Traditional Teaching on Heaven and Hell Is "Misguided and Toxic"

Here is a quote from a book I started reading last night. I’m not posting the quote because I agree with it. I’m posting it because it’s controversial.

"A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It's been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus's message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear."
(Bell, Rob. LoveWins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.  New York, NY: Harper One, 2011. p. viii.)

Heaven and hell are both significant biblical themes, so we’d better be careful before declaring historical, conservative doctrine “misguided and toxic” and subversive.