Customer Reviews
Honey and Poison 
2008-10-05
What good will it do if you mix truth and error, and present it to a child in the faith to feed on? Why are we doing this to the little ones in the faith ?
One quote from this book says a lot about Rob Bell's attitude towards the Good News of Jesus Christ. Even if he doesn't believe it wholeheartedly, it opens him, his students and followers up to tolerating all kind of future heresies. The history of the faith teaches us that it takes one concession to evil for errors to creep into the church and end up ruining lives. Doctrines are walls to protect the believer. They're neither prison bars nor optional guideposts. Creation in 6 24 hrs days is different than the Virgin birth. You can still have atonement and salvation without 6 24 hrs days creation, but you can't if Jesus had an earthly father!!!! God is His Word, and His Word is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father. We know about Jesus Christ through the historical Christian faith. Hence we can't have God without the Christian faith, because without it we don't have Jesus Christ who is the only way to the Father. While God is beyond all description, we can't be with Him without His historical self-revelation of Himself. He chose to become what He is not by nature, that we may become what we are not by nature (but by grace). If God chose to become man, that men may become like God, then that means that God who is beyond all description chose to confine Himself that we may experience Him. Now Rob Bell wants to downplay the importance of this confined description of God, which is our only means to move from what is limited to what is beyond description. He wants to do away with the bricks of doctrines which guide our way and protect us from wandering aimlessly, the incarnation of God, the voluntary self-confinement of God, His self-emptying, for the God who is beyond description but can never be accessed. He takes away the bricks of historical christianity, the narrow way to heaven, to give you a trampoline to jump on which will never get you up enough to God. God had to come down to you.
I saw it mentioned in one of the posts. Rob Bell relies too much on Rabbinic interpretation that he forgets that the Rabbis rejected Christ and still do. This means that many of his views about the Gospels will be tainted with anti-Christian views, resulting in confused paragraphs like the following on page 17:
"What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry's tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? But what if as you study the origin of the word virgin, you discover that the word virgin in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word virgin could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being "born of a virgin" also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse?"
Throughout the centuries Church fathers and apologists answered definitively these claims. To even speak this way about the apostles, the disciples of Christ and the New Testament reveals hidden doubts in the soul of the author. Even though I know that he's trying to prepare his readers for future "definitive scientific" proofs against the faith, I'd like to remind him that if these claims are true, then there is no need to prepare them for it's better for them to lose their faith in that "lie" and to move on with their lives. But what if the faith is not a lie, as all the faithful throughout Church history found out, and it is the only way for a true relationship with God, and for this reason Satan keeps on slandering it to keep people captive. If this is the case, what is Rob Bell doing exactly ?
If you want a fresh look at the Christian Faith as was always believed, check out the lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem which he gave to the new converts in 4th century Jerusalem. It's free on the web or you can buy the church fathers' volumes here on Amazon.I promise you you'll find all the good things that Rob Bell said in his book (honey) without all the poisons, in fact in those lectures you'll find the antidotes to those poisons. For the Christian faith has been around for so long now that every objection has been answered by the people who actually lived in the early centuries, who spoke the original languages and even died for what they believed.
Deep, Thoughtful, and Very Refreshing 
2008-07-10
Rob Bell presents a view of Christ that anyone would be attracted to. His explanation of contemporary Jewish customs and beliefs adds clarity to much of what Jesus said and did. The book challenges your thinking and asks Christians if they are following Christ because they are convinced that it is the best way to live.
Bell gives a fresh take on many key Biblical stories and doctrines, such as Jesus as "Rabbi," bringing Heaven (or Hell) to Earth by our lives, the value of Christian community in collectively interpreting Scripture (which he calls binding and loosing), etc. A very good read. You will learn a lot, think a lot, and be a better Christian after reading this book.
Almost a present-day C.S. Lewis 
2008-06-01
Bell presents the heart of Christianity - the love of Christ and our call to walk in the dust of our Rabbi. A thoughtful, appealing book that makes a great gift to someone searching for Christ's love. A great opening for a discussion about Christ.
