3 posts tagged “rob bell”
I finished the book. I won't try and dissect it all in one post - Bell covers way too many topics. This post is about one particular section that really spoke to me - enough so that it brought tears to my eyes when I read it. I swear, he wrote this particular passage specifically for me.
You see, I've realized that I define my worth through the man I'm with. If a guy wants me, then I must be worth wanting. I feel special when he makes me feel special, and only when he makes me feel special. From Sex God, chapter six (emphasis mine):
Do you realize that you are worth dying for?
You don't need to give yourself away to someone who won't give himself to you. You don't need to use your body to get what you need. It's a cop out for not being a certain kind of woman - a woman of dignity and honor.
Some women only know how to relate to men by making a series of transactions. They want to be wanted, and the man wants, well, the man wants what lots of men want. So they trade. Essentially they strike a deal with men, time and time again.
I have what you want, and you have what I want, so let's make a deal. I need this, you need that.
Some women learn at an early age how to negotiate. They need to be loved, to be validated, to be worth something, and they discover that by giving a little of themselves to a boy, they get what what the need in return. It's a cycle, a pattern that can stay with them their entire lives.
Sex becomes a search. A search for something they're missing. A quest for the unconditional embrace. And so they go from relationship to relationship, looking for what they already have.
This search is about that need.
But sex is not the search for something that's missing. It's the expression of something that's been found. It's designed to be the overflow, the culmination of something that a man and a woman have found in each other. It's a celebration of this living, breathing thing that's happening between the two of them.
You don't need a man by your side to validate you as a woman. You already are loved and valued. You're good enough exactly as you are. Do you believe this? Because it's true? You have limitless worth and value. If you embrace this truth, it will affect every area of life, especially your relationship with men.
You are worth dying for.
Your worth does not come from your body, your mind, your work, what you produce, what you put out, how much money you make. Your worth does not come from whether or not you have a man. Your worth does not come from whether or not men notice you. You have inestimable worth that comes from your creator.
You will continue to be tempted in a thousand different ways not to believe this. The temptation will be to go searching for your worth and validity from places other than your creator.
Especially from men.
But you don't have to give yourself away to earn a man's love. You're better than that. You're already loved.
When you give too much of yourself away too quickly, when you show too much skin, you're not being true to yourself. When you dress to show us everything, then in some sense we have all shared in it, or at least been exposed to it. There is a mystery to you, infinite depth and endless complexity.
As the woman says in Song of Songs, "My own vineyard is mine to give." In the ancient Near East, a vineyard was a euphemism for sexuality. She is saying that she doesn't give herself to just anyone. She is fully in control of herself, and she is not cheap and she is not easy.
Your strength is a beautiful thing. And when you live in it, when you carry yourself with the honor and dignity that are yours, it forces the men around you to relate to you on more than just a flesh level.
You are worth dying for.
Those are the words that made me cry. I see myself in them. I've made bad choices because I wanted to feel loved and feel validated. I put my worth in something other than God. I still struggle with this. I don't know when I'll be able to change. It's not as easy as reading these words and flipping a switch in my brain. But it's a start.
I started reading this book last night, and I keep finding things that I want to share with the world! I'm impressed with the way Bell connects God with humanity. He gives practical applications that seem so normal and natural that you just don't question them. In one section, he's talking about love and what love is (to read an excerpt go here). Then he begins to talk about God and love and how God loves. When I got to the end of this passage, I literally said, "Wow."
So if you were God--which I realize is an odd way to begin a sentence--but if you were God, the all-powerful creator of the universe, and you wanted to move toward people, you wanted to express your love for the world in a new way, how would you do it?
If you showed up in your power and control and might, you would scare people off. This is what happens at the giving of the Ten Commandments. The first two commandments are in the first person: "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image...for I, the Lord..." But starting with the third commandment, someone else is talking: "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord..." The rabbis believed that this is because God was speaking directly to the people in the first two commands, but they couldn't handle it. As it says in the text, "They trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, 'Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.' " So, the rabbis reasoned, the switch in person is because Moses gave them the remaining eight commandments.
Just God speaking is too much to bear.
If you're God and you want to express ultimate love to your creation, if you want to move toward them in a definitive way, you have a problem, because just showing up overwhelms people.
You wouldn't come as you are.
You wouldn't come in strength.
You wouldn't come in your pure, raw essence. You'd scare everybody away.
The last thing people would perceive is love.
So how would you express your love in an ultimate way? How do you connect with people in a manner that wouldn't scare them off but would compel them to want to come closer, to draw nearer?
You would need to strip yourself of all of the trappings that come with ultimate power and authority. That's how love works. It doesn't matter if a man has a million dollars and wants to woo a woman, if she loves him for his money, it isn't really love.
If you were an almight being who made the universe and everything in it, you would need to meet people on their level, in their world, on their soil...like them.
This is the story of the Bible. This is the story of Jesus.
Instructions:
- Grab the nearest book. ('nearest' meaning the nearest book. Don't rummage around for the 'cool' or 'intellectual' book)
- Open the book to page 123.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the next three sentences on your blog along with these instructions
From Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (okay, so I had to do page 124 because 123 was blank)
"They realized that something much bigger was going on here, involving them and the people around them and all of creation. Something involving God making peace with the world and creation being reclaimed and everything in heaven and earth being brough back into harmony with its Creator. But before all the big language and grand claims, the story of Jesus was about a Jewish man, living in a Jewish region among Jewish people, calling people back to the way of the Jewish God."
