Sorry to my half-dozen readers.
I just finished reading Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis. Sorry Zondervan, I refuse to include that cheesy subtitle you added to help market it in your bookstores. The book was very good. Hey, it got me blogging again, so that counts for something...right?
An interesting undercurrent runs through the book--the mystery of God. I say interesting since that same undercurrent has been running through my mind for months now. I've been asking myself, "What do you really know about God?" Most of the time, no one answers.
If you want to know some of my thoughts on the mystery of God, look back at my April post, Is mystery back in vogue? This post also found it's way into the Faith articles on The Ooze.
In Velvis (my short title for the book...again, minus the cheesy subtitle), Bell uses the better part of Movement One (12 of the 18 pages) to talk about questions and mystery. Here are my two favorite passages:
The Christian faith is mysterious to the core. It is about things and beings that ultimately can't be put into words. Language fails. And if we do definitively put God into words, we have at that very moment made God something God is not (p. 32).
Questions, no matter how shocking or blasphemous or arrogant or ignorant or raw, are rooted in humility. A humility that understands that I am not God. And there is more to know (p. 30).
Hmmm...mystery...questions...humility...I can relate to those things. Bell does attempt to put his faith into words, but he steps back from the Christian worldview and tries to take in the whole story from Genesis to now. He understands that WE are part of the story that is still being told...or as Brian McLaren would say, "The Story We Find Ourselves In" (another great book, by the way).
Where have you tried to box God in? Does your faith allow room for questions?
I'm glad a good friend lent me Bell's book to read. It got me blogging again. It also prompted me to pick up Chilton's Rabbi Jesus again and continue learning.
Thanks for stopping by...I'll try not to be a stranger on my own blog from now on. Good night.
1 comment:
At the risk of sounding like a misguided Christ follower, I'm finding more and more that I'm grateful to have grown up outside of church. I just didn't see much of God there - he was just packaged into a lifestyle, and I wanted him to be my Life. And I guess maybe you have to tear open the box in order for that to happen.
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