=) 2008-05-05
this was a very interesting book. i personally really enjoyed reading this book. it made me think a lot about my faith and my persectives on many things. this is definitely a book to wrestle with but in the end, i think it will strengthen your faith, no matter where you are spiritually. i am really glad i purchased this book. its a book you can read many times and get something different from it every time
The Velvet Elvis 2008-03-31
Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Cover Image May Vary)This was a outstanding book for those of us who find out faith of our childhood, now doesnt really serve us in our adulthood. The body of Christ is addressed in a fresh way . This book allows us the ability to question those deeper parts of our faith. THese issues are NOT addressed here in the bible belt.
Terrible book!!! 2008-03-27
We know there’s something more. We sense it, we feel it, we know it. And we want it. We want an authentic spirituality.
I'm speechless 2008-03-10
Geez, I don't know what to say about this book. All I can say is, after reading this book, I:
1. Understand the Bible more;
2. Focus on Jesus more;
3. Love my neighbors more;
4. Understand suffering more; and
5. Want to walk in His ways daily!
People who have read it and claimed that it's false teaching are apparently trying to nitpick!
When we want to nitpick, we can do it with anything, including the Bible!
Just look at the number of positive reviews in Amazon- more than 119 5-star reviews! I've read tons of books over the years; enough to start a library myself. Trust me, I know my stuff. For a book to have so many positive reviews is no small feat.
I heartily recommend it!
Read it even if you don't like Rob Bell!! 2008-03-04
I want to dislike Rob Bell. I don't really understand trendy glasses and spikey hair, and I have heard people criticize him in ways that made me naturally disinclined to listen to him. But after having seen several of Bell's NOOMA videos, I began to wonder if he might have some significant things to say to me. And having now read his "Velvet Elvis," I am quite certain that he has much to say that I and many others need to hear.
As with his oral communication, Bell does not write in a linear fashion. He is not an apologist, and he does not try to win arguments by presenting an organized set of data. Instead, he tells anecdotes and stories. He meanders and makes points in less direct ways. But, thankfully, he makes some very strong points.
What I love about Bell is his willingness to be brutally honest. He calls a spade a spade, even if that spade represents something that Christians (or, more probably, evangelical American Christians) have been committed to for decades and generations. In particular, Chapter 2 about the Bible is something that every evangelical should read. He takes some baseline assumptions that I have heard and made for most of my life and articulates why these assumptions are not only absurd but ultimately destructive. This chapter is worth the price of the rest of the book.
Though not as compelling to me, other chapters were also strong. His description of what the church can and should be (and should not be) is superb. His discussion about the real Jesus was fantastic (and consolidates much of what Philip Yancey did in his book, "The Jesus I Never Knew"). He interjects biblical and church history into the book in helpful and fascinating ways and even manages to explain words from the biblical languages constructively.
There are a few things about which I am willing to critique "Velvet Elvis." First, I find Bell's conversational writing style to be too much. He is so conversational that it's almost not real writing at times. It reads more like a transcript of his speaking, which is choppy and staccato, with short bursts of insight (represented in the book by hundreds of sentence fragments) and long pauses (represented in the book by large gaps of white space between some sentences). Though the book is very readable as a result, it has an almost amateurish feel that was disappointing to me. Clearly, Bell is a deep thinker and intelligent man, and I just wish that his writing style more clearly reflected this.
Finally, I'm not sure exactly what this book is about or who it is for. The nature of Bell is that he is hard to define and describe, but I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish with this book. It would be very appropriate for those of us within the church, as he asks questions that we should all be addressing, offers some stinging criticism of the contemporary church that we need to hear, and presents some compelling challenges that we all ought to pursue. It would also be appropriate for those who are completely unfamiliar with Christianity and the church, as he presents the essence of the Christian faith in a way that is accessible and even attractive. And maybe his target audience is indeed those from both camps, in which case the breadth of topics that he covers may have allowed him to hit his mark.
