Everything Is Spiritual: Prelude

I'm not a big fan of Rob Bell. Why? Well, I've grown up understanding that the faith we live by was passed on to us by those before us, and from those before them, and before them, all the way up to Jesus (well, it really started even before 0 A.D., and even before time itself, but Jesus is a good starting point for this post right now). And Christians that sat at his feet told their friends, family, and children, and they did the same, all the way up to me. Now, when we speak of things of God, we have no capacity whatsoever to understand him completely, and while we still walk and breathe in this time, we still have an uncanny ability to get the story a bit jumbled. And occasionally, we mix up parts of God's story with something else, something we put in there. And sometimes, these something-else pieces are treated as God's story. So, when something smells funny, we go back to the Bible, and we go to our brothers and sisters in the faith, and we go to the stories of those who lived before us, and we examine and critique what happened here and there and in the past, and we do our dangedest to brush out the something-else parts and try to learn from our mistakes, because again, we have no capacity whatsoever to understand Him completely. So, in a crude interpretation of what I understand of doctrine, there you have it.

Rob Bell isn't so much in that line of thought. I think he's kind of...well, jumbly. It's sometimes hard for me to understand God's story in his words. I read a quarter-way through one of his popular books, and never finished, because I couldn't comprehend it, and it bothered me. Maybe scared me a bit.

But, in a moment of possible clarity, let me attempt to be clear. Rob, as much as I and others really have problems with his teachings, he's still very much in the family. I'd never explain things like he does, but he's one of us, part of the body, and he plays a very important role that God specifically defined just for him. And I gather that I'm pretty jumbly, just in a different way, because I too have this problem of understanding the fullness of God. I could never fufill Rob's role in God's story, and I doubt he'd do a good job of doing mine, because fingers don't make good elbows.

So Rob, no stones for you today, brother. May God bless you in what you do, and keep doing your elbow thing like no tomorrow. Praise God that He is who He is, for there is none like Him.