Rob Bell - Everything is Spiritual Tour

in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth now the Bible was not originally written in the English language as shocking as that sounds but it was written in the Hebrew language and in the Hebrew language the word for God in this first verse of the Bible looks something like this if you were to spell it in English it would look something like this and it's pronounced Elohim let me hear you say Elohim in the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth now the word for create is the word bara let me hear you say bara it's this forceful energetic word of making things out of nothing in the beginning elohim barad the heavens and the earth now the earth was formless and void the hebrew phrases tohe Volvo who which gives me great pleasure to say some translated wild and waste the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters this Elohim has some sort of spirit and then God spoke and said let there be light and there was light God saw that the light was good and separated the light from the dark the light was called david ark was called night it was evening and morning the first day so God speaks some sort of word and makes things in verse one this God is some sort of creator in verse two this God is some sort of spirit and in verse three this God is some sort of word this God is one and yet God this God is several this is some God is some sort of multiple persons some sort of community of creativity what a strange way to begin a very very long book now God says let there be an expanse in the sky to separate the waters above from the waters below and so God makes this expanse and calls it sky and it separates the waters above from the waters below and it was evening and it was morning the second day so in this poem right away there's this refrain and it was evening and morning the first day and it was evening and morning the second day well we don't say it that way we say morning that evening but in this poem which is what it is it's evening then morning we'll get to that in a couple hours now God said let the waters be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear these gathered waters God called seas and this dry ground God called land and it was evening and it was morning the third day and then God said let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light to the earth and to serve as signs to mark the days the years and the seasons God made a greater light to govern the day a lesser light to govern the night and God also made Stars and God saw that it was good and it was evening and it was morning the fourth day and then God said that the waters fill with teeming creatures and let them reproduce according to their kinds they'll figure out how and then let the skies be filled with winged creatures and then then let them reproduce according to their kinds and it was evening and it was morning the fifth day birds and fish and then God said let there be animals let there be livestock let there be wild animals let there be animals that crawl on their bellies let there be small dogs whose owners dressed them in sweaters at Christmas time and God said it's a little bit weird but nevertheless it's good and then God said let us make man and women in our image and so God made people and God saw that it was very good and it was evening and it was morning the sixth day and then God saw all that God had made and God rested now birds go in the sky and fish go in water thank you it's been great the Sun Moon and stars well they essentially go in space serve it to give us light and dark animals and humans go on land and see the things in day for fill in day one the things in day five correspond to day two in the things in day six relate to day three in fact the dominant work in the first three days is God separates and in the second three days God fills what has previously been separated so the days are all interconnected never mind the fact that the way that we measure an actual day is the movement of the Sun the moon and the stars and so the way that we move a day the planets doesn't come till day four which raises the question how do you know the first three days are actually days what a fascinating poem now if you begin to look just another layer deeper and ask well are there any patterns that might tell us what it's about well this word bara is kind of the driving it's the engine of the poem God creates God creates the word bara occurs in three different points throughout the poem and at the last time it occurs it repeats three times I sort of jumped out to the first here of this poem and this God has a three in oneness so there was a three figures dominantly in the poem which raises the question are there any other pattern that we should be looking for well the first verse in the Bible has seven words the second verse in the Hebrew language has 14 words 7 times 2 the word earth occurs 21 times 7 times 3 the seventh paragraph has 35 words 7 times 5 the word God appears in this poem 35 times 7 times 5 and the phrase it was so occurs 7 times and the phrase and God saw occurs 7 times there are sevens and patterns of sevens all throughout the poem it's arranged in patterns now if there's lots of threes and there's lots of sevens the question of course is are there any 10s if you have that kind of time on your hands the phrase to make occurs 10 times the phrase according to their kinds occurs 10 times the phrase and God said occurs 10 times 3 times in relation to people seven times in relation to other creatures and the phrase let there be occurs 10 times three times four things in heavens seven times four things on earth you begin to think the writer had help so the question remains what's it about if you've never read the Bible and you opened it up and you read this first poem this opening stanza and you were asked what's it about I assume well it starts with God and it starts with God creating there's all sorts of creating but then it ends and God rested now there's this rhythm there's this cadence there's this beat to the poem evening morning and it was evening morning second day evening morning third day it has a certain groove to it