“What We Talk About When We Talk About God: Finding a New Faith for the Twenty-First Century” by Rob Bell (London: Collins, 2013).

Enjoyable, thoughtful, intriguing.
**** Andy gives this book a 4 Star Rating on Goodreads. [Available from Wellington Library]
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Memorable quotes include:

“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.” - page 4

An atom is in size to a golf ball as a golf ball is in size to Earth.
That small.
If an atom were blown up to the size of a stadium, the nucleus (centre of the atom) would be the size of a grain of rice, but it would weigh more than the stadium. - page 33

And atoms, it turns out, are 99.9 percent empty space.
If all of the empty space was taken out of all of the atoms in the universe, the universe would fit in a sugar cube. - page 43

“We are both large and small,
strong and weak,
formidable and faint,
reflecting the image of the divine,
and formed from dust.” - page 55

“Never confuse the person formed in the image of God, with the evil that is in him; because evil is but a chance misfortune, an illness, a devilish reverie. But the very essence of the person is the image of God, and this remains in him despite every disfigurement.” - St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ (footnotes, p218)
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“We're an exotic blend of
awesome
and
pathetic,
extraordinary
and
lame,
big
and
small. - page 56

“... you are more than the sum of your parts in the same way that
novels are more than just words,
songs are more than just the notes,
and boats are more than just the planks.” - page 59

“When God is described as father or mother … God is like that.
It's an attempt to put that which is beyond language into a frame or form we can grasp.
An image of God doesn't contain God,
in the same way a word about God or a doctrine or a dogma about God isn't God, it only points to God.” - page 89, 90.

God as woman.....
“Take faith, for example. For many people in our world, the opposite of faith is doubt. The goal, then, within this understanding, is to eliminate doubt. But faith and doubt aren't opposites. Doubt is often a sign that your faith has a pulse, that it's alive and well and exploring and searching. Faith and doubt aren't opposites, they are, it turns out, excellent dance partners.” - page 92.

“Do you believe the exact same things you did in the exact same way you did five years ago?
Probably not.
You've grown,
evolved,
changed,
had new experiences,
studied,
listened,
observed,
suffered,
reflected,
and reexamined.

That's how faith is.
We learn as we go.” - page 93, 94.
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“Gospel is the shocking, provocative, revolutionary, subversive, counterintuitive good news that in your moments of greatest
despair,
failure,
sin,
weakness,
losing,
failing,
frustration,
inability,
helplessness,
wandering,
and falling short,
God meets you there-
right there-
right exactly there-
in that place, and announces,
I am on your side.

Gospel insists that God doesn’t wait for us to get ourselves polished, shined, proper, and without blemish. God comes to us and meets us and blesses us while we are still in the middle of the mess we created.

Gospel isn’t us getting it together so that we can have God’s favor; gospel is us finding God exactly in the moment of our greatest not-togetherness. 

Gospel is grace, and grace is a gift. You don’t earn a gift; you simply receive it. You don’t make it happen; you wake up to what has already happened.

Gospel isn’t doing enough good to be worthy; it’s your eyes being opened to your unworthiness and to Jesus’s insistence that that was never the way it worked in the first place.

Being a good person, then, naturally flows not from trying to get on God’s good side but from your realization that God has been on your side the whole time.

Gospel calls you to a major change in thinking, a giant shift in understanding, a massive leap in how you see yourself, otherwise, you’re stuck in the same old points program, trying to earn what is already yours.

Can you see why Jesus often began his teachings by saying “Repent!”? You know what repent means? It means to change your thinking, to see things in a new way, to have your mind renewed.” - Pg. 135-137.

Repent is the word metanoia in Greek: meta meaning change (as in metamorphosis) and noia meaning to think or perceive – that is, “to see in a new way, to have a new mind.” (footnotes, page 222).”
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“... the dusty, messy, bloody and unexpected stories about Jesus,
who
touches lepers, whom no one else would touch,
and
hears the cries of blind people, who had been told to be quiet,
and
dines with tax collectors, whom everybody hated,
and
talks with thirsty, loose Samaritan women he wasn't supposed to with -
over and over again we see him going to the edges, to the margins, to those in trouble, those despised, those no one else would touch, those who were ignored, the weak, the blind, the lame, the lost, the losers.

He moves toward them;
he extends himself to them;
he reaches out to them;
he meets them in their place of pain, helplessness, abandonment and failure.

He is living, breathing evidence that God wants everybody, everyone, to be rescued, renewed and reconciled to ourselves, our neighbors, our world -- and our God.
 
There are, of course, consequences to his
teaching
and
touching
and
talking
and
dining
and
healing
and
helping.

In his very insistence that God is for everybody, Jesus challenged the conventional wisdom of his day that God is only for some.
In his standing in solidarity with the poor, he confronted the system that created those kinds of conditions.
In his declarations that God can't fit in any one temple, he provoked those who controlled and profited from that very temple.” - p141-2

(References include: Matt 8; 20; Mk 2; Jn 4; Lk 5; Mt 9.)
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“And so when I talk about God, I’m talking about the Jesus who invites us to embrace our weakness and doubt and anger and whatever other pain and helplessness we’re carrying around, offering it up in all of its mystery, strangeness, pain, and unresolved tension to God, trusting that in the same way that Jesus’s offering of his body and blood brings us new life, this present pain and brokenness can also be turned into something new.

