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Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile
Rob Bell
Don Golden
Rob Bell’s highly-praised third book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, is his most political yet. Published as part of the Rob Bell Classics relaunch, this is an inspiring call-to-arms for Christians to tackle poverty, inequality and oppression.‘There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building,’ writes Rob Bell. ‘Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty. This is a book about those two numbers.’Jesus Wants to Save Christians is a book about faith and fear, wealth and war, poverty, power, safety, terror, Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity.
JESUS WANTS
TO SAVE CHRISTIANS
A MANIFESTO FOR THE CHURCH IN EXILE
ROB BELL & DON GOLDEN
Contents
Cover (#u97c00fa2-9870-586b-b846-786042aecec7)
Title Page (#u672f7cea-89c0-55d2-bf96-2928dbbe16d3)
Preface
Introduction to the Introduction
Introduction: Air Puffers and Rubber Gloves
Chapter One: The Cry of the Oppressed
Chapter Two: Get Down Your Harps
Chapter Three: David’s Other Son
Chapter Four: Genital-Free Africans
Chapter Five: Swollen-Bellied Black Babies, Soccer Moms on Prozac, and the Mark of the Beast
Chapter Six: Blood on the Doorposts of the Universe
Epilogue: Broken and Poured
About the Authors
Endnotes
Discussion Guide
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Preface (#u56551c5c-f5d2-54ee-9544-3092982c74f8)
Part One
I remember the exact moment when I knew that Don and I had a book on our hands.
We were eating our usual once a week burrito discussing our usual topics—revolution, Jesus, our favorite British bands—you know, average sorts of things friends talk about, when Don asked me how King Solomon had built his temple.
How Solomon built his temple? What an odd question.
I had read that story about Solomon building a temple for God in the Old Testament Book of Kings, but I had no recollection of how he built it.
The answer? Don pointed out that Solomon built the temple using slave labor.
Hearing that for me was like a bomb going off.
Slaves? I’d never noticed that. The implications were stunning.
The earlier parts of the Bible, the ones about empires and power and liberation from slavery, suddenly took on new meaning. The prophets, and then Jesus, began to mean something different. And then the church, and the New Testament letters connecting Jesus and the Exodus began to make sense in ways I’d never considered.
And then Don kept going. He made connections between Solomon’s slaves and Egypt and Sinai and Jerusalem and Babylon and America and Iraq and politics and economics and churches and media . . . it was overwhelming. As we discussed more and more over the next weeks and months, rereading the stories of Jesus through this lens, I often felt like I was reading the Bible for the first time.
And the story that it was telling blew me away.
Reading the Bible through this new lens was so much more current and volatile and true and interesting and dangerous and subversive and hopeful and big than how I’d read it before.
Yes, I kept telling Don, there is a book here.
So that’s my hope for you with this book: I hope you have a series of those “bomb going off” kind of moments as you read this book. I hope you see in our reading and interpreting of this ancient book, the Bible, a new way of seeing our world. I hope you see that there is a common humanity we share with everybody alive today, and everybody who has come before us. I hope you see in the way the writers of the Bible critique their own use and abuse of power and blessing a way for us to think about our power and blessing.
And then, most of all, I hope you see Jesus’s invitation to be a force for good in the world, to wake up to our calling, to be saved in all of the ways that matter most.
—Rob Bell
November 2011
Part Two
On Christmas Eve 1968 the first humans orbited the moon. Highly trained Apollo 8 astronauts were ready for every eventuality—except one. The first photo of Earth from outer space unexpectedly shook the imagination of the world. This one shot of our fragile blue orb alone in the infinitude of space revealed our majesty and our vulnerability. By going to the moon we discovered ourselves.
We hope a similar change in perspective happens when you read this book.
Jesus Wants to Save Christians offers a different perspective on the Bible and on how we see ourselves at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Since we mostly retell the Bible’s story through a new lens, the book’s message hasn’t changed since it was first released. But there are new challenges and new questions in a world that seems somehow scarier today than it did during the fires of President Bush’s wars.
For some, President Bush was an easy parallel to Solomon and Pharaoh. We argued that power exists for the cause of the poor and that America will be measured by the voices we fail to hear. Since the book was first published in 2008, some major punctuation points have been added: Arab Spring—what Bush tried with bombs, social media masses achieved with their thumbs. The Hummer dealership on 28th Street in Grand Rapids closed. In many ways, the world seems changed.
But the Bible still has a lot to say about empires. The Bible is always asking about the prospects of the poor. The vulnerability index is the measure that matters most in God’s economy. Read seriously, the Bible confronts the reader with the God of the oppressed.
We want you to discover the Bible as its own best commentary. We offer you a way to read the Bible that doesn’t require a library or a preacher or a politician or an academic to interpret for you. Once justice is seen as the thread woven into the fabric of biblical history, the whole Bible becomes much clearer. Justice is the issue when God redeems Israel from Pharaoh. Justice is at the heart of the Sinai law and justice is what Israel must show the world as a kingdom of priests. Justice is the measure the Jews failed to meet in their days of power and empire in Jerusalem. It was justice the prophets proclaimed as the way of return during the exile of the Jews in Babylon and it was justice that Jesus incarnated.
Some readers have told me that after reading the book it was still not clear what they should do with this new perspective on the Bible. Mostly, I think that is part of the adventure of discovery that we hope God leads you on. For me, though, I can say that when I look around and see what God is doing in the world, I tend to see, first, the people and ministries who incarnate this Exodus ethic. I’m thinking of friends like David and Marianne and Sam and Dr. Pieter.