and yet this groove is glaringly absent day seven doesn't have and it was evening in the morning day seven is just and then God rested and the seventh day just kind of continues on the rest have a definite ending the seventh just lingers on and carries forward I imagine if you're asking what's it about it must have something to do with God creating and God resting and then it must have something to do with people in our role in the midst of this creation it begins with God creating but it ends very glaringly with God resting and somewhere in the middle is this vast creation with humans right in the middle of it and the universe is vast its massive scientists are generally agreed that our universe has somewhere around a hundred billion galaxies somebody counted and the general estimate is that each of those galaxies has somewhere around a hundred billion suns and they believe each of those Suns has at least a hundred billion stars and they're now estimating that our galaxy alone has at least a hundred billion black holes which is why some afternoons you feel slightly depressed now when you get to the bigness of the universe things get very strange very fast there's a galaxy called the Andromeda galaxy which is racing through our universe at 200,000 miles an hour stars do unbelievably strange things there are stars called neutron stars they are essentially what's called hyper dense which means their gravitational pull is so strong that these stars are literally turning in on themselves when this gravitational pull becomes so strong that pulls the star in on itself then it's weight density mass and volume takes on all sorts of strange characteristics here's an example a neutron star weighs has a friend named spongebob unbelievable the art police would make an arrest for that just boom now a neutron star weighs several hundred million tons a neutron star weighs several hundred million tons and fits in a teaspoon when you deal with the bigness of the universe things get very strange very fast nothing is as strange as light which comes from Suns in the form of particles called photons and photons travel at the speed of light now yes the speed of light is incidentally the speed of light now at the speed of light and the way that light travels and particles called photons things get even weirder here's an example let's say you're standing in the street and you see a car coming at you at 20 miles an hour you elect not to step onto the curb this way or to step onto the curb this way but you decide to turn and run as fast as you can away from the car that's coming at you at 20 miles an hour we don't know why you do things like this so you turn and you run as fast as you can away from the oncoming car because when you run you feel his pleasure now let's say the car is coming at 20 miles an hour and you reach a top speed of 10 miles an hour now when you were standing still the car was coming at you at 20 if you reach 10 miles an hour and you look back the car will now be bearing down on you at what speed 10 well done now let's draw this just because I think oftentimes the drawings help here's you and and interestingly enough you've grown dreadlocks for the occasion now ah 10 20 equals 10 and we all say this because we have what's called a Newtonian understanding of the universe Isaac Newton mechanical laws of physics an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an outside flashbacks to 9th grade we were taught that there are these rules that govern how the universe functions safe predictable plug in the numbers and you'll get your answer we were essentially taught what's called a cause and effect understanding of the universe certain things work on other things to produce and lead to certain results give me a give me B I'll give you see the problem is light travels at 670 million miles an hour if you're saying the street and a particle of light comes at you and you turn to run the other way which raises a whole nother set of questions if you're standing still it comes at you at the speed of light if you turn and run one mile an hour 10 miles an hour 100 miles an hour a million miles an hour and look back that particle of light will always be bearing down at you at the exact same speed the speed of light well a man named Albert Einstein got onto this in roughly 1915 he said wait wait wait wait wait the more he discovered about light he said hold on light doesn't follow any of the rules of our Newtonian understanding of the universe Einstein said wait wait he essentially said the universe is not static it when it comes to light there is no a plus B light just does its own thing when you get to the bigness of the universe the universe bends and a works and it's distorts and it doesn't matter how fast you run away from light it always will be pursuing you at the exact same speed while you command and this is obviously his general theory of relativity was an absolute revolution in the way people saw the universe because it was assumed that the universe had these predictable predetermined ways that it operates but with light it simply doesn't follow any of those the universe and it's bigness it's just plain weird they've even found in our galaxy a planet which is racing through our galaxy at 67,000 miles an hour at the same time it's racing through our galaxy at six seven thousand miles an hour it's also spinning rotating at a thousand miles an hour this planet is called Earth and this is why you should wear a seat belt now the earth has a Sun or or maybe we should say our Sun has us the earth receives 99% of its energy from the Sun the Sun converts for us four million tons of energy every second and over an 11-year sunset energy output varies less than one tenth of one percent all of this at a distance of 93 million miles 92 million miles no life on planet Earth 94 million miles no life on planet earth now the earth is unusual from other planets and that the earth tilts on its axis at 23.5 degrees other planets in the solar system earth now the question is why does the earth tilt well if the earth did not tilt it would run the risk of becoming what's called tidally locked which means one side of the earth would get stuck