Nascent Thinker | Contemplations Along The Way

Brick Walls and Trampolines

I’ve re-opened a book I thought I had long closed, Rob Bell’s Vel­vet Elvis. Back in 2005 it caused some­thing of a craze and a con­tro­versy, espe­cially at the (appar­ent) sug­ges­tion that the vir­gin birth — among other doc­trines — was effec­tively unnec­es­sary (but don’t worry, I’m not going to dis­cuss the vir­gin birth). The rea­son I’ve re-opened this book is because my post yes­ter­day night was, in fact, “inspired” by Rob Bell. What I want to do with this post is dis­cuss in detail Bell’s illus­tra­tions, and then dis­cuss the impli­ca­tions of what he is teach­ing. There would appear to be mul­ti­ple inter­pre­ta­tions of this par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of Bell’s writ­ing, so I’ll keep  those in con­sid­er­a­tion, espe­cially those which, I think, miss the point (I’ll prob­a­bly end up dis­cussing two such interpretations).

Intro­duc­tion

Bell paints an illus­tra­tion using the exam­ples of tram­po­line springs, and a brick wall. The … (Read more)