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bc221ad
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The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.
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jesus
faith
spirituality
god
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Rob Bell |
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10a4c88
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What we do comes out of who we believe we are.
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thoughts
inspiration
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Rob Bell |
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e2a60b7
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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."
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suffering
jesus
god
cross
crucifixtion
hurt
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Rob Bell |
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f631a85
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Love is giving up control. It's surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two--love and controlling power over the other person--are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.
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sex
marriage
relationships
romance
submission
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Rob Bell |
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848759a
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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.
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Rob Bell |
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1ac6f13
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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.
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Rob Bell |
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cc7577a
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Freedom is not having everything we crave, it's being able to go without the things we crave and being OK with it.
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inspirational
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Rob Bell |
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f4685e6
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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.
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Rob Bell |
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92117fe
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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 ..
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Rob Bell |
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69fff8c
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Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God's ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.
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heaven
spirituality
hell
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Rob Bell |
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6e2350f
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God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.
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Rob Bell |
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6c4b420
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As we experience this love, there is a temptation at times to become hostile to our earlier understandings, feeling embarrassed that we were so "simple" or "naive," or "brainwashed" or whatever terms arise when we haven't come to terms with our own story. These past understandings aren't to be denied or dismissed; they're to be embraced. Those experiences belong. Love demands that they belong. That's where we were at that point in our life ..
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past
love
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Rob Bell |
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d4a8fdf
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Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker.
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Rob Bell |
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f0128a0
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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.
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religion
organized-religion
atheism
ideas
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Rob Bell |
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d5557c0
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If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody.
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Rob Bell |
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6ebaad8
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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
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Rob Bell |
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59c2570
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The Bible] has to be interpreted. And if it isn't interpreted, then it can't be put into action. So if we are serious about following God, then we have to interpret the Bible. It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says. We must first make decisions about what it means at this time, in this place, for these people.
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Rob Bell |
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b98fe3f
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As obvious as it is, then, Jesus is bigger than any one religion. He didn't come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his day. He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain him, especially the one called 'Christianity'.
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jesus
spirituality
religion
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Rob Bell |
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6bbb7eb
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To say it again, eternal life is less about a kind of time that starts when we die, and more about a quality and vitality of life now in connection to God. Eternal life doesn't start when we die; it starts now. It's not about a life that begins at death; it's about experiencing the kind of life now that can endure and survive even death.
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Rob Bell |
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29ece90
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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..
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Rob Bell |
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d4d1b98
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Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: "We don't discuss those things here." I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest question..
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spirituality
questions
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Rob Bell |
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2316cf6
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Times change. God doesn't, but times do. We learn and grow, and the world around us shifts, and the Christian faith is alive only when it is listening, morphing, innovating, letting go of whatever has gotten in the way of Jesus and embracing whatever will help us be more and more the people God wants us to be.
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Rob Bell |
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34d80b4
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If we want hell, if we want heaven, they are ours. That's how love works. It can't be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for the other to decide. God says yes, we can have what we want, because love wins.
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spirituality
religion
hell
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Rob Bell |
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34e04ef
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The peace we are offered is not a peace that is free from tragedy, illness, bankruptcy, divorce, depression, or heartache. It is peace rooted in the trust that the life Jesus gives us is deeper, wider, stronger, and more enduring than whatever our current circumstances are, because all we see is not all there is and the last word about us and our struggle has not yet been spoken.
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Rob Bell |
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ae9aff7
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Take faith, for example. For many people in our world, the opposite of faith is doubt. The goal, then, within this understanding, is to eliminate doubt. But faith and doubt aren't opposites. Doubt is often a sign that your faith has a pulse, that it's alive and well and exploring and searching. Faith and doubt aren't opposites, they are, it turns out, excellent dance partners.
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doubt
faith
inspiration
religion
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Rob Bell |
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4b75c44
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Your deepest, darkest sins and your shameful secrets are simply irrelevant when it comes to the counterintuitive, ecstatic announcement of the gospel. So are your goodness, your rightness, your church attendance, and all of the wise, moral, mature decisions you have made and actions you have taken.
