Quotes from Rob Bell

That's what Spirit does, it brings about new creation. And what was true thirteen billion years ago is true now.

It takes quite a spine to turn the other cheek. It takes phenomenal fortitude to love your enemy. It takes firm resolve to pray for those who persecute you. (with reference to Matthew 5)

Jesus responds to almost every question he's asked with...a question. What do you think? How do you read it? he asks, again and again and again.

This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.

God is bigger than the Christian faith.

I believe God gives people the right to say no, to resist, to refuse, to reject, to cling to their sins, to cling to their version of their story.

Heaven, for Jesus, wasn't less real, but more real.

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. Life in the age to come. Earthy.

We shape our God, and then our God shapes us.

everybody is resting on a set of interpretations, and we need to be honest about it.

as the king rose from his seat, Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king's belly. Even the handle sank in after the blade, and his bowels discharged. Ehud did not pull the sword out, and the fat closed in over it. (That's in the Bible. Word for word.)

Is God our friend, our provider, our protector, our father—or is God the kind of judge who may in the end declare that we deserve to spend forever separated from our Father? Is God like the characters in a story Jesus would tell, old ladies who keep searching for the lost coin until they find it, shepherds who don't rest until that one sheep is back in the fold, fathers who rush out to greet and embrace their returning son, or, in the end, will God give up?