{"id":869,"date":"2011-04-08T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T17:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/?p=869"},"modified":"2011-04-08T12:00:20","modified_gmt":"2011-04-08T17:00:20","slug":"going-to-hell-with-rob-bell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=869","title":{"rendered":"Going to Hell with Rob Bell&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/GRPR0601.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-871\" title=\"GRPR060.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/GRPR0601.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"402\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/GRPR060.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Originally published in the <em>Grand Rapids Press<\/em>, April 2, 2011<\/p>\n<p>The very first cartoons I ever drew starred an angel and devil. I was about 8 years-old, and I can\u2019t remember exactly why I found the whole heaven\/hell concepts so fascinating. Part of it I\u2019m sure was being raised a Roman Catholic with churches steeped with Renaissance-era art. Part of it was not ever having seen a newspaper-type cartoon with angels and devils, which appealed to my oddly innate need to always create something new. Part of it might have to do with definable characters writing their own lines &#8212; an angel that loses his temper or a devil with a kind soft spot &#8212; there is potential for funny there.<\/p>\n<p>So I loved drawing this week\u2019s cartoon. Perhaps a little disturbing to think of cartoon satan as an old friend, but let\u2019s not analyze too much, shall we?<\/p>\n<p>The <a title=\"Love Wins\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mlive.com\/news\/grand-rapids\/index.ssf\/2011\/03\/rob_bell_talks_love_wins_sting.html\" target=\"_blank\">backstory<\/a> is that Rob Bell &#8212; a local but internationally known pastor from a church right here in Grandville (Mars Hill) &#8212;\u00a0just had a book published called \u201cLove Wins.\u201d I haven\u2019t read it yet, but I would like to at some point. So of course that allows me to make sweeping generalizations about the contents. (What? That\u2019s what everybody else does!) A particular controversy about the book revolves around Pastor Bell\u2019s thoughts about Hell. Who supposedly goes there? Why the fascination with it? Does it take focus away from Jesus\u2019s central messages? Could Gandhi really be stuck there for eternity? Those sorts of things. Then &#8212; BOOM! &#8212; it blew up, as religious issues often do.<\/p>\n<p>Next week: Guardian angels! (to keep things fair and balanced)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, April 2, 2011 The very first cartoons I ever drew starred an angel and devil. I was about 8 years-old, and I can\u2019t remember exactly why I found the whole heaven\/hell concepts so fascinating. Part of it I\u2019m sure was being raised a Roman Catholic with churches steeped [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}