Rob Bell Quotes - Page 5

I believe that God is with you, that there is a presence. I believe this God is for you. I don't think the universe is a cold, dead place that is indifferent.

Everybody is following somebody. Everybody has faith in something and somebody. We are all believers.

Look at the size of the universe and look at what we're discovering about string theory. There's a wide-eyed sense of we're just getting started here.

I embrace the term 'evangelical,' if by that we mean a belief that we together can actually work for change in the world, caring for the environment, extending to the poor generosity and kindness, a hopeful outlook. That's a beautiful sort of thing.

One of the oldest aches in the bones of humanity is loneliness. I mean it's one of the things that goes way back; loneliness is not good for the world. And so, whoever you are, gay or straight, it is totally normal, natural, and healthy to want somebody to go through life with. It's central to our humanity.

Many people confuse religion with God and walk away from them both. The point isn't Christianity, the point is being a Christian.

Hope. People want hope. We crave hope. We long for hope. Hope has been present since the very beginning. And almost in the worst situations of human history, you often find the greatest amount of hope. The very nature of the situation, the way stepped-on people created within them even more hope than when things were going fine. Hope has always been around.

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

And this reality extends beyond this life. Heaven is full of forgiven people. Hell is full of forgiven people. Heaven is full of people God loves, whom Jesus died for. Hell is full of forgiven people God loves, whom Jesus died for. The difference is how we choose to live, which story we choose to live in, which version of reality we trust.

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.

Any time someone makes you feel guilty about how you are living, that is part of the old system (pre-Christ).

When someone wrongs us, we rarely (if ever) want to do the same thing back. Why? Because we want to do something more harmful. Likewise, when someone insults us, our instinct is to search for words that will be more insulting.Revenge always escalates.

God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.

Love frees us to embrace all of our history, the history in which all things are being made new.

[The Bible] has to be interpreted. And if it isn’t interpreted, then it can’t be put into action. So if we are serious about following God, then we have to interpret the Bible. It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says. We must first make decisions about what it means at this time, in this place, for these people.

Faith can take many different forms and expressions.

The joy is in the creation. So I've never had a target audience, it's always been about being true to the work as it emerges.

You can be living in a big house, driving a nice car, going on exotic vacations and still be empty inside, crippled with fear and dread.

What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry's tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live?

To be honest with you, I am passionate about all the people out there who want to know Jesus, they want to know God, and they are sick of a system that is hung up on a bunch of things that have nothing to do with the love of God.

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.

If your faith is threatened by something that's true, then it wasn't much of a faith to begin with, was it?

Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God's ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.

I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is God's and everything in it.

God is bigger than the Christian faith.