In any case, I'm happy to recommend "Velvet Elvis" to anyone who wants to read a remarkably compelling portrayal of what following Jesus and honoring God is all about. There is much that will challenge and even irritate, but I'm confident that it will be worth your time.
Repainting the Christian Faith 2008-01-12
The title of this book is drawn from an illustration that Rob Bell uses to explain the purpose of his book. In his basement he has a velvet painting of Elvis Presley. Bell uses the painting as an illustration for the book's subtitle: "Repainting the Christian Faith." What if the artist who created that painting had said it was the ultimate painting and no more paintings could be done by anyone? Art is not meant to be "frozen"; neither is the Christian faith. There is nothing wrong with the "paintings" that have been done. But for those that need a fresh view of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, Bell offers his story and his vision in this book (pp. 013-014).
Jump
"Everybody has faith. Everybody is following somebody." When Jesus said he was "the way, the truth and the life" he was saying that his way of life is the best possible way for a person to live." It is "the way to the depth of reality." The doctrines of the Christian faith are like the springs of a trampoline. Jumping on the trampoline is analogous to how we live our life. The doctrines help give words to the depth of our experience of following Jesus. Our words about the faith are not absolute. Only God is absolute. "Doctrine is a wonderful servant and a horrible master." Christianity must allow room for questioning and doubt in order to truly pursue the living God. The Christian faith isn't like a wall of bricks that might topple over if one or two bricks (doctrines) are pulled out and questioned. He's not talking about "belligerent, arrogant questions that have no respect for our maker, but naked, honest, vulnerable, raw questions, arising out of the awe that comes from engaging the living God" (p. 018-31).
Yoke
In this chapter, Bell discusses the nature of interpreting the Bible. The idea that there is some objective, unbiased interpretation of what the Bible means is a problem for Bell. For example, what does the command to love your neighbor as yourself in Leviticus 19:18 mean for us today? We have to know what is meant by "love", who is our neighbor and what it means to love ourselves. The meaning of all these things depends on the context in which they are done. That is the point of Jesus saying that he did not come to abolish he law, but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17). He came to live it out in the context of the time in which he lived. The Bible has to be interpreted in order to apply it to the context in which we live. The Bible is alive; it is open-ended (p. 046). It is not just about things that happened a long time ago, but about things which also happen today. The Bible gives us a picture of what it is like when he works through actual people (p. 065). When we come under Jesus' "yoke," we are living out his teachings in our own context. We interpret the Bible with our lives and for our life.
True
Bell's approach to truth follows that of philosopher Arthur Holmes; "All Truth is God's Truth". Real truth is to be found everywhere, even among those who are not Christians, and it is God's truth. As Christians, we are free to claim truth of God wherever and whenever we find it. Jesus' saying that he is the way the truth and the life (John 14:6) is not the exclusive statement that many Christians take it to be. He is saying that all truth, wherever it is found, originates in him (pp. 080-2). When Jesus says that, "No one comes to the Father except through me", he is saying that he is the basis of all reality. "His life is our connection to how things truly are at the deepest levels of existence" (p. 083). From this it follows that "'Christian' is a great noun but a poor adjective", "It is impossible for a Christian to have a secular job", and the business of Christians is not to bring the world to the church but to be agents of transformation in the world because "the whole world is filled with the kavod [glory] of God." (pp. 084-5).
Tassels
When Bell and others started Mars Hill Bible Church, he insisted that they not put a sign out in front. People had to want to find them. The church grew tremendously by word-of-mouth only. Bell recounts how, at one point, he was ready to run away from it all. His responsibilities at Mars Hill had completely overwhelmed him and he found himself sitting in a storage room between church services, wanting to get into his car and get as far away as possible. He had been trying to be "superpastor" and it was ruining him. A counselor told him that his problem was sin; he needed to repent of anything he was trying to do that was beyond what God made him to be. And he needed to be healed of his tendency to overextend himself. He needed to touch the fringe (tassels) of Jesus garments, so to speak (Matt. 9:20, 14:36) and be healed. He learned the importance of only trying to be what God was calling him to be and communicating that to others. This freed others up to find their place in the ministry of the church and serve in areas where they knew Bell could not (p. 116).
