Velvet Elvis Repainting The Christian Faith

VELVET Elvis Copyright © 2005 by Rob Bell This title is also available as a Zondervan ebook product. Visit www.zondervan.com/ebooks for more information. This title is also available as a Zondervan audio product. Visit www.zondervan.com/audiopages for more information. Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bell, Rob. Velvet Elvis: repainting the Christian faith / Rob Bell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-10: 0-310-26345-X ISBN-13: 978-0-310-26345-6 1. Christianity and culture. 2. Christian life. I. Title. BR115.C8B395 2005 261 -dc22 2005010352 This edition printed on acid-free paper. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, Today's New International VersionTM. Copyright © 2001 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for their content for the life of this book. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means - electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other - except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. The story of Yvette on pages 90-91 is used with her permission. Published in association with Yates & Yates, LLP, Attorneys and Counselors, Suite 1000, Literary Agent, Orange, CA. Interior design by FLANNEL Printed in the United States of America jump Several years ago my parents and in-laws gave our boys a trampoline. A fifteenfooter with netting around the outside so kids don't end up headfirst in the flowers. Since then my boys and I have logged more hours on that trampoline than I could begin to count. When we first got it, my older son, who was five at the time, discovered that if he timed his bounce with mine, he could launch higher than if he was jumping on his own. I remember the first time he called my wife, Kristen, out into the backyard to watch him jump off of my bounce. Now mind you, up until this point he was maybe getting a foot higher because of his new technique. But this one particular time, when my wife was watching for the first time, something freakish happened in the space-time continuum. When he jumped, there was this perfect convergence of his weight and my weight and his jump and my jump, and I'm sure barometric pressure and air temperature had something to do with it too, because he went really high. I don't mean a few feet off the mat. I mean he went over my head. Forty pounds of boy, clawing the air like a cat thrown from a second-story window, and a man making eye contact with his wife and thinking, This is not good. She told us she didn't think our new trick was very safe and we should be careful. Which we were. Until she went inside the house. It is on this trampoline that God has started to make more sense to me. Because when it comes to faith, everybody has it. People often tell me they could never have faith, that it is just too hard. The idea that some people have faith and others don't is a popular one. But it is not a true one. Everybody has faith. Everybody is following somebody. What often happens is that people with specific beliefs about God end up backed into a corner, defending their faith against the calm, cool rationality of others. As if they have faith and beliefs and others don't. But that is not true. Let's take an example: Some people believe we were made by a creator who has plans and pBell, Rob is the author of 'Velvet Elvis Repainting The Christian Faith', published 2005 under ISBN 9780310263456 and ISBN 031026345X.