David is a forty-two-year-old man in northern Kenya who does whatever it takes to help the Turkana suffering without food and water. David embodies the cry of the oppressed that God uses to kick-start redemptive history. David is pouring his life out to save Turkana.
Marianne is a recent Bible college graduate who travels the world photographing development professionals, capturing their amazing work in images that motivate people to action. Marianne’s eye for the human story makes the plight and the possibilities of the poor live in high definition. Marianne helps us hear the cry of the oppressed.
Sam is a teacher from rural Pennsylvania who moved to Baltimore’s inner city with a tribe of others just like him. Sam and co., with all their middle-American gifts, have set out to love on Baltimore neighborhoods most people abandoned a generation ago. Sam is the man who hears what God hears and joins what God is doing.
Dr. Pieter left his home in Johannesburg to discover the causes of child mortality in Mozambique. Dr. Pieter and his alternative community of life-giving workers have literally moved the needle on child mortality in southern Mozambique.
A doctor battles the mass murdering, malarial mosquito. A teacher spends his education on embattled Baltimore public schools. A poor Turkana man tries to save his ancient people from extinction. A young suburbanite with a camera takes aim at American indifference. Each one and countless others following Jesus out of the exile of irrelevance into what God is doing in history—redeeming people and using them to save others.
We hope this paperback edition of Jesus Wants to Save Christians helps you encounter the Bible in a new way. Like a trip to the moon, may you see the big picture and may the God of the oppressed lead you through these disorienting days of teetering empire.
—Don Golden
November 2011
Introduction to the Introduction (#u56551c5c-f5d2-54ee-9544-3092982c74f8)
This is a book about a book.
The structure follows the narrative of the Bible, which means that there is a progression here, each chapter building on the one before it. If you skip ahead, it’s not going to make much sense.
Before we begin, a disclaimer and a shout-out or two.
First, the disclaimer.
In the scriptures, ultimate truths about the universe are revealed through the stories of particular people living in particular places. As this book explores, the nation of Egypt and the Jewish people feature prominently in the biblical narrative. When we write of Egypt then, we are not writing about Egypt today. When we mention the Jews then, we are not speaking of our Jewish friends and neighbors today. We realize that some of these words, such as Egypt and the Jews, have power to evoke feelings and thoughts and attitudes about the very pain and division in our world that this book addresses. We join you in this tension, believing that the story is ultimately about healing, hope, and reconciliation.
And now, a shout-out. This is a book of theology. The word theology comes from two Greek words: theo, which means “God,” and logos, which means “word.”
Theology, a word about God.
Anybody can do theology.1
This book is our attempt to articulate a specific theology, a particular way to read the Bible, referred to by some as a New Exodus perspective. One New Exodus scholar is a British theologian named Tom Holland, who has done pioneering work in this approach.2 We are grateful to him for his groundbreaking take on the story of Jesus. He has liberated profound truths about what it means to be human, and we celebrate that with him.
One more shout-out, which is actually a massive shout-out. We are part of a church, a community of people learning to live the way of Jesus together. For their love and support and critique and questions and example and insight and hope, we are deeply grateful.
You know who you are.
Grace and peace to you.
And thanks.
Now, on to “Air Puffers and Rubber Gloves.”
Introduction Air Puffers and Rubber Gloves (#u56551c5c-f5d2-54ee-9544-3092982c74f8)
The first family was dysfunctional.
At least, that’s the picture painted by the storyteller in the book of Genesis.
The first son, Cain, was angry with the other first son, Abel, because “the LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor.”1
Cain said to his brother, “Let’s go out to the field.” And when they went, Cain killed Abel.
According to the story, Cain “worked the soil” while Abel “kept flocks.” One was a farmer, the other was a shepherd.
A farmer is settled.
A farmer has chosen a piece of land and settled there because he’s decided that this land can best support his crops. He has a strong sense of boundaries—this land, the land that he lives on and farms, is his land.
A shepherd is nomadic.
A shepherd goes wherever there is food for his flock. A shepherd wanders from place to place. A shepherd doesn’t have a strong sense of boundaries, because he sees all land as a possible spot for him to stop and feed his flock.
It wouldn’t take long for the shepherd and his flock to cross onto the property of the farmer. And that would raise the question, Whose land is it, anyway?
This question would have many dimensions—economic, political, religious, social—let alone the personal aspects of ownership and property and progress and wealth. The story of these two first sons is actually a story about progress, innovation, and the inevitable forward movement of human civilization.2
This Genesis account reflects the transition that was occurring in the time and place in which this story was first told. A seismic shift was occurring as human society transitioned from a pastoral, nomadic orientation to an agricultural one. This was a huge change that did not come without a lot of strife.
And, occasionally, murder.
As a result of the murder, the text says, “Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.”3
East of Eden.
There is a place called Eden, a paradise, a state of being in which everything is in its right place. A realm where the favor and peace of God rest on everything.
And Cain is not there. He’s east of there.
And he’s not only east of Eden, but in chapter 4 of the book of Genesis, the text says that he was “building a city.”4
It’s not just that he’s east of where he was created to live, but he’s actually settling there, building a city, putting down roots. The land of his wandering has become the location of his home. And then several chapters later, the Bible says that the whole world had one language and a common speech “as people moved eastward.”5
The writer, or writers, of Genesis keeps returning to this eastward metaphor,6 insisting that something has gone terribly wrong with humanity, and that from the very beginning humans are moving in the wrong direction.7
God asks Adam, “Where are you?”8
And the answer is, of course, “East.”
East of where he’s supposed to be. East of how things are meant to be.
