Rob and Kristen Bell/Oprah Winfrey Interview on Homosexuality: A Response
Paul Derengowski, ThM
Recently, postmodern, “progressive,” pastor Rob Bell and his wife, Kristen, were guests of New Age exponent Oprah Winfrey on her self-promoting program, “Super Soul Sunday.” He was invited to promote a book he co-authored with his wife, The Zimzum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage, as well to answer a few questions about it. Of particular interest that has caused another storm of controversy were his comments about homosexuality and homosexual marriage.
Below is the unofficial transcript of that interview along with my response, which has been indented. Any questions or comments about them are welcome by writing apologetics@capro.info.
Introductory Comment by Ms. Bell
“Marriage–gay and straight–is a gift to the world because the world needs more not less love, fidelity, commitment, devotion, and sacrifice.”—Kristen Bell
There is no such thing as “gay marriage” in the eyes of God. God’s pattern for marriage has always been between one man and one woman, as they not only dispelled the loneliness that God said was “not good” in the beginning (Gen. 2:18), but also as they reflected God’s image while they took dominion over and cared for God’s creation (Gen. 1:26-27).
Conversely, homosexuality has always been an egregious sin in the eyes of God. It is an “abomination” that made one unworthy of remaining a part of God’s people in the Old Testament (Lev. 19:22).
In the New Testament the imagery does not improve. Jesus not only repeated the appropriate marriage arrangement when refuting notions about divorce (Matt. 19:5-ff.), the Apostle Paul made it perfectly clear of just how disgusting homosexuality is when he wrote that it was a byproduct of suppressing the truth of God (Rom. 1:18-32).
In fact, Paul would place the homosexual in the same category as those who engaged in other sexual perversions, along with the thieves, drunks, and swindlers, all of which are on their way to hell (1 Cor. 6:9-10).
Later, in the letter of Jude, he wrote of those at Sodom and Gomorrah who “indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh,” who now serve as examples of those enduring everlasting punishment in eternal fire (Jude 7).
So, whatever Ms. Bell is talking about in terms of homosexual marriage, it has nothing to do with God’s views, which further means her ideas about "love, fidelity, commitment, devotion, and sacrifice" are equally nothing that God has in mind either.
The Interview
Oprah: I think it’s great that you all made a conscious choice to include gay marriage in here [referring to Rob and Kristen Bell’s book The Zimzum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage].
Rob: Absolutely.
Oprah: Yeah. Why?
Rob: Because one of the oldest aches in the bones of humanity is loneliness. I mean it’s one of the things that goes way back; loneliness is not good for the world. And so, whoever you are, gay or straight, it is totally normal, natural, and healthy to want somebody to go through life with. It’s central to our humanity…
Once again, the Bible speaks of man’s loneliness and his lack of a helper suitable for him at the beginning of human existence in the Book of Genesis (2:18-ff).
God’s solution was to take a part of man and create a woman, who was introduced to man with this prescription: “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh" (Gen. 2:24).
Later, Jesus would utter these very same words as the norm for marriage, with the caveat: “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matt. 19:6).
So, while Rob is correct that loneliness is not God’s ideal for mankind, but then neither is the joining of two men or two women.
In fact, since homosexuality is a particularly egregious sin, it only contributes to the loneliness of man, it does not alleviate it.
But, as is the case with all false teachers, they take one nugget of gold and encase it a mountain of lead.
Meaning that at the end of the day, whatever value the gold might have, is lost, because no one can ever gain access to it.
Such is the teaching of Rob Bell on man’s loneliness and his effort to dispel it through promotion of sin.
Oprah: Yeah.
Rob: …we want somebody to go on the journey with.
Oprah: When is the church going to get that?
Rob: {long pause} We’re close.
This is an abject lie. Only those whom God has given over to the delusion of accepting perversion as a norm are “close” to rubber-stamping homosexuality with approval.
Those whose are genuinely born-again are no more close to embracing homosexuality than they are of embracing any of the other particularly egregious sins as normal.
Instead, they repel the thought of envisioning two men lying with each other or two lesbians mimicking the husband-wife relationship.
One has to wonder if Rob Bell, himself, is a sexual pervert. Time will tell.
For now, though, it would be a safe bet to eventually learn that one day both Rob and Kristen have more than each other on their minds when it comes to sex.
It would not be outside the realm of possibility to discover he had contracted AIDS given what he said during this interview.
