The gods aren't angry (DVD)

Jesus less clear

THE GODS AREN’T ANGRY (DVD)
By Rob Bell
Zondervan. 89 minutes. £14.25

Initial reaction: An incredible example of how to hold an audience for 90 minutes by simply telling the story of the Bible in an engaging way, as well as a staggering example of how to spend 90 minutes explaining the story of the Bible and simply miss the point.

Storyline: there were lots of ancient gods who were often angry and therefore we needed to give to them to appease them. However, we could never be sure if we’d given enough, so lived in fear. Abraham encounters the God who asks him to sacrifice his only son, but then, at the last moment, provides a substitute. The idea of a God who provides was totally new, as was the idea in Leviticus that you make a sacrifice and then ‘walk away because the case is closed, you have peace with God’. Bell says that, just as the story of Abraham was ‘unbelievably progressive and radical’, Jesus does the same ‘pulling culture forward with something new… the sacrificial system was about violence, but in Jesus’s walk to the cross he answers violence with non-violence… What is your god like? Does he need a violent death to be satisfied? Jesus shows a new way’.

Question: What that new way Jesus shows remains much less clear. Bell uses phrases like ‘repentance was never trying to get God to do something because God has already made peace with all things… For the first Christians, all that was left to do, as you became aware and awakened to the reconciliation of all things that had happened at the culmination of the ages, was to celebrate it’. But Bell cuts out the most amazing part of the story: that peace with God is only possible because ‘the God’ is angry at our sin but his wrath was laid on Jesus and dealt with. Bell ends by saying, ‘May you come to trust that reconciliation, peace has been made. May you believe this God is not angry because this God is love’. But surely we’ll believe that more when we have a proper understanding that ‘the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed?’

Andrew Baughen,
St. James Clerkenwell, London

© Evangelicals Now - August 2009
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