The Complete Rob Bell: His Seven Bestselling Books, All in One Place

God has been there all along, and Jacob is just beginning to realize it. He’s waking up from physical sleep, but he is also waking up from spiritual sleep. I’ve heard people tell stories about something powerful that happened and then at the end of the story say, “And then God showed up!” As if God were somewhere else and then decided to intervene.

But God is always present. We’re the ones who show up.

For the ancient Jew, the world is soaked in the presence of God.

The whole earth is full of the kavod of God.

For the writers of the Bible, this truth is everywhere. It’s here. It’s there. It’s all over.

And not only is truth everywhere, not only is the whole earth filled with the kavod of God, but the writer Paul makes a fascinating observation about people in his letter to the Romans. He says at one point, “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves.”5 (#ulink_36eec962-f356-58b0-b709-134fd60686a7) Gentiles is his word for people who don’t follow God, and law is his word for the scriptures. So he says that people who don’t know anything about God are able to do the right thing on a regular basis. Without having any instructions from God or the Bible, these people are still able from time to time to live as God created us to live. For Paul, truth is available to everyone.

Truth is everywhere, and it is available to everyone.

But Paul takes it further, because for him truth is bigger than his religion. Notice what he says in the book of Titus. He is referring to the people who live on the island of Crete when he writes that even one of their own prophets has said, “‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.’ He has surely told the truth.”6 (#ulink_7737aa83-e280-5c4b-9070-9135441da02a)

So Paul quotes one of the Cretan prophets and then affirms that this guy was right in what he said. “This testimony is true.” What the prophet said was true, so Paul quotes him. For Paul, anybody is capable of speaking truth. Anybody, from any perspective, from any religion, from anywhere.

And these words from the book of Titus, the quote from a Cretan prophet, are in the Bible. So the Word of God contains the words of a prophet from Crete.

Paul affirms the truth wherever he finds it.

But he takes it further in the book of Acts. He is speaking at a place called Mars Hill (which would be a great name for a church) and trying to explain to a group of people who believe in hundreds of thousands of gods that there is really only one God who made everything and everybody. At one point he’s talking about how God made us all, and he says to them, “As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”7 (#ulink_f031fb35-1ace-5042-b1d9-dba7139a63b5) He quotes their own poets. And their poets don’t even believe in the God he’s talking about. They were talking about some other god and how we are all the offspring of that god, and Paul takes their statement and makes it about his God. Amazing.

Paul doesn’t just affirm the truth here; he claims it for himself. He doesn’t care who said it or who they were even saying it about. What they said was true, and so he claims it as his own.

This affirming and claiming of truth wherever you find it is all through the writings of Paul. In 1 Corinthians, he tells his readers, “All things are yours, . . . and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.”8 (#ulink_dace78b1-6eaa-5b46-a849-ec92db341bcf) He essentially says to them, “It all belongs to God, and Christ is of God, and you are of Christ, so . . . it’s all yours.”

Claim it.

If it is true, if it is beautiful, if it is honorable, if it is right, then claim it. Because it is from God. And you belong to God.

The philosopher Arthur Holmes is known for saying, “All truth is God’s truth.” It is such a great statement, because what other kind of truth could there be?

So as a Christian, I am free to claim the good, the true, the holy, wherever and whenever I find it. I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is God’s and everything in it.

I was traveling in Turkey awhile back and kept noticing that a large number of the homes there seemed unfinished. Piles of wood and brick beside the house, half a foundation built, construction equipment everywhere. It looked like a lot of homes had been started and then the workers went to lunch . . . for a year. I asked my friend, who has spent a lot of time in Turkey, about it. He said the reason is that the Muslim culture doesn’t allow for financial debt, so people only build with cash. They work for a while, run out of money, save up, keep working, and eventually get the house done, which they own, debt-free. I was struck with how different Western culture would be if we had a similar aversion to debt. How many people do we know who are crippled with financial debt? Having less debt is a better way to live. I affirm this value of the Muslim people of Turkey because it is true, it is good, and it is a better way to live. It doesn’t matter where I find it, who speaks or lives it, or what they believe, I claim and affirm the truth wherever I find it.

All things are mine.

Why would we ever be surprised when truth turns up in strange places?

Logos

Do you know anybody who grew up in a religious environment, maybe even a Christian one, and walked away from faith/church/God when they turned eighteen and went away to college?