Kristen: I think it’s evolving. I think it’s…
Wrong word, Kristen. It’s devolving, and that because of persons such as you and your husband changing truth into a lie, light into darkness, and heaven into hell.
Rob: Lots of people are already there. We think it’s inevitable and we’re moments…
Although it has been predicted the Church will eventually fall way into apostasy (1 Tim. 4:1; 2 Tim. 4:3-4; 1 Jn. 2:18-19), that by no means changes the fact that homosexuality is an abominable sin or that God will ever endorse or embrace the abomination as acceptable.
Instead, the opposite is true, historically, with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah serving as an example of a society that did normalize the sickness and was suddenly wiped from existence by the swift judgment of God.
Oprah: A moments away from the church accepting it.
Rob: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Oprah: Yeah.
Rob: Because as soon as you meet someone, and most of the time when people have resistance on this, I say to them…
Oprah: You, you think we’re moments away?
Rob: I think culture is already there and the church will continue to be even more irrelevant when it quotes letters from two thousand years ago as their best defense. When you have in front of you flesh and blood people who are your brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, co-workers and neighbors and they love each other and they just want to go through life with someone.
Here, Rob Bell tips his hand and shows exactly where he is coming from by demeaning the value of the Bible.
To him the Bible is irrelevant and that culture, divorced from God’s guidance, knows more about truth and morals than God does.
Such thinking has been prevalent in human existence ever since the first pair of humans were duped into thinking the very same thing by none other than Satan himself.
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?’” (Gen. 3:1).
The first line of Satanic strategy is to lead people astray and get them to doubt that God has said anything about any situation or question they might have.
As soon as the subject is convinced that God has not spoken—when, in fact, He has—then that person is left to flounder on his/her own, unto his/her own destruction.
This is exactly what Rob Bell is doing by discounting the relevance of Scriptural truth and presenting his corrupt version of “love” as a substitute.
He is satanically deluded and wants others to join him in his delusion.
God has spoken on the subject of homosexuality and God is not going to change His mind either.
Oprah: Well, you sound really progressive to me, cause I’ve talked to pastors who are still saying that…
Again, wrong word, Oprah. There is nothing “progressive” about homosexual sin or those false prophets and teachers promoting it.
It is digressive. It is a movement away from truth, wholesomeness, and Godliness.
It is the very given over by God to “the lusts of their hearts to impurity,” that the Apostle Paul spoke of in the gradual decline of the natural man as he moved further and further away from God (Rom. 1:24).
It is the end result of a suppression of the truth that will leave every man, woman, and child “without excuse” one day, as they stand before God to give account of themselves.
Kristen: Well, oh, I think there are a lot of people who, as they see culture moving, their response is to dig in deeper. It’s to like hold their ground, fight against it. Ummm, so I think that there are both things happening. There are churches that are moving forward or into that area, and there are who are just almost regressing and making it more of a battle.
Rob: Yeah.
A church moving itself to accept perversion as the truth because culture is moving that way only demonstrates that that church has/had no sound, objective, moral, ethical, or spiritually moorings upon which to secure its congregational soul.
It is indicative of a flock without a shepherd or the very thing that led to the captivity of God’s chosen people, the Jews, in the Old Testament (Isa. 56:11; Jer. 10:21; 12:10; 22:22; 23:1-2) and a cause of warning by none other than Jesus in the New Testament.
“Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matt. 7:15).
Rob and Kristen Bell, along with Oprah Winfrey, are ravenous wolves. Therefore, "Beware!"
Epilog
The blight of homosexual sin is upon everyone. What was once wrong is now right. What was once sacred is now sin. Satanic influence is all over this, yet with only a handful standing up and denouncing it.
The Bible makes it perfectly clear that “Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained” (Prov. 29:18). They lose control, in other words.
Conversely, “but happy is he who keeps the law,” or knows and follows God’s mandates concerning human behavior. Sin is kept in check and society refrains from destroying itself.
With the Rob Bell’s out and about peddling their poisonous Kool-Aid, and diabolic devas like Oprah Winfrey providing the suicidal platform to spread it around, it is clear that the people are unrestrained and headed for a fall.
Therefore, it becomes incumbent upon those who claim to know God to repent, pick up His book and study it, and then proclaim an apologetic (rationally defensible) message so that exposure of sin, as sin, takes place, people are convicted and converted, and the abomination of homosexuality is driven back into the darkness from which is sprang.
Failure anywhere along the way will only lead to disaster, as we are already beginning to see all around us.
