost, incapable even of saving belief, much less willing or able to earn our way into God's presence. My former pastor called that the "bad news" we must understand before we can even begin to grasp and appreciate the "Good News" of the Gospel, the news that justice has indeed been done upon the cross. The blood price has been paid, our sins have been forgiven, and God's people are held in His mighty right hand.
Rob Bell's is an old argument: there's no such thing as true damnation, and indeed the very idea is cruel. Progressive Christians argue that it's repellent to our generation, and it may very well be. But it's repellent not because orthodox Christianity is wrong. It's repellent because we are wrong. Our unwillingness to acknowledge Hell is a marker not of our love and compassion but of our sin, our self-justification, and our utterly false sense of self-worth.
I don't doubt the desire of the Rob Bells of the world to help people, and I'm moved when I hear stories of drug addicts finding new life in his church, of troubled teens no longer cutting themselves, and of marriages reconciled. But those are also things that therapists can do. Can a therapist forgive your sins? Can a therapist reconcile the reality of your depraved life before the unimaginable holiness and perfect justice of the Living God?
Hell is what I deserve. Grace is what I've received. And for that I'm thankful every day of my life.
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