facing the Sun all the time while the other side would never see the Sun so the one side of the earth would get hotter and hotter and hotter until it could not sustain human life while the other side would get colder and colder and colder until it could not sustain human life so this twenty three point five degree tilt of the Earth's FS is just exactly precise to allow this little blue and green floating ball to sustain human life which raises the question why does it tilt it tilts because 40% of a gravitational pull that comes from the Sun pulls it over the other 60% of that tilt comes from the gravitational pull of a little rock we've come to know is the moon the moon and this pole is what allows planet earth to sustain life no moon no life which raises the question how did we get our moon scientists believe that our moon was some sort of meteor or asteroid that was just flying through our galaxy and essentially got stuck in the Earth's gravitational pull making it the cosmological equivalent of oh all right but I have a dark side hydrogen on planet earth must convert 1/7 thousandth of its mass to helium continually for the earth to sustain human life point zero zero seven point zero zero eight no life on planet Earth point zero zero six no life on planet Earth our atmosphere is 21 percent oxygen 23 percent oxygen no life on planet Earth 19 percent oxygen no life on planet Earth the ocean our oceans are 3.4 percent salt the oceans are 3.4 percent salt which is the exact percentage of salt in the human bloodstream 4 percent salt in the oceans or a blood stream no life on planet Earth 2 percent salt in our bloodstream or the oceans no life on planet Earth this is by the way called the science of fine-tuning and there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these unbelievably precise numbers that all add up to life on planet Earth carbon levels gravitational force the density of particular minerals and primal elements that all add up perfectly metaphor is simply this it's as if there are these dials to create and sustain life on planet Earth it's as if there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these dials and every single one of them has been adjusted just perfectly and this one goes to 11 and and every single one of them adjusted just perfectly hundreds of them it isn't just that there are hundreds and hundreds of them and somehow some one has adjusted them just perfectly it's the haunting truth that if just one of them were even slightly turned in any direction it would render the accuracy of all of the hundreds of others irrelevant it isn't just that there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these dials it's as if you just messed with one of them it wouldn't matter about the precise accuracy of every single other one what a strange mysterious little floating blue and green ball we call home now the general estimate is that our universe is 10 to the 27th power meters across once again somebody measured and the general estimate is that the smallest thing in our universe is a subatomic particle 10 to the negative 26th power now if you were to take an average of all human beings Heights if you were to look on planet Earth what's the average height of all human beings and so you were to take babies toddlers preschool kids hobbits adults you would end up average height of all human beings somewhere around 1 meter making human beings the middle in size in the universe and and you you're fascinating how many of you can see me excellent encouraging say the least yeah you have this visual cortex in your brain connected ultimately to the retina on your eye 110 million cones 7 million rods over a million nerve fibers all working in harmony so that you can see things you have over several hundred billion brain cells neural connections somewhere in the trillions every second your brain doing roughly a trillion computations and no one of those brain cells are the same in any given one or two second period your body has just produced two to ten million brand-new red blood cells you have a hundred million white blood cells being stored right now in your bone marrow alone which raises the question if your body is producing new red cells and white cells to make you you and producing these cells at the rate of hundreds of millions every couple of seconds how does your body know to make more and more and more of you and not somebody else every single one of those cells hundreds and hundreds of millions of cells has roughly 6 feet of DNA inside of it it's like a map it's a code that tells your body who you are how to make more of you if those DNA strands were stretched out into their six-foot length and then all of them in your body were put end to end it would be 80 billion miles of instruction it would go from the earth to the Sun and back 400 times your body down to the hundredths billionth millionth of a cell is hardwired to be you and no one else but those cells are actually made up of a smaller component called an atom now if you wanted to see an atom with your naked eye you would need to be one billionth of an inch tall and you'd have an incredibly high voice the earth is - an orange as an orange is - an atom if we were to count the number of atoms in one drop of water if we were to count the number of atoms in one drop of water it would take every single person on planet Earth counting one drop of one atom every second for the next 20,000 years atoms are small thank you it's been great now if you were to take apart an atom if you had those kinds of tools in your garage you would discover that an atom in the center is made up of neutrons and protons and then you would discover that circling around the center very very quickly are what's called electrons now the question is what do you mean by circling electron orbits and atom several billion times every second or so the quite busy now if you have two bonded atoms with all of these electrons orbiting around their centers in any given second between the two bonded atoms it would be roughly three billion collisions here's means take a picture of an atom take a picture of the same atom a second later and while that atom will be in