Love Wins:
If left to my own devices, this is literally one of the last books on earth I would have elected to read.

Of course it goes without saying, that I never, in a million years would have expected to LOVE this book.

But I have to admit. I'm guilty of both.

Voltaire said "modernity means, that you are embarrassed if someone catches you praying".

Guilty!

Yes I would be dreadfully embarrassed if someone caught me doing that.

But I don't do that, not in the traditional sense.

I often say: My favorite form of prayer is doing things that are in line with my values, and I hope, useful to at least someone other than just me.

I have very little respect for someone that prays by talking to thin air instead of by doing things that matter.

So, not guilty!

I didn't drink the Kool Aid or anything.

I don't pray (not that way anyway) and I don't believe in Gods that people constructed in their own likeness, thousands of years ago.

That seems pretty crazy.

And I absolutely cannot condone a faith that systematically discriminates against anyone.

That's just plain mean.

But I will say Love Wins restored my faith in (some) people who have faith.

Now I know that their not all mean and crazy.

Perhaps postmodernity means, that you are embarrassed to post (no pun intended) that you liked a book about Jesus on Goodreads.

Guilty!

But getting over it.

Because this ain't you're grandma's book about Jesus. This book isn't really about Jesus per se. It's about what Jesus taught.

It's about Love and Tolerance.

Why I Read This Book:
It came highly recommended to me by a trusted friend and colleague. Otherwise, no fucking way would I have ever gone within 1000 feet of this thing.

If left to my own devices, I would have thought "why would I Intentionally waste even one millisecond of my one wild life listening to some former pastor of a mega church prattle on about Jesus"?

Man am I glad I listened to him (my colleague) and not me.

As it turns out, Rob Bell is the real Deal. And Love Wins is a real Thing of beauty.

The Thing And The Deal:
An important person from my past used to say; go for the Deal not the Thing.

In her cosmology, The Deal was the burning inner spiritual core of what ever enterprise you were perusing. The Thing was what ever product you produced.

The Deal:
The Deal for the artist may be the liberating loss of self and the sense of renewal experienced as a result of becoming totally and powerfully engaged in the process of their work.

The Thing:
The Thing for the artist may be what ever products they produce, for instance paintings, drawings, dance, music what ever.

James Joyce said:
Art that simply makes you want to posses it is pornography, even if (on the surface) it depicts something profound.

Art that makes you stop (takes you out of your struggle to survive, puts you into a state of transcendence), that is real art.

Lame art focuses on the Thing (the product) and has no Deal (depth, vitality, transcendence).

Masterworks are those rare pieces that are glorious on the level of Thing and Deal.

The Thing is in the service of the Deal. The Thing is the vehicle by which the Master shares the Deal with their audience.

We (their audience) can experience their real Deal with out the necessity of being a genius who suffered tremendously for their art.

What a Great Deal.

The Thing About Religion:
Great spiritual teachers (masters if you will) experience the Deal. They commune with the divine source (or whatever).

Usually their (well intended) followers create a Thing (a religion) as a vehicle to share their masters Deal with a broader audience.

Jesus, for instance, didn't set out to creat a new religion, he was a reformer of Judaism. That was his deal. And as far as I can tell, his real Deal was Love, Tolerance and Transcendence.

His (well intended) followers built a religion out of it. But as so often happens, these well intended followers forgot the Deal, and are by now almost completely fixated on the Thing.

Why I can't Deal with the Christianity Thing:
From my perspective, whatever the Deal was with Jesus. It has been utterly inverted by the current day followers of the whole Christianity Thing.

I feel sort of sorry for people who fall in love with the Jesus Deal, and then have to sit there and struggle with making sense out of the literally insane legacy of the Christian tradition.

The Straight Shall Become Bent:
When you listen to Christians try to make sense out of the Old Testament, it's like they're doing philosophical yoga in order to bend themselves into a twisted enough pretzel in order to make that shit makes sense.

Plowshares into Swords:
When you add on top of that, the fact that many Christians have a conservative political and social agenda, and you watch them weaponize the Old and New Testament against gay people, poor people and people who happened to be born in other cultures with different religions. Then the whole thing goes from ironic comedy too outrageous tragedy.

They turn the lovely Jesus Deal into a pornography and propaganda Thing.

That's when I got to say hold up.

You Can Ring My Bell:
Rob Bell echoes these observations and complaints in his insiders critique of contemporary American evangelical Christianity.

What's In It For Me:
Much of what Rob Bell covers in the book is interesting but not directly useful to me in my personal life and in my work. But much of it is, and in a big way.

I'm not a Christian. I'm not religious. But I deeply resonate with Rob Bell's mission and I love his bighearted wisdom and infectious enthusiasm.

I am not a parishioner or a pastor. But much of what Rob Bell expounds is strangely pertinent to my work.

I'm a psychotherapist. I accompany people in their journey to liberate themselves from the hell of addiction, trauma and psychopathology.

I help people liberate themselves from maladaptive, inflexible behavior.

Function and Context:
I'm a functional, contextualist. Meaning I analyze a behavior based on it's function, and the context it emerges from.

Values:
I also help the client to identify the important values they are pursuing, and I try to help them identify and achieve their values based goals.

The Medium Is The Message:
I believe Rob Bell understands the context from which the Jesus story emerged.

I believe Rob Bell understands the intended function of Jesus's teachings.

And most importantly, I believe Rob Bell understands the values Juses was promoting.

I believe Jesus's message was one of Love and Tolerance. And that is Rob Bell's message about Jesus's message.

Heaven and Hell:
Rob Bell shatters the whole heaven and hell nonsense. He basically asserts that heaven and hell are qualities of this world. We should focus on this here and now. We should create heaven on earth by being of service to one another and building lives worth living and environments worth living in.

Birth, Death and Resurrection:
Rob Bell, criticizes Christian fundamentalists that drain the fun out of life and justify it by referring to eternal salvation in the next life.

Rob Bell drills down to the spiritual core of the afterlife myth. He cites the many spiritually relevant (and plausible) ways that people metaphorically die and are reborn in this very lifetime.

The Good News Is Better Than That:
Rob Bell criticizes the notion of angry punishing God. He speaks very pragmatically about the subject. Is basic clam is that this rendering of God isn't very sustaining or motivating in the longterm. His claim is that the real gift of spiritual journey is so much better than this angry, punishing God idea promotes.

Love Wins Won Me Over:
I'm an atheist. Not one of those capital A for a-hole atheist, but more like a (behave as if) atheist.

Meaning. I don't pretend to know the capital T truth. But when I began behaving as if this there was only one natural world, and no God and no afterlife. Then my life sprang to life. This life, this moment became much more important and vital.

Suddenly meaning, clarity, responsibility and traction existed where confusion, avoidance and torpor had formerly kept me paralyzed.

At some point. Probably during the Bush administration. I became vehemently anti Christian.

The fact that some Christians were attacking science and condoning ignorance, homophobia, bigotry, discrimination and war in the name of their God and their religion filled me with feelings of snarling righteous opposition.

This book restores my faith in faith (just a little, but that's at least something).

Rob Bell is light up. From what I can tell, his message is brave, brilliant and inspired.

I resonate with his values and I find his mission to be laudable and profoundly humane.

My testimonial is probably horrible, anti advertising for this wonderful book.

But it's my honest truth.

I'm still a godless monist.

But I love Rob Bell and I love this book.

Love Wins.

Five Stars!!!