Rob Bell Quotes

Often the people most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned with the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death.

When the female voice is repressed and stifled, the entire community can easily find themselves cut off from the sacred feminine, depriving themselves of the full image of god.

When you are bored, restless, longing for something more, unfulfilled, feeling like you've settled, haunted by the sense of being trapped in your own life, these are the deep waters of your soul speaking to you, telling you something is wrong, something is missing, something needs to change.

How we eat is connected to how we care for the planet
which is connected to how we use our resources
which is connected to how many people in the world go to bed hungry every night
which is connected to how food is distributed
which is connected to the massive inequalities in our world between those who have and those who don't
which is connected to how our justice system treats people who use their power and position to make hundreds of millions of dollars while others struggle just to buy groceries
which is connected to how we treat those who don't have what we have
which is connected to the sanctity and holiness and mystery of our human life and their human life and his little human life
which is why we hold up that baby's hand and say to the parents, 'it's just so small.

If anybody didn't have a messiah complex, it was Jesus

Some things that are labeled Christian aren’t true, and some things that aren’t labeled Christian are true. Some atheists say lots of things that are true, and some Christians are full of shit.

Grace is when you aren’t striving or controlling or trying to change or manipulate or make something happen. Grace is when you find yourself carried along, when all that’s left to do is receive. Grace is when you know you’re loved, exactly as you are. Grace is an entirely different way of experiencing life. Another word for grace is gift.

If this understanding of the good news of Jesus prevailed among Christians, the belief that Jesus’s message is about how to get somewhere else, you could possibly end up with a world in which millions of people were starving, thirsty, and poor; the earth was being exploited and polluted; disease and despair were everywhere; and Christians weren’t known for doing much about it. If it got bad enough, you might even have people rejecting Jesus because of how his followers lived. That would be tragic.

Questions are not scary. What is scary is when people don’t have any. What is tragic is faith that has no room for them.

To elevate abstract doctrines and dogmas over living, breathing, embodied experiences of God’s love and grace, then, is going the wrong direction. It’s taking flesh and turning it back into words.

The great German scholar Helmut Thielicke once said that a person who speaks to this hour’s need will always be skirting the edge of heresy, but only the person who risks those heresies can gain the truth.

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.

Find your rituals, develop your routines, create those practices that ground and center you. Stick to them, don't apologize for them, treat them, even the small things, like they're big things.

That’s why the Bible is not a book about going to heaven. The action is here. The life is here. The point is here. It’s a library of books about the healing and restoring and reconciling and renewing of this world. Our home.

Jesus is supracultural. He is present within all cultures, and yet outside of all cultures. He is for all people, and yet he refuses to be co-opted or owned by any one culture. That includes any Christian culture. Any denomination. Any church. Any theological system. We can point to him, name him, follow him, discuss him, honor him, and believe in him — but we cannot claim him to be ours any more than he’s anyone else’s.