Thoughts from Rob Bell

[Brad Fox]

Rob Bell is the pastor of Mars Hill Church and a thoughtful theological writer and creator of Christian videos.  Below are some of his interesting viewpoints on God and our faith life.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5344.Rob_Bell

"If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody. And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. To do this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms are offensive to those who are the "un" and "non", they work against Jesus' teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody. We are all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of God. Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone. As the book of James says, "God shows no favoritism." So we don't either."

 

"Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be."
— Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith)

"Agape doesn't love somebody because they're worthy.

Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love.

Agape doesn't love somebody because they're beautiful.

Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful."
— Rob Bell (Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality And Spirituality)

with every action, comment, conversation, we have the choice to invite Heaven or Hell to Earth."

"Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there.  You see God where others don't.  And then you point him out. So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst. "

"Our tendency in the midst of suffering is to turn on God. To get angry and bitter and shake our fist at the sky and say, "God, you don't know what it's like! You don't understand! You have no idea what I'm going through. You don't have a clue how much this hurts."  The cross is God's way of taking away all of our accusations, excuses, and arguments.  The cross is God taking on flesh and blood and saying, "Me too."

 

"Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it."

 

"Christian' makes a poor adjective"

 

"Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker."

 

"Most of the Bible is a history told by people living in lands occupied by conquering superpowers. It is a book written from the underside of power. It’s an oppression narrative. The majority of the Bible was written by a minority people living under the rule and reign of massive, mighty empires, from the Egyptian Empire to the Babylonian Empire to the Persian Empire to the Assyrian Empire to the Roman Empire.

This can make the Bible a very difficult book to understand if you are reading it as a citizen of the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. Without careful study and reflection, and humility, it may even be possible to miss central themes of the Scriptures."

 

"Love Wins"

 

"I'm on your side"

 

"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 truth does"

 

"The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we'll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it."

 

"Everybody is following somebody. Everybody has faith in something and somebody. We are all believers."

 

"Think about some of the words that are used in these kinds of discussions, one of the most common being the phrase “open-minded.”  Often the person with spiritual convictions is seen as close-minded and others are seen as open-minded.  What is fascinating to me is that at the center of the Christian faith is the assumption that this life isn’t all there is.  That there is more to life than the material.  That existence is not limited to what we can see, touch, measure, taste, hear, and observe. One of the central assertions of the Christian worldview is that there is “more” – Those who oppose this insist that this is all there is, that only what we can measure and observe and see with our eyes is real. There is nothing else. Which perspective is more “closed-minded?” Which perspective is more “open?"

 

"For thousands of years Christians have found the cross to be so central to life. It speaks to us of God's suffering, God's pain, God's broken heart. It's God making the first move and then waiting for our response."