ChimpsAhoy

The wife and I attended the gods aren’t angry tour last night at Orpheum Theater, taught by Rob Bell. Information on the tour:

Part anthropology, part history, part deconstruction – this is new material that Rob hasn’t taught before, exploring how humans invented religion to make themselves feel better.

My thoughts after the jump:

I’ll preface everything by saying that I love Bell’s teaching style, even going as far as saying he is my favorite teacher. However, I am taken aback (as I’m sure he is) at all the ‘Bell worship’ – whether its blogs I’ve read online or the awkward partial standing ovation at the end of his teaching. As for people who blindly follow his teaching or for those who discount him as a heretic (see Amazon.com reviews) – he is human; he is sharing his views from an admitted flawed human perspective. As he says in the preface of his book, “Just because I’m a Christian and I’m trying to articulate a Christian worldview doesn’t mean I’ve got it nailed. I’m contributing to the discussion.” I do think that he is someone that God speaks through, and he did so last night.

With that caveat, I was overwhelmed at the perspective he took on this teaching, and I’m not going to summarize his hour and a half teaching here – no spoilers! Never before have I heard a Christian teacher take head-on anthropology as the beginning of the teaching. So much of my experience with messages is the avoidance of the Old Testament and its roots/similarities to pagan gods and goddesses of the era. In college, I took a class in Hebrew scripture and the teacher spent most of his time discounting the Torah as stories ’stolen’ from culture of the time. Animal sacrifice, human sacrifice (i.e. Abraham and Isaac), etc all finds roots in pagan culture, yet our modern teaching does all it can to avoid that. When was the last time someone taught Leviticus in church aside from quick quotes or as a joke? How many non-Christians approach the Old Testament and leave the scriptures entirely disturbed? The Old Testament is essentially uprooted from history and interpreted from a modern culture. I realize this is not a new concept to teach rooted in culture – rather, it was used as the foundation of the teaching and ultimately brought so much beauty to Levitical law and the history of encounters with God up to the sacrifice of Jesus. I’m not at all summarizing his teaching either – he really brought it full circle without making the whole discussion analytical or heady. A phenomenal message that I do hope is available on video soon.

If you can catch this series in your city, I would highly recommend it.