What is Rob Bell Talking About When He's Talking About What We Talk About When We Talk About God?

Rob Bell’s Promotional Video and the Book’s Premise

Rob Bell has a new promotional video out there put out by HarperOne, and it's on the HarperOne video YouTube channel, where he's discussing his forthcoming book entitled, What We Talk About When We Talk About God.

And as you're about to hear, I think the more important question to ask is, what is Rob Bell talking about when he's talking about what we talk about when we talk about God? Yeah, listen in.

I think there are a lot of people in our culture who can't do the God sort of belief system or the idea. And so there's this very, very, very popular movement that essentially says, this is all there is.

The problem is, for lots and lots of people, that doesn't work. Because your kid is born, or you hear that piece of music, or you find yourself in the middle of some natural wonder, and you're like, I find it hard to believe this is all there is.

There's nothing else. There's just such extraordinary, great, interesting, fascinating truths and insights and discoveries. Where'd the idea for the book come from? It actually started years ago. Kept having all these ideas, and it all seemed to have something connecting it, but I didn't really know what.

Oh yeah, there's some stuff on Italian monkeys eating peanuts.

Stuff on Italian monkeys eating peanuts. Right, because that makes perfect sense when you're talking about Christianity and God.

The Book’s Research Notes and Disconnected Ideas

The strangeness of the universe, it dug up all these questions, and I realized I needed.

To read.

I needed to do a bit of research.

Yeah, because those monkeys eating peanuts, I mean, that causes all kinds of questions to come flooding into my mind. How about you?

I started amassing books, because there's like 50 different topics. Then I was trying to organize it, because it was so much sort of percolating there, and I had no idea how to organize it, so I figured maybe I'd do 3x5 cards.

You know, come to think of it, he's got this, I'm watching the video, he's got this huge stack of 3x5 cards with all these little ideas that he's talked about. You ever, what is that television program out there about those people who hoard things?

It's called Hoarders, isn't it? I think it is. They actually have one of those reality TV shows about the people who have that mental disorder where they can't actually throw away anything, and so the clutter and the collections like take over their entire house, their garage, and they end up buying multiple storage facilities, because it can't get rid of anything.

Literally their houses become like the Grand Canyon, where there's just these little tiny walkways where you can go through, and I'm beginning to think that post-modernism has done a number on poor Rob Bell, that to now, rather than being a hoarder of stuff, I'm beginning to think that he is a hoarder of non-lucid ideas, because that's quite a collection.

I'm looking at the stack of 3x5 index cards that he has collected.

Every single card had one of the ideas for the book. Here's one about cosmic significance, here's one about crime for the divine, like there's just tons and tons and tons of them. So here's one about boombox, snail, volume, further closer.

Boombox, snail, volume, further closer. Yeah, because, you know, that just points us straight to Jesus, I'm sure.

And then comes the inevitable moment, when you have to just sit down at the computer and start typing.

I could just imagine how hard that would be with all these weird non-lucid disjuncted ideas.

It's just blank pages.

God as the One Who Pulls Us Forward

Yeah.

You just begin each morning like, kunk type word, letter, paragraph. And it doesn't matter who's going to read this or like this or not like this, it's all totally irrelevant.

Yeah, I agree. This book is probably totally irrelevant.

What matters is you know that you are here to make this, and so your feet get planted under the table, and you start typing.

Mm, yeah.

It's important that you have good posture while typing in your word processing program.

And it's almost like the desires of your heart are revealed at that moment.

Yeah.

Do you want to make the next thing?

Do you want to make the next thing? Again, the question I'm asking is, what is Rob Bell talking about when he's talking about what we talk about when we talk about God? I haven't any clue what he's talking about.

Do you have any idea what he's talking about? Snail further closer?

Boombox?

Do you love it?

And so you just give a big giant yes. The book is essentially, God is not behind us dragging us backwards.

God is not behind us dragging us backwards. Yeah, I'm not familiar with any passages of scripture that actually says anything of the sword. Nor am I familiar with any Christians who are making that claim.

But, you know, as strange as his life is, maybe he's run into a whole bunch of people who have gotten in his face and say, no, God is behind us and he's dragging us backwards. And so Rob Bell felt the importance of, you know, he might have been one of those like, you know, people sitting on the side of the road, you know, with the sign that says we'll work for food.

But since he thinks this is an important thing he needs to address, that's apparently what Rob Bell is talking about when he's talking about what we talk about when we talk about God.

Into some primitive regressive state. God has always been ahead of us pulling us forward.

Oh, so God's ahead of us pulling us forward. Like a big horse? Like a Clydesdale? Or maybe like an ox? I mean, maybe it could be like, you know, like those animals, the Malamutes and the Huskies, you know, that they use for like the Iditarod or something.

Maybe God's like the great dog team pulling us forward into the future.

Okay.

Into greater and greater peace, integration, wholeness and love.

The Video’s Conclusion and the Speaker’s Response

Yeah.

So available March 12th. Rob Bell's new book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God. And that's Rob Bell talking about what we talk about when we talk about God. And I'm not sure what he's talking about.

So, I mean, do you understand what Rob Bell was talking about when he was talking about what we talk about when we talk about God? Because I'm totally at a loss. And I find that reading the Bible is so much easier on my brain than listening to a Rob Bell promotional video or reading a Rob Bell book.

And, I mean, of course, the obvious question is, is that if we're going to talk about God, what's going to be the source of our information about God? Is it going to be non-lucid, postmodern, disjuncted ideas that Rob Bell has collected on a three-by-five index card?

Or is it going to be God's Word? Call me old-fashioned. I'm sure I'll be accused of believing in the God that's behind me pulling me backwards, but I'm going to go with the Bible. Because I've never had, never once in reading the Bible have I had the experience that I had while listening to this latest Rob Bell promotional video and where I just said, I have no clue what on earth he's talking about or even where to begin to figure out where he's, yeah.

So, there you go. So, I mean, if you have any ideas as to what it is that you just heard there, I'd love to get your feedback. Again, the question is, what is or what was, since we're now listening to, what was Rob Bell talking about when he was talking about what we talk about when we talk about God?

If you have, like, even the foggiest notion of what it is that he was actually saying, maybe you can write it down on a napkin and scan it into your computer and email it to me so that I can share it with the rest of the listeners here at Fighting for the Faith, maybe on Facebook and Twitter, because I'm beginning to think I probably need a visual graphic depicting what it was that he was talking about when he was talking about what we talk about when we talk about God.

So, you get what I'm saying?