The peace we are offered is not a piece that is free from
tragedy,
illness,
bankruptcy,
divorce,
depression, or
heartache.
It is peace rooted in the trust that the life Jesus gives us is deeper, wider, stronger, and more enduring than whatever our current circumstances are, because all we see is not all there is and the last word about us and our struggle has not yet been spoken.” - page 146

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How did the message of the Jesus who comes …. p147
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“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.” - page 149
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page 160
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“What we see in these passages is God meeting people, tribes, and cultures right where they are and drawing and inviting and calling them forward, into greater and greater shalom and respect and rights and peace and dignity and equality. It's as if human history were progressing along a trajectory, an arc, a continuum; and sacred history is the capturing and recording of those moments when people became aware that they were being called and drawn and pulled forward by the divine force and power and energy that gives life to everything.” - page 164-165.
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“.. the divine pull … It is possible for religious people who see themselves as God’s people to resist the forward-calling of God to such a degree that the larger culture around them is actually ahead of them in a particular area, such as the protection of human dignity or the integration of the mind and body or the treatment of women or inclusion of the forgotten and marginalized or compassion or intellectual honesty or care for the environment. Churches and religious communities and organizations can claim to speak for God while at the same time actually being behind the movement of God that is continuing forward in the culture around them …
without their participation.” - page 169
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“You have to construct a temple to teach the idea of holy and sacred, but in doing that you risk that people will incorrectly divide the world up into two realms and distinctions that don’t actually exist.

This is why the Jesus story is so massive, progressive, and forward-looking in human history. Jesus comes among us as God in a body, the divine and the human existing in the same place, in his death bringing an end to the idea that God is confined to a temple because the whole world is a temple, the whole earth is
holy,
holy,
holy,
as the prophet Isaiah said.” - page 181-2.
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“... on the night Jesus was betrayed. Surrounded by his followers, eating a last meal, he gave them bread and wine, telling them that those ordinary foods were his body and blood, telling them that whenever they gathered and took the bread and wine it would be an enduring experience for them of the new life he was giving them through his life and death and resurrection. In doing this, he was treating common bread and wine as holy and sacred because for him all bread and wine are holy and sacred. And all bread and wine are holy and sacred to him because all of life is sacred and holy, and that includes all interactions, events, tasks, conversations, work, words, and of course jobs.” - p.182.1

{Ephrem the Syrian prayed in the fourth century:
The spirit is in your bread,
the fire in your wine,
a manifest wonder,
that our lips have received.} Footnote, p.223.2

“Jesus doesn’t divide the world up into the common and the sacred; he gives us eyes to see the sacred in the common.” - page 184.

“The first Christians had a way of talking about this massive movement, bigger than any one of us, that's sweeping across human history: they wrote that God is in the process of moving everything forward so that God will be over all and through all and in all, and in another passage in the Bible it's written that God does what God does so that God may be all in all.
Over
and
through
and
in
and
all in all.” - Page 187.
(1 Cor 15; Eph 4)
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“This is why the Psalms … are so full of people asking God to do horrible, vengeful, violent things to their enemies.” - Page 192. (example of destructive impulses, Ps 35)
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“We all have a shadow side, the part of us in which our fears and insecurities and greed and terror and worst suspicions about ourselves reside. It’s a churning, restless, dark place, often containing truths that can cripple us with just a fleeting thought.

When I talk about the God who is with us, for us, and ahead of us, I’m talking about our facing that which most terrifies us about ourselves, embracing it and fearing it no longer, refusing to allow it to exist separate from the rest of our being, resting assured that we are loved and we belong and we are going to be just fine

“People deal with their shadow side in a number of ways, the most common way being to find outside enemies and point to them, demonizing them and blaming them for long lists of perceived evils. This strategy often does a very effective job of helping us avoid that which lurks within us. Politicians and radio talk-show hosts and pastors can become very skilled in this, constantly pointing out the darkness and evil and twisted ways of others to avoid dealing with the doubts and insecurities and questions they bear in their own bones.” p193-4
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The Greeks had a way of talking about the deep place within us where our desires reside: they called it our splagchnon. Splagchnon translates literally as bowel or intestines or guts or innards. It came to refer to the part of you from which you truly live, the seat of your being that drives you to move and act and touch and feel. p196
[When] we need to face and know and name and embrace all that is true about us, from our fears and addictions and doubts and guilt to our dreams and desires and hopes and longings. p197
What happened in the Western world several hundred years ago is that the rational dimensions of our being gained a prominence over other ways of knowing. This had a powerful effect, leading many of us to discount the very real and reliable information our bodies are constantly absorbing from the world around us. P199
And this isn’t just about listening and trusting our bodies, but also about the far more important responsibility we have to honor them as the gifts they are. P200
{Splagchnon is found in the New Testament eleven times} Footnote, p.224.