Dust
Following Jesus means more than trying to know his teaching. It means trying to be just like him; to follow his way of life just as any rabbi's disciples did in the time that Jesus lived. Disciples often could be seen following their rabbi on the dusty roads and the dust kicked up by the rabbi's feet would cover them. When Jesus chooses us to follow him, as he chose his disciples, he is expressing confidence in us that we have what it takes (because he is giving it to us) to do the things that he does; to be like him. Jesus believes in us (p. 134). We need to be covered with the dust from his feet.
New
God intends to make us into the new persons he originally intended for us to be. Bell wants us to avoid the trap of "sin management." Instead of focusing all our energy on avoiding sin, we try to understand what kind of person Jesus says we are. Sin is serious, but we need to repent of it and move on in the process of becoming the kind of persons who would naturally do and say the things that Jesus would do and say if he were living our life (p. 144). "For Jesus the question wasn't, how do I get to heaven? but how do I bring heaven here?" This should be our question as well. Hell is "a place, an event, a situation absent of how God desires things to be." Aside from whether hell has an eternal existence, it certainly has its place here on earth. Our goal as Christians is not to escape this world but to help make it the kind of place God intends it to be (pp. 147-150).
Good
God made the world good and "Jesus is God's way of refusing to give up on his dream for the world" (p. 157). He "isn't just interested in reclaiming his original dream for creation; he wants to take it further" (p. 161). The blessings God gives his people are always "instrumental." They are meant to be used to bless others in fulfillment of Abraham's calling in Genesis 12 (blessed to be a blessing). "The church doesn't exist for itself; it exists to serve the world." When Christians picket and boycott and complain about how bad the world is, it is toxic to the gospel. Serving the world is the only way its perception of the church will change (pp. 165-6). Christianity is not about making life easier. On the contrary, it will involve difficulty and suffering because we are not to give up on this broken world but are to become "more generous and disciplined and loving and free." We are to become the kind of people who can "[stare] pain and suffering right in the eyes and refuse to believe that this is all there is" (pp. 169-70). It's a tall order; one that we must completely rely on God to fulfill.
This is a great book. There are many important ideas in here that modern Christians need to think about. My only serious reservation with the book is its experiential approach to the value of scripture. For Bell, "the Bible is open-ended. It has to be interpreted" (Bell 2005, 046). This is true enough, but more traditional evangelicals would say that it has to be interpreted carefully and according to sound hermeneutical principles. This is something Bell certainly does in his sermons, but in his book he seems to present two false alternatives: "Is the greatest truth about Adam and Eve and the fruit that it happened, or that it happens?" Bell's answer is that it happens (p. 058-9). In this case, many could easily go along with him. Even some of the most conservative Bible scholars have no trouble seeing this story as an allegory rather than a historical event, but Bell's readers might easily assume that his point applies to everything in the Bible. Earlier in the book, Bell illustrates faith as a wall of bricks or a trampoline. If our beliefs are like the springs of a trampoline, they are flexible, open to question, and faith still functions if a few of the springs are removed. The problem pointed out by the brick wall analogy is that if our beliefs are like bricks in a wall, they are inflexible; the wall begins to weaken and crumble if a few bricks are removed (p. 022-8). The problem that Bell doesn't address is that some beliefs really are like springs (e.g., creation in six literal 24-hour days) and some are like bricks (e.g. the resurrection of Jesus). How do we tell the difference?
Relevant to my Generation 2008-01-03
Rob Bell writes in a winsome way. He appeals to my generation of many levels and this book is one of his best.
Yet, between the lines I found great skepticism concerning the Christian faith. I can't really get into his challanging the trinity, virgin birth and other staples of Christianity. I'm not even sure that's where we need to be spending our energy.
My generation is tired of fighting against historic Christianity. This book was helpful, though, in that it shows us a pastor who is thinking about theology. This book prepares us for other books that help us abandon ourselves completely to God.
Bell's book is a great read, and I look forward to other books coming from his pen.
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