its basic essence the same atom it will have changed drastically in that passing second take a picture of an atom take a picture of an atom a second later you don't know exactly what it's going to do now in the 1890s a group of scientists led by man named JJ Thompson said what if we could take apart an atom what if we could split an atom what if we could come up with a thing that makes atoms well if we get splitted atom down to the thing that makes up an atom well what if we could split it enough to get down to the basic building block of matter well if we could do that if we could get down to the thing that makes the things that makes the things that makes the things that makes everything well then we could explain why everything is how everything is so they began splitting an atom they quickly discovered that an atom can be split into a smaller substance called a cork atoms are made up of quarks but then they discovered you can split a quark and then I discovered the thing that you can split a cork into you can split that and then they discovered that thing that you can split the thing that you can split a thing to make a cork they can split that so the quest kind of went a little bit off track and to this day they're saying they roughly they agree that they've identified at least 100 sub atomic particles it got your mouth sounds mouth sounds gluons nuan's leptons massan's endless lists of these unbelievably small things if you ever heard the term quantum physics cuantas simply means packets of energy because at its core these atoms and these quarks are simply these bundles of energy now when you get into the sub atomic realm things get very very strange they have discovered that a cork can be in one place can disappear and appear in another place without traveling the distance in between they have discovered that a cork is capable of what's called simultaneous duality they have observed corks one cork one cork that is capable of being in two different places at the same time in 1949 a scientist came up with what's called Bell's Theorem a personal favorite of mine Bell's Theorem was essentially this discovery you can take a cork an atom and split it in half and put one half in New York and you can put the other half in San Francisco if you take the half the cork in New York and you reverse the spin of its electrons at that exact moment the half in San Francisco its electrons will reverse their spin as well if you've heard the butterfly effect that's essentially a popularizing of Bell's Theorem in New York State in 1997 they discovered an exotic mess on and we all know how exotic math sounds can be this meson appeared for a trillionth of a trillionth of a second and then it was gone they don't really know where it came from and they don't really know where it went and so you have these unbelievably brilliant subatomic quantum particle physicists saying things like I don't know they have discovered a subatomic particle called a lepton and the general consensus is that leptons do exist as individual subatomic particles the only hitch is they've only been able to observe leptons in communities of two and three and so they said yes we understand that this is a single lepton the problem is we only find them existing in groups of two and three oneness and so the Newtonian understanding of cause-and-effect has simply taken a beating with quantum physics because you take a picture of an atom you take a picture of the same atom a second later they don't know what it's going to do well the assumption was always there's an element of predictability at the very bedrock foundational part of the universe but the problem is quantum physicists are just saying well when you get right down to the smallest thing that makes the thing that makes the thing that makes the thing it essentially the universe at its core it is unpredictable the best we can come up with is that the universe at its core is some sort of relationship of energy so you have brilliant studied respected research scientists saying all we can come up with as the universe at its core is made up of some sort of relational energy that we simply can't control some of them even starting to use words like personality and and that this energy that holds everything together that brought everything into existence and somehow sustains or holds everything in existence gives life to everything and simply has a mind of its own we cannot conquer it or put it in a box it is simply above and beyond what we can comprehend and particle quantum sub atomic physicist are starting to sound a lot like ancient near-eastern Jewish poets now for years there's been a disparity because you have those trying to explain the weirdness of the bigness of the universe my technical scientific language the weirdness of the bigness and then you have others at the quantum level talking about the weirdness of the smallness but these two ways of explaining why things get so strange when they go big and why things are so and explainable when they go small have essentially been two different ways and so there's been a search for years for what's called a unified theory is or some way to explain why the universe whether you go incredibly far out or incredibly far in is just strange and unpredictable and it bends and lights does all sorts of things is there some way to explain it all and a group has come along who have said well the way to explain it is that the ultimate building block of reality is actually small strings these are called string theorists and they've presented to the world essentially what's called string theory so you immediately say well what do you mean by small they're essentially saying the universe is to the earth as the earth is to an atom the universe is bigger than the earth in the same way the earth is bigger than an atom in the same way an atom is bigger than one of these strings yeah and they're saying well the real issue isn't the bigness and the out Nisour the smallness and the illness the real issue is multiple dimensions of reality now to get our minds around dimensions this is a rectangle and this is a circle now this circle will never be a rectangle and this rectangle will