Everything is Spiritual by Rob Bell
“It is the myth of redemptive violence. It’s been around forever. It’s the belief that when someone wrongs you, the way to make it better is to wrong them. They bomb us, then we bomb them. Which never, ever makes things better. What the myth of redemptive violence does is keep the violence in circulation. Back and forth the violence goes, without anybody ever learning anything. That’s the heart of it, right there. A lack of learning. A lack of new thinking. A lack of imagination. There’s no other way to change the world?”
“This is the revolutionary truth at the heart of the Jesus story. He’s executed for insisting that there are other ways to change the world. Love. Solidarity. Generocity. Compassion. Praying for your enemies. That’s been the power of the teachings of Jesus for two thousand years. He insists that violence can end. We don’t have to live like this.”
“We craft these identities, and then we cling to them, grasping them for the sense of security they give us. And then we let them go, and new identities form, sometimes around who are are and sometimes around who we aren’t. I was that, but now I’m not that…Soul doesn’t care what it is or what it should be called. Soul just wants to enter into it. And feel it. And absorb it. And experience it. Soul wants to participate.”
“Think of how much violence in our world comes from the hands of those who have never felt seem. When there aren’t jobs or education or options or basics like food and water and health care—and no one seems to care—of course people get angry. It becomes political and societal and structural, but it often starts deeply personal: no one sees.”
“Think of the most obnoxious person you know. Someone who has the supernatural ability to get under your skin. Picturing them? Now imagine that they’re your teacher. That they’re here in your life to teach you something. A few questions: why do they annoy you? What is it about them that gets under your skin? Can you name it?
Is that present anywhere within you? Are you completely free of it? Or is there some fear lurking within you that you have this same whatever-it-is within you? Is this why they have this unique ability to provoke you like they do? Have they come to help you see what you’re terrified might be true about you? What a gift this person is.
Or maybe not. Maybe it’s something awful they do and it’s nowhere in you. More questions: why do you care so much? Lots of people do awful things. Why this person, and these things? Does this person ignite these energies within you because this is something you are here to do something about but you aren’t doing it? Have they been sent to wake you up to your work in the world? What a gift this person is.
Or does this person crank you up because they are free in some way you aren’t free? You resent them, because they cut the cord and now they fly, and you’re still tied down? Is it fear? You don’t want to disappoint someone? You might fail? Is this why they agitate you like they do? What a gift. “
“I have these old impulses, shaped from years of trying to help people. Urges to race ahead and give the answer, to tell everybody that it’s all going to be fine, to stay a step ahead of the pain with ideas and truth and insights and hope. Just be funny, keep moving, just keep talking, just do something so we don’t have to sit in it and feel it fully.”
Rob Bell has a podcast called “Robcast.” I listened to the South Star episode (March 12, 2021), with the idea that North Stars are when we see someone doing something we want to do—and it guides us. South Stars are when we see someone doing something we DON’T want to do—and it guides us to do NOT that. Such a powerful way to transform all the negative stuff around us, and let it guide us to good.