Sex God

Published by bryan | Filed under journal entries

13 Feb 07

If the measure of a good communicator is signified in the ability to explain difficult concepts, Rob Bell has succeeded in the first chapter of his new book “Sex God.” We only have the first chapter as the book does not release until next month, but the first chapter is worth the price of the whole. The rest of the book can be journal pages and we are fine for having spent the money. My guess is it will be more than this.

What is remarkable about this chapter is not what it communicates, but what it does not communicate. Bell has a unique ability to weave thoughts that, when looking back across his path, one feels is obvious. And yet the path was not there before, and the path leads to a better place. Specifically, Bell has chosen the relationship between sex and theology, which to us seems obvious in that God created sex, and yet the new path is that God is explaining something to our entire senses, and that this something speaks of meaning and beauty and even freedom. These concepts do not only redeem the idea of sex for a perverted (I do not chose this word to be accusational, only to illustrate an obvious confusion about the acts meaning) culture, but it also redeems our perverted understanding of God, that is that God does not understand sex and does not like it and wishes it were not so. Again, an obvious path that is overgrow with weeds. Bell opens the path again, and we see the path is leading somewhere better.

What may be best about this line of thinking is that it sheds light on passages of scripture in which God celebrates this act of intimacy as a positive rather than a negative. Song of Songs comes to mind, but so much Biblical narrative is akin.

Rob Bell’s book releases in March and is available for pre-order on Amazon. The first chapter of the book can be found here:

http://www.zondervan.com/media/samples/pdf/0310263468_samptxt.pdf

Don