Rob Bell

“Agape doesn't love somebody because they're worthy.Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love.Agape doesn't love somebody because they're beautiful.Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful.”

“The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we'll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it.”

“Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.”

“Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.”

“[The Bible] has to be interpreted. And if it isn’t interpreted, then it can’t be put into action. So if we are serious about following God, then we have to interpret the Bible. It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says. We must first make decisions about what it means at this time, in this place, for these people.”

“Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker.”

“Whether we are reading the Bible for the first time or standing in a field in Israel next to a historian and an archaeologist and a scholar, the Bible meets us where we are. That is what truth does”

“God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.”

“Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there [...] You see God where others don't. And then you point him out. So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst. ”

“If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody. And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. To do this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms are offensive to those who are the "un" and "non", they work against Jesus' teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody. We are all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of God. Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone. As the book of James says, "God shows no favoritism." So we don't either.”

“The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.”

“Christian' makes a poor adjective”

“Because with every action, comment, conversation, we have the choice to invite Heaven or Hell to Earth.”