Dialogue with Rob Bell

Christian Celebrity. How do you deal with the obvious stresses and contradictions of that? I know you didn’t set yourself up as a celebrity. I’m not saying you did. But people like to raise other people up as - oh this guy’s unbelievable, this guy’s tremendous. I’ve seen you referred to as a rock star - and I know those references are about you - not from you. I understand that. But how do you deal with that? How do you keep the balance?

I don’t actually ever think about it. My family and I live in a particular neighborhood in our city of Grand Rapids and I walk my boys to school each morning and we have beloved friends who live kind of across the alley and we have these communal dinners and I usually spend each morning praying, and reading, and studying and writing, and cooking up the next thing somewhere in my heart or brain that I have to create or I’ll go crazy. Um, I don’t Google my name…

I did.

I don’t read Blogs. It’s just irrelevant - totally irreverent to my life. So I don’t know what people are actually saying and I don’t really care. I just don’t. I’m compelled. And I have unending joy when I’m simply going about creating the next thing. So some things are like - oh, that’s a book - that’s a film - oh, that’s a tour or that’s a Sunday sermon series at our church. And that’s what I wake up and do each day, so some other realm where there’s some other public thing just doesn’t…

You have no interest.

Yeah, the closest I’d get would be second hand - like your question would be the closest I would get. To me all of that isn’t about the art of it and it’s just totally uninteresting to me.

And the fact that whatever it is that I create people find meaningful or helpful, that’s just - that just blows me away. I’m more humbled. I just find that - that’s amazing. Wow.

That God could use you?

That’s just beyond words. For me it’s just hours and hours of hard work and reflection and the craft of it. The shaping of words and the life I have with my family, and the kids across the street who don’t have any money for anything, and the family down the street who needs someone to help with their food bill, and the people around the corner who got their heat shut off - that’s the world that we live in so that’s to me far more interesting than anything else.

How do you think you’re viewed generally by - and I’m basing my questions on everything I’ve heard or read, not experience. I don’t know you.

Okay.

How do you think you’re viewed generally by the mainstream - some of the mainstream pastors, the traditionalists - the people that are embedded in their religiosity - if that’s a word. Do you think they’re curious? I know you don’t care, but what do you think? That’s different.

I don’t have any specific reaction. I mean, what our general culture has come to see as mainstream Christian faith is an absolutely sick, twisted and perverted version of anything Jesus had in mind.

So the idea that people have perpetuated and propagated a system that is absolutely sick and distorted at its core, and then pass judgment on others who are pursuing the way of Jesus in a way that they are passionate about as being far more historically credible and true to the original intentions of Jesus’ movement, that’s just - that’s crazy.

I think a lot of people who have appointed themselves as the gatekeepers
of what it means to be Christian are not, and assume they have authority
that they do not. They just don’t. They have lost their authority and culture. Nobody’s listening and no one cares.

So to me the highest value in the scriptures is not words, the movement of the scriptures is word to flesh, and the Word became flesh. So the highest form of authority is never just whoever said something, it’s always when that word takes on flesh and blood and it’s actually a living, breathing demonstration of the reconciliation of all things.

So Jesus is, in flesh and blood we are looking at it, what the peace and love and compassion of God looks like when it takes on skin and bone.

My understanding is that as a Christian your authority comes not from how much you spout off, but the ways in which the Divine is taking on flesh and blood. God has always been looking for a body. You know that’s the beautiful thing. Even when church sees itself as a moral police of culture, our job is to point out where everything has gone wrong - if that church does not have some sort of living, breathing witness to truth, and goodness and beauty, if they aren’t incarnate in some way, they’re just one more group of people spouting off.

So the primary problem that you see in the Church today is basically what you just said?