Rob Bell Quotes

The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.

— Rob Bell

“Agape doesn't love somebody because they're worthy.
Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love.
Agape doesn't love somebody because they're beautiful.
Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful.”

— Rob Bell

“The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we'll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it.”

— Rob Bell

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

— Rob Bell

“[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.”

— Rob Bell

“We are only as sick as our secrets.”

— Rob Bell

“Well, I affirm orthodox Christian faith. I affirm the Nicene Creed. I don't think I'm doing anything terribly new.”

— Rob Bell

When someone sets out to be controversial or provocative or shocking as an end in itself, I don't think that's a noble goal.

— Rob Bell

“Every generation has to ask difficult questions about what does it mean to follow Jesus.”

— Rob Bell

“The myth of redemptive violence - Caesar, peace, and victory - is in people's bones so deeply, we aren't even aware of it. You crush the opposition; that's how we bring peace.”

— Rob Bell

“You turn the light on, you get all kinds of bugs.”

— Rob Bell

“It's as if Thomas Kinkade and Dante were at a party, and one turned to the other sometime after midnight and uttered that classic line You know, we really should work together sometime ...”

— Rob Bell

“I'm on your side”

— Rob Bell

“In one of the accounts of Jesus's death we read that the curtain in the temple of God-the one that kept people out of the holiest place of God's presence
ripped.
One New Testament writer said that this ripping was a picture of how, because of Jesus, we can have new, direct access to God.
A beautiful idea.
But the curtain ripping also means that God comes out, that God is no longer confined to the temple as God was previously.”

— Rob Bell

“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.”

— Rob Bell

“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.”

— Rob Bell

“Whatever those things are that make you feel fully alive and like the universe is ultimately a good place and you are not alone, I need a faith that doesn't deny these moments but embraces them.”

— Rob Bell

“When the gospel is understood primarily in terms of entrance rather than joyous participation, it can actually serve to cut people off from the explosive, liberating experience of the God who is an endless giving circle of joy and creativity.”

— Rob Bell

So when we talk about God we're using language, language that employs a vast array of words and phrases and forms to describe a reality that is fundamentally beyond words and phrases and forms.

— Rob Bell

“You cannot control how people are going to respond to you and your work in the world. Surrendering the outcomes does not mean that we don't care or we aren't emotionally involved or we are indifferent to the results. We want to connect with people and move them and inspire them - and we want more kids to learn to read. Surrendering the outcomes is making peace with our lack of control over how people respond to us and our work. Surrendering the outcomes is coming to terms with the freedom people have to react to us and our work however they want.”

— Rob Bell

“Holism is when two plus two equals infinity.”

— Rob Bell

“Your marriage will only be as healthy as the least healthy one of you.”

— Rob Bell

“The scorecard is rooted in resentment, and the space between you is highly responsive to resentment. The scorecard is lethal because its rooted in fear - fear that we're on our own, that we're not going to be taken care of, that we're not going to get what we need ... In order to get rid of scorecard, you have to choose to act in love instead of fear. To get rid of your scorecard, someone has to move toward the other first.”

— Rob Bell

“What the gospel does is confront our version of our story with God's version of our story. It is a brutally honest, exuberantly liberating story, and it is good news. It begins with the sure and certain truth that we are loved. That in spite of whatever has gone horribly wrong deep in our hearts and has spread to every corner of the world, in spite of our sins, failures, rebellion, and hard hearts, in spite of what's been done to us or what we've done, God has made peace with us.”

— Rob Bell

“I believe the discussion itself is divine.”

— Rob Bell

“The question, then, the art, the task, the search, the challenge, the invitation is for you and me to become more and more the kind of people who are aware of the divine presence, attuned to the ruach,”

— Rob Bell

“When you forgive somebody, when you are generous, when you withhold judgment, when you love and when you stand up to injustice, you are, in that moment, bringing heaven to earth.”

— Rob Bell

My interest is in what's true, where is the life, where is the heart and what inspires.

— Rob Bell

“We need a childlike trust that God is good ... ultimately we are OK. That is a simple, beautiful pure thing that can be complicated ferociously by all sorts of intellectual categories.”

— Rob Bell

“I got into pastoring because of the art form. I started a church, but I felt the art form needed to be freed for all people. A particular religion over others was never interesting to me. I wanted to talk to people about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human.”

— Rob Bell

You can set your intention to better understand your soul, your spirit, through daily practices like prayer, yoga and meditation, etc.

— Rob Bell

“Fear wants us to become obsessed with some event or person in the future, a year, a month, even a day. It also wants us to look backwards not at our successes, but our short-comings and our failures. Fear losses it's grip when we stay in the now.”

— Rob Bell

“The modern world has created airports and hospitals and put 10,000 songs in our pocket. It has built gleaming buildings and computers and advances and innovations that blow our minds. But we have soul, and spirit, and consciousness, and the modern world hasn't done so well at helping us name and understand what it means to be thriving and fully alive with a full heart.”

— Rob Bell

“The Christian faith is mysterious to the core. It is about things and beings that ultimately can't be put into words. Language fails. And if we do definitively put God into words, we have at that very moment made God something God is not.”

— Rob Bell

“That breath that you just took, that's a gift!”

— Rob Bell

“For Jesus, heaven and hell were present realities. Ways of living we can enter into here and now. He talked very little of the life beyond this one ...”

— Rob Bell

“Your life is a gift and how you respond to it - what you do with it matters. That's where I start.”

— Rob Bell

It's absurd and quite tragic the way people have managed to pit science against faith. They aren't in conflict at all - they're long lost dance partners. I don't divide the world up into Christians and other people - we are all human beings, brothers and sisters, and we embrace truth wherever we find it, whether that's in a lab, a field or a cathedral. Because sometimes you need a scientist and sometimes you need a poet.

— Rob Bell

“You want people who are both great fans and supporters and believers of your work and people who are also ruthlessly honest. People who will tell you the truth about it. Over the years I've picked up some friends and I know who to show what to and they'll give me the proper read.”

— Rob Bell

“The Bible itself is a book that constantly must be wrestled with and re-interpreted ... Bible interpretation is colored by historical context, the reader's bias and current realities. The more you study the Bible, the more questions it raises. It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says.”

— Rob Bell

“The fact that we are loved and accepted and forgiven in spite of everything we have done is simply too good to be true.”

— Rob Bell

“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.”

— Rob Bell

“There's way too much wonder and mystery all around us to not stay open to more that's going on here. You can wake up, and sense and feel and taste and hear a whole world right here within this one, right here in this breath you're about to take.”

— Rob Bell

“Being a pastor for 20 years I realized that the labels, agnostic, atheist, believer, everybody's human and everybody wants to know what kind of universe we're living in, and everybody's living according to a story.”

— Rob Bell

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

— Rob Bell

“What's interesting is, if you take the scientists and the theologians, the really good ones, they end up both filled with this wide-eyed sense of wonder and awe about look at this world we live in.”

— Rob Bell

When people use the word hell, what do they mean? They mean a place, an event, a situation absent of how God desires things to be. Famine, debt, oppression, loneliness, despair, death, slaughter
they are all hell on earth. Jesus' desire for his followers is that they live in such a way that they bring heaven to earth. What's disturbing is when people talk more about hell after this life than they do about Hell here and now. As a Christian, I want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth.

— Rob Bell

“It's absolutely crucial that we come face to face with the power of our choices.”

— Rob Bell

“The interactions I have are with people who are very kind and very grateful and they say very overwhelming things to me. Somebody who doesn't like what I do or doesn't understand it, then it wasn't for them.”

— Rob Bell

“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.”

— Rob Bell