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

One summer when I was in high school, my family and I were on vacation and decided to visit a church in the town where we were staying. At the end of the service, the pastor asked if anybody wanted to become a Christian. He said that people could repeat a prayer after him and become a Christian, right there at that moment in their seats. He said that if people repeated this prayer after him, they could be sure that when they died, they would go to heaven and not hell. He then asked everybody to bow their heads and close their eyes, and he said the prayer, leaving space after each sentence for those who wanted to repeat the prayer after him. When he finished, he told everybody to keep their eyes closed and heads bowed. He then asked for the people who had prayed the prayer to raise their hands wherever they were seated. This way he would know who they were so he could pray for them. He said that nobody but him would be looking.

The pastor then said, “I see that hand over there. Thank you. I see a hand in the back. I see some young women in the front . . .” And he proceeded to acknowledge the hands that were going up all around the room.

During this entire time I had kept my eyes open and was watching the whole thing.

I didn’t see any hands go up.

Several years ago my dad reminded me of that day. He told me he had his eyes open the whole time as well—only he was not watching for hands. He was watching me. He said that when he realized what was going on and that I was observing it all, he had this sick feeling that I would walk away from God and the church and faith forever. He said he kept thinking, I’ve lost Rob. I’ve lost Rob . . .

I am like you. I have seen plenty done in the name of God that I’m sure God doesn’t want anything to do with. I have lots of reasons for bailing on the whole thing.

I am also like you because I have a choice. To become bitter, cynical, jaded, and hard. Anybody can do that. A lot have. Hatred is a powerful, unifying force. And there is a lot to be repulsed by.

Or, like you, I can choose to reclaim my innocence. We can choose to reclaim our innocence together. We can insist that hope is real and that a group of people who love God and others really can change the world. We can reclaim our idealism and our belief and our confidence in the big ideas that stir us deep in our bones. We can commit all the more to being the kinds of people who are learning how to do what Jesus teaches us.

I am not going to stop dreaming of a new kind of faith for the millions of us who need it. I am not going to stop dreaming of new kinds of communities that put the love of God and the brilliance of Jesus on display in honest, compelling ways. I am not going to stop dreaming of new ways to live lives of faith and creativity and meaning and significance.

But I can’t do it alone. I need you. We need you. We need you to rediscover wonder and awe. We need you to believe that it is really possible. We need you to join us.

It’s better that way.

It’s what Jesus had in mind.

Acknowledgments (#ulink_01807267-74fd-5bf9-9dd2-2af3214420e1)

I’m sending much love to all those who had a hand in this book:

Angela Scheff, editor extraordinaire

Chris Ferebee for staying calm

Erwin McManus for demanding that I write something before I die

Kent Dobson for reference help

Tom Maas for starting the car

My partners at Flannel for their tireless fidelity

René DeHaan-Canetti for teaching me more than he’ll ever know

Tom Rinks for throwing the frisbee

The Mars Hill community—who would have thought?

My extended family for being up for the journey

Kristen, shall we go another eleven?

Endnotes (#ulink_c917f9bc-62fb-5dc7-a2b7-a076fd432de1)

MOVEMENT ONE: JUMP

1 (#ulink_85999f75-2e03-5a85-889f-730ec6a5d2cd) Marcus Borg explains this idea extremely well in his book The Heart of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003).

2 (#ulink_ed0db4e2-5853-5f8c-bb23-0da3b1cde19e) John 14:9.

3 (#ulink_7aec53e2-bd5e-59b1-b61a-2537e50e94a3) I first came across the phrase “lined up” in Cornelius Plantinga’s book Engaging God’s World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).

4 (#ulink_ac5623d9-5056-5184-99be-0cf02d4ba298) John 1:14.

5 (#ulink_ac5623d9-5056-5184-99be-0cf02d4ba298) This fact, of course, doesn’t make the doctrine any less true. It’s been true all along; people just “recently” discovered it.

6 (#ulink_5adc2542-35c1-5625-9a54-610525c80817) Deuteronomy 4:12; see also verse 15.

7 (#ulink_ac23cedc-0a97-5d98-a2e6-c87f638fe349) Job 11:7. God also says in Isaiah 55:8, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” It is written like this in the Psalms: “His understanding has no limit” (147:5).

8 (#ulink_2ccf7d87-5163-5280-8132-e62ee2e32a21) Exodus 3:14.

9 (#ulink_d19c8ade-c181-5ef5-a2a0-94141ec12edc) Exodus 33:23.

10 (#ulink_9febae02-2067-56a4-87c4-be764010d623) It’s interesting that we measure days by the sun and moon, which weren’t created until day four.

11 (#ulink_017d98dc-d499-5f52-b8a1-1c66f7130be1) Matthew 19:28; Acts 3:21; Colossians 1:20.

12 (#ulink_c1ec2898-6042-5cd8-974b-e820a3629f31) See Matthew 25:41.

13 (#ulink_c1ec2898-6042-5cd8-974b-e820a3629f31) Luke 14:16–24.

14 (#ulink_25eb6824-1474-5d14-8880-9effd043bba3) David Rylaarsdam from Calvin Theological Seminary makes a great point about questioning God: In Job 42:7, God indicates that he is angry with the questions of Job’s three friends, which is paralleled in the gospels when the religious leaders try to trap Jesus with their questions. But Job’s friends and the Pharisees had a smug sense of arrival about their theology. The psalmists, by contrast, demonstrate humility about their understanding of God, and their questions arise out of the context of faith (even if it is weak faith mixed with much doubt). So the psalmists are able to ask even tougher questions of God than the Pharisees: “My God, my God, you said you would not forget your children, and now you’re hiding your face from me. I don’t get it! Where are you? I’m getting hammered here. Why?”

15 (#ulink_ab571ea7-8d17-5887-bf8e-c28fb1129131) Genesis 18.

16 (#ulink_bc937c46-afb1-5333-98cd-86ee5864664a) Exodus 3–4.

17 (#ulink_d7407dab-1550-5ff1-a773-40df1db45f34) Take a look at I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology by Abraham Joshua Heschel, edited by Samuel Dresner (New York: Crossroad Classic, 1983).

18 (#ulink_46b2100c-446c-5dc6-bbfb-cb97a23d240b) Robert Farrar Capon deals with this in his book The Fingerprints of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). Go out and buy all of his books and read them immediately.

19 (#ulink_46b2100c-446c-5dc6-bbfb-cb97a23d240b) If you really want to know, this is from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999).

20 (#ulink_c662e9e1-059a-5434-9b1d-c7d37b585e9b) 1 John 4:8, my emphasis.

21 (#ulink_16f13847-e4c1-5198-af91-28e08fa6b937) This is quoted from Entertainment Weekly (6 February 2004).

22 (#ulink_a3dcc634-faad-57da-8dba-fbffc32ca2d9) I heard Dwight Pryor say this several years ago. Dwight is about as close as you can get to a Christian rabbi, and he has deeply influenced me. Check out his teachings at www.jcstudies.com.

23 (#ulink_6b3a8ccd-87d4-5c6b-a787-2e4e1a876f5d) David Rylaarsdam provided me with this insight.