never be a circle this board that I'm writing on is a two-dimensional surface it has height and it has width and so in two dimensions this rectangle will never be a circle this circle will never be a rectangle if you ask me which is which that's either or it's either a circle or a rectangle now let's move from two dimensions to three dimensions let's add a dimension this marker from the side is a rectangle and yet if you look at it from the end it's a circle so in two dimensions it's either a rectangle or a circle you add a dimension and all of the sudden what was either/or mutually exclusive becomes both and if the question what was well is it a rectangle or a circle in three dimensions uh yep how much blood has been spilled an oxygen wasted arguing over whether it's this or this when maybe sometimes the answer is yep think about religion alone faith or science yep or think or okay predestination or freewill are and the one side has a list of Bible verses kua kung-fu and the other side has their list of Bible verses ax maybe the good God who made everything is like look it I gave you the marker trick yep and you have the circle group which is like come on man join the circles the universal loving embrace and you have the rectangles way what we have right angles we are four times more right than you are Virginia did you but you you're David you're dangerously close to becoming a square yes what we need are more straight lines not all this what we need straight lines but dude you can't smoke a rectangle maybe sometimes the good God who made everything just says yep now in 1800s a British headmaster named Edwin Abbott proposed a land of people who were trapped in two dimensions what if there was a land of people who did not have three dimensions as you and I have and they were trapped in two dimensions he called this land flatland what could we learn as enlightened three dears if we were to spend time observing those trapped in two dimensions how if you lived in two dimensions would you experience something that had three dimensions what if you were trapped in flatland at all you had was height and width and what if you encountered a three-dimensional object what if my ring passed through your two-dimensional world what if a three-dimensional ring passed through this flat two-dimensional world if this ring was able to pass through this marker board how would they see it I imagine when it first touched it would be a point then as it continued to go through the point would turn in to a line and then it would turn into two lines and then when the ring was halfway through it would appear as two different lines and then if it kept going the lines would come back together point and then it would be gone correct because you talked about this all the time with your friends you're out of the restaurant you know I stick in the other day napkin ring I don't know now how would these to process what they just experienced how would the two of them if that happened uh do you see that a little weird wasn't it what was that I don't know I don't know well what'd you see well I saw a point and it turned into a line there are two to two lines and then the lines got farther and farther apart then they came back together one line point and then it was gone I know I actually I think it was something more what do you mean I think it might have been a ring what do you mean it almost has to me a certain Monty Python a ring I do say a ring yeah I think that the point line line line line line line line point I think that was actually that was actually something more well have you ever seen a ring no ever seen a picture of a ring no ever held a ring no ever never been to ring ville no you haven't so I don't you know all it was point line line line line that's all you know line line line line point gone that's all it was I don't know I just you have any evidence no the only proof no any photos no anything in a lab you can test no so this person ends up having to use words like I don't know I just sense feel trust believe have faith and so the experience of the ring actually reveals to vastly divergent worldviews the one person immediately shifts into flatland is all we have it's all we can prove it's all we know it's all we can document and so it's all we have the P Racal evidence for the one person essentially becomes what's called reductionistic all it was was point line line line line line point con and they can argue very persuasively because this person can't come up with any tangible evidence and so their worldview is essentially it's all it is there's nothing more don't be all weird and this person is left in the awkward position of maybe being definitively convinced but there that was a ring and yet all they can do is talk about nudges and hints and senses and feelings and beliefs and maybe even have to use words like faith now what if mihrab in all of my three deenis what if I decided to mess with them and I came and just kept my hand like right here and what if the one said you feeling anything weird no I don't know man I think Rob is near I just feel the overwhelming presence of Rob and the one could be saying what are you talk I could have my hand this close and the one would be saying what are you talking about you're out of your mind you're talking nonsense you have to give up all that superstitious mythic stuff and the other one was saying no no I think Rob is very close or what if I really want to miss them and I just jammed my hand right through their world well my fingers are of different lengths and of different thickness so my fingers would appear at slightly different times and they would be of slightly they would produce circles and those circles would be of slightly different circumference --is and diameters so the one could say did you see that yeah I think all those five circles you know I think they're all related what they came at different times there are different sizes no I think I think I think it was the hand of rah and once again the person with the reductionist view point is they came at different times there have different sizes you have to give up this mythic superstitious nonsense all you have is a couple