Rob Bell

This is a name that cropped up a couple of times in some of my lectures at Ridley this year, and then I'd hear various of my fellow students talking about the 'Nooma' series of teaching DVD's he's done or his book 'Velvet Elvis'. He's the founding pastor of a large church in the US called Mars Hill (click here for further biographical info). I'd not come across him before so decided to get hold of a copy of the book. At about the same time I heard he was on a tour of the UK called 'Calling All Peacemakers':

with a visit to Cambridge as his last stop, and so I got tickets and Lisa and I went to see him. Was so impressed! A very engaging speaker - fairly simple and clear, humorous, yet so profound. There are not many people who I could just sit and listen talking to me for an hour and a half without a break without me losing concentration and my mind wandering, but he held my attention for the whole time. Can't really do justice to what he was talking about briefly enough on here, so not going to try...

But what I will do is share a bit from his book 'Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith':
I've enjoyed reading this book so much, and it's 1 that I will return to time and time again. So easy to read, but so much in there. Here's just 1 sample of some of the stuff in it that has really struck a chord with me, more might follow at later dates...

'... the Bible did not drop out of the sky. It was written by people. People who told stories and passed on oral traditions and sat down and wrote things with a pen and paper. The Bible originated from real people in real places at real times.

It is poems and stories and letters and accounts. It is people interacting with other people in actual space and time. It is God interacting with people in actual space and time. We cannot ignore this.

To take statements made in a letter from one person living in a real place at a moment in history writing to another person living in a real place out of their context and apply them to today without first understanding their original context sucks the life right out of them. They aren't isolated statements that float unattached, out in space.

They aren't first and foremost timeless truths.

We may, and usually do, find timeless truths present in the Bible, but it is because they were true in real places for real people at real times.

I heard somebody refer to the Bible as "data". That person was in an intense discussion about what the Bible teaches about a certain issue, and he disagreed with someone else so he said, "I don't see the data for your position."

The Bible is not pieces of information about God and Jesus and whatever else we take and apply to situations as we would a cookbook or an instruction manual.

And while I'm at it, let's make a group decision to drop once and for all the Bible-as-owner's-manual metaphor. It's terrible. It really is.

When was the last time you read the owner's manual for your toaster? Do you find it remotely inspiring or meaningful?

You only refer to it when something's wrong with your toaster. You use it to fix the problem, and then you put it away.

We have to embrace the Bible as the wild, uncensored, passionate account it is of people experiencing the living God.

Doubting the one true God.

Wrestling with, arguing with, getting angry with, reconciling with, loving, worshipping, thanking, following the one who gives us everything.

We cannot tame it.

We cannot tone it down.

If we do, then we can't say it is the life-giving Word of God. We have made it something else...

Real people, in real places, at real times, writing and telling stories about their experiences and their growing understanding of who God is and who they are.

This does not in any way discount the power of reading the Bible with no background knowledge at all, which is why these words are so powerful. We can enter into them at any level and they speak to us. Whether we are reading the Bible for the first time or standing in a field in Israel next to a historian and an archaeologist and a scholar, the Bible meets us where we are. That is what real truth does.'

Highly recommend getting a copy and reading it for yourselves. I'm about to start reading his latest book 'Sex God'. A few people have said that this is not as good, will let you know what I think at some point.