Whenever I ask this question in a group of people, almost every hand goes up. Let me suggest why. Imagine what happens when a young woman is raised in a Christian setting but hasn’t been taught that all things are hers and then goes to a university where she’s exposed to all sorts of new ideas and views and perspectives. She takes classes in psychology and anthropology and biology and world history, and her professors are people who have devoted themselves to their particular fields of study. Is it possible that in the course of lecturing on their field of interest, her professors will from time to time say things that are true? Of course. Truth is available to everyone.

But let’s say her professors aren’t Christians, it is not a “Christian” university, and this young woman hasn’t been taught that all things are hers. What if she has been taught that Christianity is the only thing that’s true? What if she has been taught that there is no truth outside the Bible? She’s now faced with this dilemma: believe the truth she’s learning or the Christian faith she was brought up with.

Or we could put her dilemma this way: intellectual honesty or Jesus?

How many times have you seen this? I can’t tell you the number of people in their late teens or early twenties I know, or those I have been told about, who experience truth outside the boundaries of their religion and abandon the whole thing because they think it’s a choice (which is a fatal flaw in thinking we’ll address in a moment). They are experiencing truth in all sorts of new ways, and they need a faith that is big enough to handle it. Their box is getting blown apart, and the faith they were handed doesn’t have room for what they are learning.

But it isn’t a choice, because Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, the life.” If you come across truth in any form, it isn’t outside your faith as a Christian. Your faith just got bigger. To be a Christian is to claim truth wherever you find it.

It’s not truth over here and Jesus over there, as if they were two different things. Where we find one, we find the other. Jesus is quoted in the book of John saying, “I and the Father are one.” If Jesus and God are one, if Jesus shows us what God is really, truly like, and God is truth and all truth is God’s truth, then Jesus takes us into the truth, not away from it. He frees us to embrace whatever is true and good and beautiful wherever we find it.

To live this way then, we have to believe in a big Jesus. For many, Jesus was presented to them as the solution to a problem. In fact, this has been the dominant way of explaining the story of the Bible in Western culture for the past several hundred years. It’s not that it is wrong; it’s just that Jesus is so much more. The presentation often begins with sin and the condition of human beings, separated from God and without hope in the world. God then came up with a way to fix the problem by sending Jesus, who came to the world to give us a way out of the mess we find ourselves in. So if we were to draw a continuum of the story of the Bible, Jesus essentially shows up late in the game.

But the first Christians didn’t see Jesus this way, as if God were somewhere else and then cooked up some way to solve the sin problem at the last minute by getting involved as Jesus. They believed that Jesus was somehow more, that Jesus had actually been present since before creation and had been a part of the story all along.

In the first line of his gospel, John calls Jesus the “Word.” The word Word here in Greek is the word logos, which is where we get the English word logic.

Logic, intelligence, design. The blueprint of creation.

When we speak of these concepts, what we are describing is the way the world is arranged. There is some sort of order under the chaos, and some people seem to have a better handle on it than others. Some understand math, some the human psyche, and others can speak clearly and compellingly about the solar system. When we say someone is intelligent, we are saying they have insight as to how things are put together.

And the Bible keeps insisting that Jesus is how God put things together. The writer Paul said that Jesus is how God holds all things together.9 (#ulink_a096455a-19e2-55ea-bfc0-2203d7bf37a1) The Bible points us to a Jesus who is in some mysterious way behind it all.

Jesus is the arrangement. Jesus is the design. Jesus is the intelligence. For a Christian, Jesus’s teachings aren’t to be followed because they are a nice way to live a moral life. They are to be followed because they are the best possible insight into how the world really works. They teach us how things are.

I don’t follow Jesus because I think Christianity is the best religion. I follow Jesus because he leads me into ultimate reality. He teaches me to live in tune with how reality is. When Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me,” he was saying that his way, his words, his life is our connection to how things truly are at the deepest levels of existence.10 (#ulink_dfb22f54-015d-5043-bce6-fa66a4e19c7f) For Jesus then, the point of religion is to help us connect with ultimate reality, God. I love the way Paul puts it in the book of Colossians: These religious acts and rituals are shadows of the reality. “The reality . . . is found in Christ.”11 (#ulink_19700ee0-efbe-5953-83a7-957f51e30c7c)

Labels

It is dangerous to label things “Christian.” The word Christian first appears in the Bible as a noun. The first followers of Jesus were called Christians because they had devoted themselves to living the way of the Messiah, who they believed was Jesus.

