This is an excerpt from an article written by Rob Bell and printed in the book, "The Younger Evangelicals" by Robert E. Webber.
I know a lot of people don't like Rob. But it is stuff like this that keeps me reading him.
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"...We actually believe that the biblical text is a living and breathing Word. For the first year or so of our existence as a church, I preached through the Book of Leviticus, verse by verse.
Yes that’s right.
Menstrual blood, goat sacrifice, and no shell fish, please.
Every verse.
Now if you at this moment are smiling or laughing or thinking that is crazy, what have you just said about the biblical text? Do you have a canon with a canon? Either you believe that God speaks through his entire text, or you stick within the evangelically approved texts that are tamed down enough for the local congregation.
We have no desire to tame the text. We want to let it out of its cage and we want to see it prowl around our lives, devouring us and spitting out the bones. We don’t want to be detached, methodical scientists who stand over the subject and apply the proper rules, methods, and procedures so that we can achieve favorable results. The modern impulse is always to reduce it to simple principles and clever maxims. To continually insist that with enough work, it will all make sense and line up.
Life doesn’t always line up.
We love the Scriptures and we want them to sweep us off our feet.
In the new world, much of what is currently considered preaching and study will be rendered totally irrelevant. The Bible is not a nice book. It is not a clean book. It is not a guide to proper behavior. It does not even seem to care whether it is “relevant” or not.
I have asked the congregation to please never tell me that my message was “nice”.
The Bible is a revolutionary manifesto that could get you killed in many parts of the world. It is living, it is breathing, and it demands that we surrender to it unconditionally so that it can transform us."
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1 comment:
Wow. This is interesting. So are you a "tamer of the text?" I don't believe Paul, that you tame very much. I think that you want the Word of God to speak through you, w/o being watered down.
Life doesn't always line up. How true how true, but I do believe that it does all work out, and God has His hands in it all. Just look at Michael. Not lined up, not the ideal, but a blessing to Bob and I and anyone else who is brave enought to get to know him.
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