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Rob Bell |
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e49f320
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But in reading all of the passages in which Jesus uses the word "hell," what is so striking is that people believing the right or wrong things isn't his point. He's often not talking about "beliefs" as we think of them--he's talking about anger and lust and indifference. He's talking about the state of his listeners' hearts, about how they conduct themselves, how they interact with their neighbors, about the kind of effect they have on the ..
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faith
religion
inspirtational
theology
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Rob Bell |
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290e3f6
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It is such a letdown to rise from the dead and have your friends not recognize you.
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resurrection
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Rob Bell |
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b3426ce
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You can be very religious and invoke the name of God and be able to quote lots of verses and be well versed in complicated theological systems and yet not be a person who sees. It's one thing to sing about God and recite quotes about God and invoke God's name; it's another be aware of the presence in every taste, touch, sound, and embrace. With Jesus, what we see again and again is that it's never just a person, or just a meal, or just an e..
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Rob Bell |
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b9b1f35
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because God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.
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faith
inspirational
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Rob Bell |
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aae5d6f
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This is one of the reasons we watch movies, attend recovery groups, read memoirs, and sit around campfires telling stories long after the fire has dwindled down to a few glowing embers. It's written in the Psalms that "deep calls to deep," which is what happens when you get a glimpse of what someone else has gone through or is currently in the throes of and you find yourself inextricably, mysteriously linked with that person because you hav..
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Rob Bell |
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d603ab8
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You turn the light on, you get all kinds of bugs.
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religion
spirtuality
hell
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Rob Bell |
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9568cce
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When the female voice is repressed and stifled, the entire community can easily find themselves cut off from the sacred feminine, depriving themselves of the full image of god.
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Rob Bell |
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88c0238
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Questions are not scary. What is scary is when people don't have any. What is tragic is faith that has no room for them.
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Rob Bell |
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ad6b167
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To elevate abstract doctrines and dogmas over living, breathing, embodied experiences of God's love and grace, then, is going the wrong direction. It's taking flesh and turning it back into words.
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Rob Bell |
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eefb351
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Grace is when you aren't striving or controlling or trying to change or manipulate or make something happen. Grace is when you find yourself carried along, when all that's left to do is receive. Grace is when you know you're loved, exactly as you are. Grace is an entirely different way of experiencing life. Another word for grace is gift.
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Rob Bell |
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c6a2cbe
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The great German scholar Helmut Thielicke once said that a person who speaks to this hour's need will always be skirting the edge of heresy, but only the person who risks those heresies can gain the truth.
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Rob Bell |
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dd14804
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If this understanding of the good news of Jesus prevailed among Christians, the belief that Jesus's message is about how to get somewhere else, you could possibly end up with a world in which millions of people were starving, thirsty, and poor; the earth was being exploited and polluted; disease and despair were everywhere; and Christians weren't known for doing much about it. If it got bad enough, you might even have people rejecting Jesus..
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Rob Bell |
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bc48b25
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How we eat is connected to how we care for the planet which is connected to how we use our resources which is connected to how many people in the world go to bed hungry every night which is connected to how food is distributed which is connected to the massive inequalities in our world between those who have and those who don't which is connected to how our justice system treats people who use their power and position to make hundreds of mi..
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Rob Bell |
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1a99e2a
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When Isaiah predicted that spears would become pruning hooks, that's a reference to cultivating. Pruning and trimming and growing and paying close attention to the plants and whether they're getting enough water and if their roots are deep enough. Soil under the fingernails, grapes being trampled under bare feet, fingers sticky from handling fresh fruit. It's that green stripe you get around the sole of your shoes when you mow the lawn. L..
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heaven
gardening
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Rob Bell |
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c077395
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Often the people most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned with the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death.
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Rob Bell |
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80d681d
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It's as if Thomas Kinkade and Dante were at a party, and one turned to the other sometime after midnight and uttered that classic line "You know, we really should work together sometime..."
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Rob Bell |
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046b5a0
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When I talk about the God who is with us, for us, and ahead of us, I'm talking about our facing that which most terrifies us about ourselves, embracing it and fearing it no longer, refusing to allow it to exist separate from the rest of our being, resting assured that we are loved and we belong and we are going to be just fine.
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Rob Bell |
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ad07bc1
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We shape our God, and then our God shapes us.
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Rob Bell |