“So when Jesus calls us to love our neighbor, this is more than just a command or an unethical statement or a rule of life; it’s truth about the very nature of reality. We are deeply connected with everybody around us, and our intentions and words and thoughts and inclinations toward them matter more than we can begin to comprehend” (202)
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There's a reason why people have been taking the bread and wine and remembering Jesus's life and death and resurrection for the past two thousand years.
We need reminders of who we are and how things actually are.
And so we come to the table exactly as we are, some days on top of the world, other days barely getting by. p.206.3
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Philippi:
“.. [Paul] tells them that the God who began a good work in them will be sure and certain to complete it. Paul does something really, really clever here in this letter that many of his contemporary Jewish writers often did: he uses particular words in a particular order so that he can say multiple things at the same time. Paul uses the words began and good work and complete very deliberately: those are loaded words, because they're used in that same order in the Genesis creation poem that begins the Bible, a poem about a massive bang that brought the world into being, bristling with explosive creative potential and possibility. So when Paul, a man thoroughly versed in the ancient Hebrew scriptures, uses those particular words in that particular order in his letter to his friends, he's connecting their story to the creation of the universe.
His point is that the same creative bang that formed the universe is unleashed in us through our trust in what God is doing in the world through Jesus. His insistence is that this extraordinary energy in all its diverse and expansive forms is deeply personal and readily available and on our side.
I believe this is true.” p209-210.

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Extra:
1. The Word: Kavod (Ancient Hebrew)
What it means: “The awareness of the importance of things. Kavod originally was a business term, referring to weights and measures. Over time the word began to take on a more figurative meaning, referring to the importance and significance of something.”
When—and how—to use it: “Kavod is what happens when you’re exchanging the usual ‘How are yous?’ with a person you see regularly, only on this particular day she doesn’t respond with her normal, ‘Fine, and you?’ but instead says, ‘Not good’—and suddenly everything changes. Now the conversation is no longer brief and shallow like it has been for years, because now it weighs something, it is significant, it matters. She matters; you matter; the fact that she decided to be honest with you matters; the thing that is happening between you matters.”
Why Bell believes we need it: “The word is often used in the scriptures to refer to that which happens when the monotony is pierced, the boredom hijacked, the despair overpowered by your sense that something else is going on, something that reminds you of your smallness, frailty, and impermanence. It’s that gut-level awareness you’re seized by that tells you, ‘Pay attention, because this matters.'”
2. The Word: Grenzbegrifflich (German)
What it means: “Grenzbegrifflich describes that which is very real but is beyond analysis and description.”
When—and how—to use it: When you confront “those things that you absolutely, positively know to be true but would be hard-pressed to produce evidence for if asked.” Such as, “explaining how that particular song moves you or articulating why you fell in love with that person.”
Why we need it: “‘To believe that there’s more going on here, that there may be a reality beyond what we can comprehend—that’s something else. That’s being open. There are other ways of knowing than only those of the intellect.”
3. The Word: Ruach (Ancient Hebrew)
What it means: “An explosive, expansive, surprising, creative energy that surges through all things, holding everything all together and giving the universe its life and depth and fullness.”
When—and how—to use it: When we want to “talk about those moments, when an object or gesture or word or event is what it is, but is also more, at the same time, something more.” For example: “It was a meal, but it was more than a meal; just as it was a conversation and yet more than a conversation.”
Why we need it: “In our modern world, people understand spirit to mean something less real, less tangible, less substantive—something nonphysical, something that may or may not exist. But when the Hebrews spoke of the ruach, they weren’t talking about something less real; they were talking about what happens when something becomes more real, right before your eyes…The challenge is for me and you to become more and more the kind of people who are aware of the divine presence, attuned to the ruach, present to the depths of each and every moment.”
4. The Word: Splagchnon (Greek)
What it means: “The deep place within us where our desires reside. Splagchnon translates literally as bowel or intestines or guts or innards. It came to refer to the part of you from which you truly live, the seat of your being that drives you to move and act and touch and feel.”
When—and how—to use it: “[When] we need to face and know and name and embrace all that is true about us, from our fears and addictions and doubts and guilt to our dreams and desires and hopes and longings.”
Why we need it: “What happened in the Western world several hundred years ago is that the rational dimensions of our being gained a prominence over other ways of knowing. This had a powerful effect, leading many of us to discount the very real and reliable information our bodies are constantly absorbing from the world around us. This isn’t just about listening and trusting our bodies, but also about the far more important responsibility we have to honor them as the gifts they are.”
5. The Word: Echad (Hebrew)
What it means: “A unity made up of many parts.”
When to use it: “We have an intuitive awareness that everything is ultimately connected to everything else. When you get a glimpse of what someone else has gone through or is currently in the throes of and you find yourself inextricably, mysteriously linked with that person because you have been reminded again of our common humanity.”
Why we need it: “We live in a dis-integrated culture, in which headlines and opinions and images and sound bites pound us with their fragmented, frantic, isolated blips and squeaks, none of it bound together by any higher unity, coherence, or transcendent reference point. This fragmentation can easily shape us, convincing us that things aren’t one. But everything has a singular, common source and is infinitely, endlessly, deeply connected. We are involved, all of us. And it all matters.”