seattle.

This past weekend brought an experience much enjoyed in the grand city of Seattle. It only takes a couple of hours to drive to the Emerald City, plus an hour or two for border traffic. Not bad for a lazy Sunday afternoon. I love Seattle. It settles nicely between Vancouver and Los Angeles on my rank of places I would love to live. Not only is it a beautiful city, but it is also extremely well designed, infrastructurally. Seattle boasts a well-organized spiderweb of bridges and tunnels and real highways, of which none exist in the Lower Mainland of BC. It's such a joy to weave through four lanes of highway. Vancouver has so much to live up to.

This latest venture to Seattle brought us to the Moore Theatre to catch Rob Bell in all his story-telling and deconstructing glory. He has an incredible way of picking apart the Christian faith, shuffling it around, and reorganizing it in an easy-to-understand-and-follow manner. Not that he gives a 'how-to' guide towards a better Christian life, like the latest book in the For Dummies series. Though I wouldn't be surprised if he published a book entitled Christianity for Dummies somewhere down the line. Never mind.

But one thing I do value in Rob Bell's words is his understanding of culture, and how certain ideas and stories in the Bible would be understood and read inside that culture. It's a perspective thing. Why would God ask Abraham to sacrifice his only son? Because, in those days, many cultures followed gods that demanded such a sacrifice. Child sacrifice was just a step towards appeasing the gods, and so it may not have come as a surprise to Abraham that the god he chose to follow would demand the life of his son. It's what you do to keep the gods happy. What's different about this god is that, at the last minute, he stops Abraham in mid-stab and provides an animal in recognition of Abraham's faith. The point of the story, according to Bell? Abraham's god is a god of provision. His god is different. His god cares. Unlike the gods of the surrounding cultures who would have allowed the murderous appeasement to continue.

The other aspect of Rob Bell's teaching that I much enjoy is the connection he makes between such age-old faith issues like sacrifice and present-day realities. Is sacrifice dead in our current Christian sphere of life? We'd like to think so. I mean there's no slaughter, no fire, no altar anymore. But we do still have the guilt and shame that was so directly associated with the sacrifices of old (the sacrifice was basically used to 'wipe the slate clean', so-to-speak. Forgiveness of sin came through sacrifice). So how do we deal with that now? Could it be the legalism that the church has fallen under? The 'do's' and 'don'ts' of Christianity? 'Do' this and you'll be right with God again. 'Don't' do this and you won't fall away. Yeesh. Not only does our society continue to pump fear into us, but so do many of the words we hear from the pulpit. And I'm not advocating a watering-down of the truths found in the faith, either. But there has to be a balance.

So what I love the most about the way Rob Bell's mind works is that he weighs everything out on the words and actions of Christ. Why is the altar no longer present in Christianity? Because a final sacrifice has been made. No more blood needs to be spilled. We hear it over and over again, but still struggle with this new foundation of faith: Grace. ...we'll save that topic for another day.

For more from Rob Bell, read his books or watch his movies.