Noun. A person. A person who follows Jesus. A person living in tune with ultimate reality, God. A way of life centered around a person who lives.

The problem with turning the noun into an adjective and then tacking it onto words is that it can create categories that limit the truth. Here’s what I mean: Something can be labeled “Christian” and not be true or good. I was speaking at a pastors’ conference several years ago, and a well-known pastor was going to be speaking after me. I thought I’d stick around when I was done because I wanted to hear what he had to say. It was shocking. He essentially told the roomful of pastors that if their churches weren’t growing and they weren’t happy all the time and they weren’t healthy and successful, then they probably weren’t “called and chosen by God” to be pastors. I can’t imagine the messages his talk put in the hearts and minds of those pastors who were listening. I couldn’t begin to understand how he made those verses mean that. And it was a Christian pastor talking in a Christian church to other Christian pastors. But it wasn’t true.

This happens in all sorts of areas. It is possible for music to be labeled Christian and be terrible music. It could lack creativity and inspiration. The lyrics could be recycled clichés. That “Christian” band could actually be giving Jesus a bad name because they aren’t a great band. It is possible for a movie to be a “Christian” movie and to be a terrible movie. It may actually desecrate the art form in its quality and storytelling and craft. Just because it is a “Christian” book by a “Christian” author and it was purchased in a “Christian” bookstore doesn’t mean it is all true or good or beautiful. A “Christian” political group puts me in an awkward position: What if I disagree with them? Am I less of a Christian? What if I am convinced the Christian thing to do is to vote the exact opposite?

Christian is a great noun and a poor adjective.

I was playing in a punk band a few years ago, and we were playing clubs and bars and festivals and parties. People would regularly ask us if we were a Christian band when they found out I was a pastor. I always found the question a bit odd. When you meet a plumber, do you ask her if she is a Christian plumber? I realize now why I chafed against the question.

My understanding is that to be Christian is to do whatever it is that you do with great passion and devotion. We throw ourselves into our work because everything is sacred. I love how Paul put it in Colossians: “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.”12 (#ulink_acd75915-d962-58be-a9a9-6d4db91d25fe) He is teaching people to live as Christians, and then whatever they do will be sacred, holy work. Music already is worship. Music is praise. Music is sacred. Music is good. Creation doesn’t need a label to make it sacred or acceptable or blessed. When God made the world, God called it “good.” Now obviously anything can be corrupted and desecrated and used for purposes other than those which God intends, but making music is sacred enough. Paul put it like this: “For everything God created is good.”13 (#ulink_589b2e7c-4feb-5d4b-8fd4-bc2317489131)

This is why Jesus wouldn’t have blessed the food before he ate. He blessed God for providing the earth, which provides the food. The food is already blessed, because it comes from the earth, and “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”14 (#ulink_dcf3fe10-7b2b-547e-9969-c8f22af75e4e)

This is why it is impossible for a Christian to have a secular job. If you follow Jesus and you are doing what you do in his name, then it is no longer secular work; it’s sacred. You are there; God is there. The difference is our awareness.

This truth has significant implications for how churches function.

Somebody asked me the other day why our church doesn’t support the arts because we don’t have dramas and short-act plays in the services. I realized the question, as with almost every question, goes back to creation. I don’t believe something has to be in a church service to be “for God.” As if the only acting that is “for God” is acting in a church service. A church is a community of people who are learning how to be certain kinds of people wherever they find themselves, so they can do whatever it is they do “in the name of the Lord Jesus.” The goal isn’t to bring everyone’s work into the church; the goal is for the church to be these unique kinds of people who are transforming the places they live and work and play because they understand the whole earth is filled with the kavod of God. God isn’t in one building only. Doing things for God happens all the time, everywhere. If you are an actor, the goal isn’t for you to do your work in a church building in a church service. Please go wherever it is in the world that people act and do it well. Really well. Throw yourself into it and give it everything you have.

So the labels ultimately fail, no matter how useful they are from time to time, because the life of Jesus is just that, a life that is lived by people who have oriented their entire lives around being true to Jesus’s teachings.