What follows is a review from my friend Brent of the July 7, 2006 Everything is Spiritual talk
7-7-06
We joined the vanpool to Sacramento to hear Rob Bell speak at the Crest Theater. I appreciate his effort to take his work into a new venue, even if only the same people found their way there.
He spoke for nearly two fast hours, using a large white board and a simple set of board skills.
Rob started “In the beginning,” which is a creative place to start, even if he regularly finds himself at the foundations of everything. “In the beginning Elohim,” God, and His Spirit, are present and His Word separates light from dark, sky from water, land from sea for three days, and in the following three days brings forth sun and moon, birds and fish, animals and humans from the earth and sea and sky that He has spoken into being.
There is a poetic quality to the creation account, with the later three days mirroring the first three days and each of the six days progressing from evening to morning, from setting to dawning, from chaos to order, from darkness to light, even as the sun and moon do not fill the sky until the fourth day. The author seems to pay close attention to the words and structure of the account, with words and phrases repeating in sevens and threes.
Rob then shifted from a discussion of Genesis in light of its form and cadence to an overview of the shape of the world at the scale of the universe and the scale of the subatomic particle, stopping to highlight the vastness of a small portion of the center of those two extremes, the linear quantity of DNA in the human body. At the subatomic level, intuition and certainty fall away and scientific description starts to sound like the poetry of a Hebrew creation story.
After pointing out that we live in a “half-dimension” of time, moving in one of two directions in time as if traversing a string, Rob touched on the multi-dimensionality of string theory. If we do not intuitively understand the numerous dimensions of string theory, how much more will we face uncertainty in our inability to capture the fullness of a multi-dimensional God? Again, the descriptive language of physics takes on a lyrical quality that echoes the cascading sevens, threes, evenings, and mornings of the genesis.
In the middle of this discussion of dimensionality Rob touched on Flatland, a hypothetical two-dimension existence that lacks the descriptive language to describe the three-dimensional world that intersects it. A closed shape in two dimensions is not accessible within that dimensionality but in a third dimension it is totally laid bare, exposed, and vulnerable, a sobering analogy of our own simplicity in light of a Creator that is outside dimensionality.
Jesus “insists” that reality extends beyond our eyes and ears, that our “power brokers” are not the only or final powers. The pantheon of gods in antiquity were captured in our own half-dimension of time, but the God who claims to be, whose name in some way reflects His independence and existence, is not trapped in any dimension. In the beginning the Spirit has no form. He refuses to be captured in shape and is “beyond manipulation.” Elohim is not the god(s) of the creation accounts of the ancients, and the earth is not born of celestial conflict but comes from an outpouring of creativity, ordering, and blessing.
In the beginning Elohim, His Spirit, act, create, speak, and breathe into existence light, sky, land, trees, seed, animals, and man. Rob drew a pyramid with an inverted pyramid sitting atop it. In the upper pyramid he wrote this chain of creation: God, Spirit, act, create, breathe, and in the lower pyramid he filled from the bottom this product of creation: light, sky, land, tree, seed, animals, man. The peaks of the pyramids kiss at man and breath, the connection between what often is separated into “physical” and “spiritual.” To ignore the “spiritual” portion of life is to miss half of humanity, and in Rob’s experience many people who close themselves to this part of life find an intense boredom. He commented that this merging of “spiritual” and “physical” is reflected in the Hebrew language and in its lack of a word that matches our “spiritual.” The reality proclaimed in the creation Text is that humanity is a fusion of two realms, two existences, two things that God joined in creation. The Kingdom of God transcends but consists of this world, this physicality.
“In the beginning” Elohim does not lay out systematic theology, a set of laws, or a summation of science. The Text begins with a poetic account of a massive world and our blessed place in it.
At the center of the creation account is the fourth day and the formation of the sun, moon, and stars to mark the seasons, to mark the festivals and Sabbaths. A central part of the creation of everything is this marking of the passing of time, these festivals and Sabbaths that remind us that we are not of value only for what we produce, that we were not made to be slaves, that we are important because we were made in the image of God, and that the rhythm of tending and resting is a part God’s intent for humanity.
Rob mentioned Exodus 24, where God calls Moses up the mountain. He tells him to “stay” on the mountain – in Hebrew He tells Moses to “be” on the mountain. Rob suggested that this is commanded so that Moses might be present on the mountain, so that he wouldn’t miss the mountain, miss the moment in his planning his descent. It is possible to physically be on the mountain but to have fragmented into so many pieces that the mountain cannot be seen, experienced, or known.
And so it can be in our lives. All around there are things to consume us with despair, bitterness, cynicism, criticality, and raw rationalism, but it is possible to miss the mountain of awe, beauty, wonder, mystery, and design if we do not take the time to be. Awe, beauty, wonder, mystery, and design are all around us, if we would only look. “There is more going on here than we first thought… What you are looking for is not elsewhere.” As Jesus said, “Seek and you will find.” The Kingdom is at hand, near, among you, within you. Authentic spirituality is here. Everything is spiritual.
*Update:* I (Eric) have posted my own review in two parts: Impressions of Everything is Spiritual and Fact-checking Everything is Spiritual. Also, I’ve posted a reassembled photo of the whiteboard Rob used here.
