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I read the Fire without brimstone article....
In the Baltimore Sun newspaper article on Brian/Cedar Ridge, the author writes:
To the horror of many evangelicals, he [Brian McLaren] questions the idea
of hell and claims that, through human love, heaven can be lived on
earth."
I would love to know if this statement lines up with your beliefs.
A: Thanks for asking! There were a couple things in the article that were more or less inaccurate, and this was one of them. Her statement makes it sound like I'm simply rejecting or discounting the Bible's teaching on hell, which I would never do. What I do question is the conventional teaching on hell - and I question this based on the Bible. My most recent book (The Last Word and the Word After That) is largely on this topic, and it received a lot of attention on a recent "blog tour" I did - if you go to "tallskinnykiwi.com" or "jenlemen.com," you'll find lengthy dialogue there, with links to several other blogsites that I also visited as part of the "blog tour."
The comment on heaven was also somewhat misleading. I tried to explain to the journalist the difference between Jesus' teaching on the kingdom of God (which is about God's will being done on earth) and the idea of heaven (afterlife) ... but obviously, I didn't explain it clearly enough! My next book is going to be about the kingdom of God, so I'll get a chance to explore this in more depth soon. I also address this subject in "Adventures in Missing the Point" and "A Generous Orthodoxy."