Velvet Elvis Part 1 - A wall or a trampoline?
I’ve just finished reading this book by Rob Bell called Velvet Elvis. It’s a book that lots of people have recommended to me over the past year, so I’m long overdue reading it. I’m so glad I did get round to reading it, I ended up reading it in less than a week which is very quick for me, unless I’m on a long plane journey! But, it’s such a rich book and I know I will keep coming back to it.
This is just a general review to say EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK, but I’ll come back and talk about various parts of it over the coming weeks as I explore it further. That is what Bell has designed the book for, he invites the reader not to ”swallow it uncritically but think about it and wrestle with it”. I found myself reading parts of it and saying,
“I like that, I totally agree”.
Then I would think about it and say “Wow, if I believe that I should be living my life differently” or “would that idea really work in the real world?”
I’ll give you an example…
In the first chapter he talks about our faith being like a trampoline rather than a brick wall. A trampoline where the springs are beliefs and ideas that help us understand who God is. In the wall each brick represents our ideas and beliefs about God. If there is definitive evidence that one of your beliefs or ideas is not true what happens to your faith? So, say concrete evidence shows the world wasn’t created in 6 days, does that mean nothing else about God is true? In the wall, one rigid brick is removed and the wall falls down, in the trampoline the spring flexes and other springs can take the strain. I thought this was a great analogy and encouraged me in examining my beliefs about things. But as I thought further I became worried, what if something I hold to be important in my faith doesn’t work the way I think it should, how would that affect my faith?
I wonder if my faith is more like the brick wall, where I think (incorrectly) that I’ve got everything figured out and don’t need to think about my faith or work on it? I need to have a trampoline faith where I talk to others and challenge myself and allow the springs to flex and become stronger and give my spiritual life more bounce!
I was then immediately encouraged when he went on to talk about how our faith should not be like a wall that we want to defend and spend time talking about how right we are. Instead our trampoline faith is one where we invite others to come and jump with us. Also, God is bigger than our questions, God is bigger than our faith and when we try to put Him in a neat wall we are limiting an awesome God.
Everyone should read this book but don’t expect it to be a nice gentle read, you will have to do some wrestling!
