Blue Like Jazz

Donald Miller with an insightful observation on intellectual faith struggles:

"I don't really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out that there are some guys who don't believe in God and they can prove He doesn't exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now its about who is smarter, and honestly I don't care."

I'm about halfway through Blue Like Jazz, and I'm finding it pretty good- quite thought provoking, but his writing style irks me sometimes. All in all, its doing a reasonable job of living up to the hype...

A book you should all read

Recently I was given 'Velvet Elvis' by Rob Bell as a birthday present from my sister- I'd already heard good things about it but I wasn't expecting it to be this good!
The guy pretty much sums up my beliefs but in a way that makes sense, and that I don't feel guilty about... it's encouraging to know that a guy who's the pastor of a massive church thinks similarly to me!

Here's an excerpt:



Now before various people start calling Rob and I heathens for denying the virgin birth- we're not. He's simply saying that the virgin birth- along with literal 6 day creation, the factual accuracy of the book of Jonah, and various other doctrines- is not the central point of his faith. Instead his faith is centred around the person of Jesus Christ- learning from his words, emulating his actions, and making the most of life here and now. How exactly Christ came into the world is pretty irrelevant when the impact he can have on a person's life is so massive.
Personally, I think the man is onto something... what do you think?



Excuse the image quality- Google Book Search is quite clever at preventing standard Ctrl+C, but they can't do anything about the 'Print Screen' button!

Note to Google & Rob Bell's publishers- since I'm actually promoting the book, how about overlooking the old copyright laws just this once? ;)

Bono a prophet?

Eugene Peterson (who authored The Message bible translation) thinks so. You can read about it here:

http://www.atu2.com/news/article.src?ID=4232

For those with limited time on their hands (although I'm not quite sure what you're doing on my blog if that's the case) here's an excerpt:

"Is U2 a prophetic voice? I rather think so. And many of my friends think so. If they do not explicitly proclaim the Kingdom, they certainly prepare the way for that proclamation in much the same way that John the Baptist prepared the way for the kerygma of Jesus...Amos crafted poems, Jeremiah wept sermons, Isaiah alternately rebuked and comforted, Ezekiel did street theater. U2 writes songs and goes on tour, singing them."