Quotes from Rob Bell

This is because conviction and humility, like faith and doubt, are not opposites; they're dance partners. It's possible to hold your faith with open hands, living with great conviction and yet at the same time humbly admitting that your knowledge and perspective will always be limited.

When someone wrongs us, we rarely (if ever) want to do the same thing back. Why? Because we want to do something more harmful. Likewise, when someone insults us, our instinct is to search for words that will be more insulting. Revenge always escalates.

In one of the accounts of Jesus's death we read that the curtain in the temple of God—the one that kept people out of the holiest place of God's presence— ripped. One New Testament writer said that this ripping was a picture of how, because of Jesus, we can have new, direct access to God. A beautiful idea. But the curtain ripping also means that God comes out, that God is no longer confined to the temple as God was previously.

People wrote these stories down because they found in them something that helped restore their dignity; the stories gave them a sense of identity; they helped give voice to their pain.

If there is a divine being who made everything, including us, what would our experiences with this being look like? The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. We are dealing with somebody we made up. And if we made him up, then we are in control. And so in passage after passage, we find God reminding people that he is beyond and bigger and more.

It's in that place that we're reminded that true life comes when we're willing to admit that we've reached the end of ourselves, we've given up, we've let go, we're willing to die to all of our desires to figure it out and be in control. We lose our life, only to find it.

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.

Jesus did not use hell to try and compel heathens and pagans to believe in God, so they wouldn't burn when they die. He talked about hell to very religious people to warn them about the consequences of straying from their God-given calling and identity to show the world God's love.

Because when you can't hear the cry, when you stop caring for the widow, the orphan, and the refugee among you, it always leads to the diminishing of your empire.

In a letter, Martin Luther, one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, wrote to Hans von Rechenberg in 1522 about the possibility that people could turn to God after death, asking: Who would doubt God's ability to do that?

For Jesus, the question wasn't, "How do I get into heaven?" but "How do I bring heaven here?

Decide now that you will not spend your precious energy speculating about someone else's life and how it compares with yours.

Nerves are God's gift to you, reminding you that your life is not passing you by, Make friend with the butterflies. Welcome them when they come, revel in them, enjoy them, and if they go away, do whatever it takes to put yourself in a position where they return. Better to have a stomach full of butterflies than to feel like life is passing you by.

When we don't throw ourselves completely into it and we hold back our best efforts because of what happened in the past, we are letting the past decide the future.

The Psalms show us what healthy spiritual life looks like. You name everything that's happening inside of you. You give it language and expression, You articulate exactly what the desolation feels like. If you don't drag it up and give it words, then it's buried down in your being somewhere. And it will come out in other ways. Unhealthy, destructive ways. You'll keep it bottled up. And you'll be miserable.

The Bible tells a story. A story that isn't over. A story that is still being told. A story that we have a part to play in.

What's disturbing, then, is when people talk more about hell after this life than they do about hell here and now. As a Christian I want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth: poverty, injustice, suffering--they're all hells on earth and as Christians we oppose them with all of our energies.

I have been told that I need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is that Jesus believes in me.

God doesn't wait for us to get ourselves polished, shined, proper, and without blemish—God comes to us and meets us and blesses us while we are still in the middle of the mess we created.

The Bible is not an argument. It is a record of human experience. The point is not to prove that it's the word of God or it's inspired or it's whatever the current word is that people are using. The point is to enter into its stories with such intention and vitality that you find what it is that inspired people to write these books.

I can't find one place in the teachings of Jesus, or the Bible for that matter, where we are to identity ourselves first and foremost as sinners.

God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2). So does God get what God wants?

It is possible for music to be labeled Christian and be terrible music. It could lack creativity and inspiration. The lyrics could be recycled cliches. 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.

How we respond to what happens to us - especially the painful, excruciating things that we never wanted and we have no control over - is a creative act.