Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell and Don Golden

Jesus Wants to Save Christians redifines what it means to be a Christian. The book's subtitle is: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile.

This book changed the way I understand my Bible.

Ok, let me just give you a few thoughts from this book and maybe you'll be intrigued enough that you'll want to read it for yourself.

The first chapter was particularly awesome: it's called The Cry of the Oppressed. It begins in Egypt. The Children of Israel are slaves to the Empire of Egypt. The super-power of the ancient world. Then God miraculously saves the Chilren of Israel and brings them out of Egypt, across the Red Sea and to Mount Sinai. At Sinai God gives the Children of Israel the law.

And this is where this chapter gets really awesome, because its about the fundamental purpose of the law. God begins by telling his people: "Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:5-6). So God wants his people, the Chidlren of Israel, to show the world who He is and what He is like--because that's what priests do.

The Cry of the Oppressed shows that the Ten Commandments are not a series of strict rules given by a firebreathing God to keep the people in line.

So the first commandment is that they have no other Gods. This is because their humanity, their value as people is directly linked to their ability to remember their liberation from slavery, because slavery is "a fundamentally inhumane condition" (p. 33) and their liberation from slavery was a gift from God. "If they forget God," the author writes, "they are at that very same moment forgetting their story. If they forget their story, they migh forget what it was like to be slaves, and they might find themselves back in a new sort of slavery" (p. 33).

The second commandment builds on the first. It prohibits any "image in the form of anything" (Exodus 20.4). The authors explain that in the ancient near East, images made of clay or wood or bronze or any other kind of material were constructed to give the gods depth and size and shape so that the people could understand just who their god was and what he or she was like. But the God of the Ten Commandments commands His people not to construct any images like this. Why? Because He wants His people to be a kingdom of priests. He wants His people to be the ones showing the world what He is like. He doesn't need an image made of wood or clay or bronze or marble, because this God has people.

The third commandment is not to "misuse the name of the LORD your God" (Exodus 20.7). So God has redeemed these former slaves and is now asking them to be His representatives to the world. His character, in a manner of speaking, depends on them and on how they carry His name. The authors write: "The command is certainly about the words a person speaks. But at its heart it is far more about how Israel carries herself as those who carry the name of God" (p. 34).

And the fourth commandment is to keep the Sabbath. They were commanded to take one day each week and rest. They were not to do any work on the Sabbath. This is because in Egypt, they worked every day without a break; they were treated as possessions, objects to be exploited and not as people. The Sabbath reminds them that they are not in Egypt anymore; they are no longer slaves. Their value does not come from how many bricks they produce but from the God who loves them and rescued them.

Here I'll just quote one whole paragraph for you: "Everything about the rest of the commandments speaks to this newfound liberation. God is inviting, God is looking, God is searching for a body, a group of people to be the body of God in the world. Following the Ten Commandments are all sorts of laws and commands about how to live in this new way. The Israelites are told not to charge interest: 'If you take your neighbour's cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering your neighbour has. What else can your neighbour sleep in? When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate' (Exodus 22.26-27). Do you hear the echoes of Egypt in the command? If they begin to oppress on an individual basis, God says that when the oppressed cry out, 'I will hear.' The warning is sharp here: don't become another Pharaoh, because God acts against people like Pharaoh" (p. 34-35).

So the authors show how God continually warns His people that He hears the cry of the oppressed. They write: "It's as if God is saying, 'The thing that happened to you, go make it happen for others. The freedom from oppression that you are now experiencing, help others experience that same freedom. The grace that has been extended to you when you were at your lowest, extend it to others. In the same way that I heard your cry, go and hear the cry of others and act on their behalf" (p. 35).

Next God takes His people into the Promised Land, where they enjoy a period of prosperity. But soon, they're in Jerusalem. Under King Solomon, the Children of Israel enjoyed the greatest prosperity ever. But, the Bible tells how King Solomon used slaves to build the temple, to build his palace, to build the walls of Jerusalem, to build his military bases... slaves. So, it wasn't long then before the oppressed became the oppressors. The authors put it this way, "Jerusalem is the new Egypt" (p. 41).

And so, as God promised that He would always hear the cry of the oppressed, that He would always oppose the oppressors, it's not much longer before the Children of Israel are in slavery again, in Babylon. In Exile.

The authors put it this way: "Exile is when you fail to convert your blessings into blessings for others. Exile is when you find yourself a stranger to the purposes of God" (p. 45).

So the Children of Israel came full circle.

I liked this. It was very eye-opening and it changed the way I understood the Historical Books of the Old Testament. It helped me see what God meant when he called His people a Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation, and it helped me see what it's like to fail at that. It also helped me see that God's purpose for the Children of Israel is the same as His purpose for the Church. He wants someone to show the world who He is and what He is like, to show the world the freedom from the Egypt-systems that only He can provide.

The rest of the book is about how we can and have become the oppressors. How we have become strangers to God's purposes. The Church is not showing people the great power of God to liberate people from the world's systems. Instead, the Church is becoming a world-system, oppressing people. Or at least, legitimitizing the oppression of others. Turning a blind eye.

The rest of the book is about how we can return to God's purposes by following Jesus' example. By taking the downward slope of self-abasement and humility.

The rest of the book is about how Jesus has redeemed us. Jesus has spread his blood on "the doorposts of the universe" so that we could be liberated and live like liberated people.

So, there's a pretty huge gospel message in there and I couldn't do it much justice by summarizing it, so read the book. If you can't find it or can't afford it, let me know and I'll send you my copy.

I'm going to quote a few lines from the book's epilogue here and that will be the end of this:

"Jesus wants to save our church from thinking that the priests are somebody else.

Jesus wants to save us from standing at a distance, begging Moses to speak to God because we're convinced that if we speak to God, we'll die.

Jesus wants to save our Church from fear.

We haven't been brought to that kind of mountain. Sinai, alive again.

Jesus wants to save from making the good news about another world and not this one.

Jesus wants to save us from preaching a gospel that is only about individuals and not about the systems that enlsave them.

Jesus wants to save us from shrinking the gospel down to a transaction about the removal of sin and not about every single particle of creation being reconciled to its maker.

Jesus wants to save us from religiously sanctioned despair, the kind that doesn't believe the world can be made better, the kind that either blatantly or subtly teaches people to just be quiet and behave and wait for something big to happen 'someday'" (p. 178-179).

okay: in my summary, i shamelessly quoted parts of the book without attributing them. sorry. i only hope i haven't misconstrued what the authors intended to say.


also: it occurs to me that some people might misinterpret to idea of the book based on my explanation of it. so if you find yourself disagreeing with the idea of the book after reading this and not the book, please read the book and then decide.


also: if it helps, i don't think Rob Bell and Don Golden are trying to, in any way, negate or diminish what Jesus did. I don't think they're telling us that we have to do Jesus' job. Jesus came to show the world who God is and what He is like. He also came to redeem the world. our job isn't to redeem the world or to show the world what God is like and who He is in our selves but to point others to Jesus; to show the world God, through Jesus. And to do it the way Jesus did, by taking the downward slope. by humbling ourselves.