Wow. You're spot on with everything here. Are you sure you're not a Christian? (I kid, I kid)

Hah! Thanks I'm glad you enjoyed my post. I'm a deist, which is why I understand Christianity and not some caricature of it. It sounds like we have a lot of areas of agreement.

Obviously, I've said before that Bell is off theologically in my book, but I don't think we really need to debate that seeing as we've got two different world-views, it would seem.

Very different. I'm like the opposite of one of those "I studied to disprove Jesus and was saved" types; sort of like Bart Ehrman, except I was Christian and eventually religiously Jewish, and I had a slightly more experiential approach. The difference (and there is a big difference) between me and an atheist being that I didn't cheat and leech onto another worldview to confirm a bias and I actually did academic work on it. It rendered me a deist. I know there's a God and I can infer a little about how "he" might operate. I can't believe in Jesus for so many reasons that it defies words to get into. Frankly Messianicism cannot be substantiated even by the Jews, in fact most literature is explicitly against it (and other things that would shock you, like the Torah, animal sacrifice, etc.) if you want to reference the prophets.

I do think Bell is sincere as well, just very misguided (to me, you can be sincere and still want the spotlight, etc.). Bell has always come across to me as someone who wants too badly to be relevant, and wants to preach a gospel (or lack thereof) that doesn't offend anyone.

Well, he does offend his own group, the Christians, and gets called a heretic and threatened with hellfire.

The "fool for Christ" (1 Corinth.4:10) teaching is what's behind the idea of Christians encouraging being offensive to the world and challenging people. It's the idea of standing up against the man, which is coupled with sacrificing one's self, going up against the modern mores (our Rome) thus emulating Christ. When Paul said it and moderns practice it, it's meant as a form of stoicism. There are stoic and extremely strong platonic features in post-400 CE Christianity. Stanford comments on stoicism, and you can tell how it applies to past and modern Christendom, and its nasty little brother, atheism:

Though it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense, they did not do so simply to shock. Stoic ethics achieves a certain plausibility within the context of their physical theory and psychology, and within the framework of Greek ethical theory as that was handed down to them from Plato and Aristotle. It seems that they were well aware of the mutually interdependent nature of their philosophical views, likening philosophy itself to a living animal in which logic is bones and sinews; ethics and physics, the flesh and the soul respectively (another version reverses this assignment, making ethics the soul). Their views in logic and physics are no less distinctive and interesting than those in ethics itself.

Rob Bell does use the stoic approach too, it's just turned inward on the church instead of outward on unbelievers. This is his mechanism for transforming Christianity into something even more universalist, which was Pauline Christianity's original charter.

I do have to disagree with you on Piper, though (I assume you mean egoist in the context of self-interest, not narcissism). I think he's abrasive and very old-fart-y, but he's got some great things to say. Again, I don't think he's totally right on everything (none of us are), but I don't find anything wrong with him personally.

I just have a personal revulsion for his type.

EDIT: Also, a great interview with Chan on Erasing Hell, and coincidentally, Rob Bell.

Thanks very much. I really enjoyed that.