Resurrection: Rob Bell

When I heard that Rob Bell was going to be shifting from the Nooma format of short films into something else, I wondered what that could possibly be. This just goes to show that this is a man who thinks and creates on another level than I do.

More than anyone else alive today, Rob Bell gives me hope for the future of the church and the followers of Jesus. This is the kind of thing that makes me excited to see what's next.



*If the video won't fit in the browser, click here to watch it at YouTube.

The Source

I've been meaning to post about this. I didn't really start this blog to be a series of book reports. Really, I just wanted this to be a place where I could vent some thoughts and wrestle with some ideas that had yet to be fully formed. However, I did feel compelled to recommend this book.

For over a year now, I have been working through a long list of books that I believe will inform and help guide me through many of my questions and help me to have a deeper and more substantive understanding of my own worldview. While most of these books would be categorized as theology or philosophy (e.g., N.T. Wright's The Last Word, Lawrence Kushner's God Was In This Place And I, i Did Not Know It, Rodney Clapp's A Peculiar People, etc.), there are a handful of items on this list that are novels. James Michener's The Source is one of these books.

The Source is, quite simply, a literary masterpiece. While one might typically expect a novel to be a single story existing in a relatively limited span of time, MIchener's writing style is quite different. The main character in this book is neither a single individual nor a group of people. Rather, it is a geographical area; specifically, a fictional region of Israel called Makor (this is consistent with Michener's typical style of storytelling). While the anchor story of the book takes place at an archaeological dig in the year 1964, the book itself spans from the pre-monotheistic era out of which the concept of a Divine Force first emerged all the way until the reinstitution of the nation of Israel in 1948. What exists in between is a series of riveting and historically aware short stories, each of which reflecting with deep accuracy and scholarship the spirit of the age in this most hostile of territories. (think: a fictionalized version of Rob Bell's The Gods Aren't Angry).

If you are looking for an amazing book to read, this is it. The only caution that I would give you is this: It is long. When he was alive, he was often jokingly described as an author who wrote by the pound. This book is 909 pages long, and it does not go quickly. However, it is a deeply satisfying literary journey that is well worth the time that it requires to fully engage the book.

The reason that this book appears on my long list is that, in a narrative fashion, the reader is given a thorough understanding of the history and the worldview of the Jewish people. This is the worldview out of which Jesus would have come. I feel that I have never understood the Hebrew Scriptures like I do now that I have read The Source.

I think that's enough of the book reports for one day. Thanks for reading my entry. If you decide to read the book, I hope you like it.

A Great Book

I just finished Rob Bell's new book (co-authored with his former co-pastor, Don Golden). It's called Jesus Wants to Save Christians (which may be my all-time favorite title for a book). I don't really have any significant insights or theological reflections for this post. I simply wanted you to know that this fantastic book is available to the general public and that you should read it immediately.

Yes, you.

Story and Scripture

I was in class a couple of weeks ago, and we were discussing the narrative behind the Psalms. One of my classmates (We'll call him Christian Cliche Man, or "CCM" for short) always seems to say the most ignorant things and this particular day was no exception. CCM raised his hand, and when the professor acknowledged him, he said with a very serious look on his face: "One of the things that we've lost in America is the ability to truly tell stories. We can't understand a lot of the Old Testament because we don't understand stories." Now, I'm not totally adverse to some good old-fashioned America bashing. But I've observed that any time a Christian wants to make a point or a cultural statement, the easiest platform on which to stand is, "In America, we've lost ____________" (I'll let you fill in the blank. Go ahead. It'll be fun!). Of course, these statements aren't always inaccurate. This is certainly not a nation without some major blind spots in its ideology. If someone in my class had said that Americans are over-consumers or that we are an unusually hostile nation, I would had trouble offering any vocal disagreement. However, I think that to claim that American society doesn't produce good storytellers reveals one's lack of understanding of American culture. Allow me to offer a short list of American storytellers from various mediums, and you can tell me how egregiously we have lost the ability to understand story:
Mark Twain
Cormac McCarthy
Ernest Hemingway
Orson Wells
Quentin Tarantino
Martin Scorcese
J.D. Salinger
J.J. Abrams
Flannery O'Connor
Bob Dylan
Tom Petty
Johnny Cash
Upton Sinclair
John Updike
Walt Disney
Steven Spielberg
John Irving
Diablo Cody (the woman who wrote "Juno")
Stan Lee
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (creators of Superman)
James Michener
Stephen King
Bruce Springsteen (Don't laugh. Just go listen to the albums Born In The U.S.A., Born To Run, and Darkness On The Edge Of Town. You'll see. The Boss can weave a tale)

Obviously, I could keep going, but I think I've made my point. However, I might point out that there is one type of person missing from the list above. Look closely. Closer. Keep looking. What group of people do you not see on this list? Give up? I'll tell you. Christians (not that none of these people could possibly be followers of Jesus. They just aren't known for being nominal "Christians."). Now just settle down for a minute. I'm not saying that Christians are incapable of producing good art or telling great stories. On the contrary, I think Christians should be leading the way in producing great art. However, I think my misguided classmate, CCM, is almost right--there is a group of people who have lost the art of story, but it's not Americans. It's the church.

I don't think I've ever heard a compelling sermon about the Bible. I'm not saying that I've never heard a compelling sermon that uses the Bible. I'm saying that when a preacher stands up and says, "Today, I'm going to preach about why we should love the Bible and how we should use it," I instantly get bored. For one thing, for someone to say that they are preaching about the Bible on one particular Sunday might imply that they neglect to do so on all other Sundays (another topic for another post). For another, almost any sermon I've heard about the Bible tends to fall into one of two categories: 1) "Let me prove to you with archaeological evidence that the Bible is accurate." This inevitably descends into mechanics and charts. Not that this isn't useful information, but it's certainly not inspiring. And 2) "Here are some charts and graphs that should help you categorize the Scriptures and become a better student of the Bible." Again, this could be somewhat helpful, but it lacks any sort of inspiration. In both cases, I'm asleep before the speaker can say, "Turn with me to Zephaniah chapter 1." (Let me acknowledge that there is so much more to say about both of these types of sermons, and I am only scratching the surface. I'm sure I will return to both of these at a later time.)

I think the reason that so many sermons about the power of the Bible fall flat is that they are devoid of the element of story. We try to make the Scriptures something that they never claim to be, and we drain them of any life or beauty. One of my favorite theologians and communicators, Rob Bell, says it like this in his book Velvet Elvis:

“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…We have to embrace the Bible as the wild, uncensored, passionate account it is of people experiencing the living God" (page 63).

What if we began to interact with the Scriptures as though they were a beautiful story? As I pointed out in the second post on this blog, there is a single metanarrative flowing through the pages of the Bible, and to reduce these beautiful words and passages to something smaller than they are, we've done something tragic.

I don't think Americans in general have lost the ability to tell and hear stories. I think the church is the truly guilty party here. I also think it's time to reclaim the story within which we have been placed. What would it look like if Christians began to interact with the world around us as though we were living within the pages of a beautiful story that God is in the midst of telling?

I only ask because we already are.