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Simply the Best

By Ryan, July 16, 2006

Rob Bell, that is.

He hates cats, by the way. All you feline-hugger associations should be mad at him. Good thing I’m not a cat person myself.

Rob Bell had some interesting things to say at the little convention thing I mentioned last time. He was showing all this scientific stuff that I had learned in, like, 8th grade or so... but he was using it to show that there absolutely must be a god. All this stuff like how if the earth were tilted another half of a degree in either way, no life on earth. A tenth of a percent more or less salt in the oceans or in our bloodstreams, no life on earth. One million miles closer to or farther from the sun... you get the point. He said that it’s like “God has all these dials that are turned to exactly the right spot... if one dial isn’t right, then all these other dials being right mean nothing.”

He’s so good at making these points that I was even able to come up with my own analogy: imagine a football field with a laser on one goal line and a target on the other. Every ten yards is a giant wooden board stretching from sideline to sideline, and your job is to drill a tiny hole in each board. If you put one hole just a half centimeter too far to the left, the laser doesn’t shine on the target. One hole just a little to the top, no light on the target.

Rob Bell is also very funny... not only in what is prepared, but in what is a reaction. Someone had a cell phone go off in the middle of the speaking... and it was LOUD. Rob stopped in the middle of what he was saying and just said “That is the loudest cell phone I’ve ever heard! I hear it again, it’s mine.” And wouldn’t you know it, the same phone rang again about 5 minutes later. Without losing his cool, Rob just stopped talking, lowered his head, and waved the person to the front.

He also had an interesting take on how Adam named the animals. According to Rob, it was like this:

God: So, what should we call this?
Adam: I dunno... how about... hippopotamous?
God: And this?
Adam: Hmm... maybe a... duck-billed platypus?
[many hours later; Adam is very tired]
God: This one?
Adam: Ugh... a dog.
God: [sigh] And this?
Adam: [groan] [mumble] Cat.
God: Wait a second! I didn’t make that one!
Another thing Rob Bell did that impressed me was how well he planned his speech. In the middle of his introductory talk about Genesis 1, he wrote a then arbitrary-seeming number waaaay on the other side of the whiteboard. (This whiteboard was, like, 30 feet wide, I swear.) He was like, “Alright, we’ll cover this number next Tuesday.” Heh, heh. He was right; when he had used up so much whiteboard that he was back to where that number was, he was at the perfect point to tie that number in.

There is so much more I can write about, like his knowledge of Hebrew, his understanding of culture when the Bible was written... but that really would take until Tuesday. Instead of writing it, I’d rather be able to apply and show what he said in my everyday life.

And all that was to cover the two-hour talk from Rob Bell. I haven’t even begun to post about the good times I had with my uncle, aunt, and cousin. Whew... that’s one for next time.

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{ Posted 1:45 PM | E-Mail Post | Edit Post }

Comments: 1

Blogger Justin:

YEP!
July 16, 2006 11:22 PM

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