rings circles that don't have any relation to each other and the other one sounds like they've completely lost their mind but in fact they are dead on right see their experiences of three dimensional objects would expose vastly different world views and the one who sounded crazy would actually be dead right and the one who sounded extremely rational calculated and weighed all the evidence would be missing a whole new reality right here within this one now in flatland you also run the risk because there are boundaries in flatland there are those who say this is simply how it is there is no other world there is no higher law there is no greater purpose we have flatland that's all we have and there would be others who would keep insisting there's more there's beyond there's something else and you would have great conflict the story of human history is the story of enlightened souls again and again who simply insisted this isn't all there is and others who had great power invested in maintaining this is all there is ultimately have harmed lots and lots if you were to sort through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ what is it the world was ruled by an empire that simply said this is how it works the Roman Emperor is God bow down to the emperor the Empire is all-powerful and an obscure Jewish rabbi comes along and preaches the kingdom of God what is the essential conflict within the story of Jesus somebody who simply looks at the power brokers of flatland and says there's more there's more now you and I are trapped in time we cannot go to the right in time we cannot go to the left in time we can't I go up in time or down in time you and I are trapped in what's called linear forward time we can only go forward we cannot go back in time and so your barn you pay taxes you watch your country's World Cup team lose you die now you and I cannot go we can only go forward in time left right up down forward we cannot go back in time time is one dimension and yet we can't go back and so essentially we lose the back time you and I are trapped in a half dimension of time time for us only goes forward in one direction now what if there was a beam who wasn't trapped in one dimension of time what if there was a beam who had a two dimensional awareness of time what if there was a beam who had a three dimensional awareness of time well you and I have a three dimensional awareness of space so what if there was a beam who had an awareness of space in time the way that you and I are aware of space what if there was a beam who looked at this marker let's have this marker represent your life in my life born pay taxes die now here's your life here's my life what if there was a beam who had a three-dimensional awareness of time could they in looking at our life do this could they do this could they do this would they say I have no idea what she's gonna do next no they probably just say yep they wouldn't be confined in any of the ways you and I are being confined with they might even use phrases like in the beginning you know before time to which those trapped and I have to mention we'd be like it's not healthy at the time of this poem Genesis emerged among a group of people who lived in a culture in which people assumed that the gods and goddesses are trapped in time just like humans are so the gods and goddesses are born they start to get ill so you build them a giant pyramid stuff all their stuff into the pyramid they die and then their son or daughter comes along and rules and then the next ruler so their understanding was that the gods and goddesses are trapped in a half dimension of time just like we are it's at this time that God appears to a shepherd named Moses and says Moses I want you to liberate my people because God is in the liberation business and God says to this Shepherd Moses Moses I want you to set my people free and Moses a very practical man and says okay but I'm gonna need a name can you tell them what your name is and God says to this man Moses well just tell them my name just tell them I am to which Moses responds because that pretty much clears it up yeah nothing fussy there now wherever you have ten rabbis you have twenty opinions on about what the name means some say the name means I always have then I am I always will be others say way to comers and the name is essentially raw essence I just am pure existence some say the name is a way of saying God saying I am not trapped in time like all the gods and goddesses that you know of I stand outside of a simply am existence in its most pure primal form the astounding dimension to this story is this God who is outside of time this God who is spirit it was assumed that all the gods and goddesses had shape and form you had statues carvings totems so that you could get your mind around the God the God our God us always at the time this poem emerged had a shape or a form this God is spirit this God even says or Moses says to the people remember when you encountered this God this God had no shape or form this God again and again is a God who trained sends time and transcend spaces God is spirit cannot be contained with physicality there is no shape or form so this God these are brand-new ideas in human history no one had ever suggested anything like a God who isn't trapped in time a God who can't be confined in physical space and in the history of ideas or the evolution of real it no one had ever even begun to talk about a God like this the astounding thing about this creation poem is not only is this God outside of time and outside of space but this God chooses to act within human history this God chooses to act in tangible ways and that act is to create this God who is endless infinite beyond who has no boundaries edges thinness shape or form chooses to act very specifically in human history by creating and then in Genesis to another account of creation this God breathes into dust and makes people now at the other end of the spectrum there is this realm of the Spirit with no shape form no physicality there is this realm in Genesis one of physicality light dark sky water land sea and then out of the land comes trees and the trees produce fruit and the fruit has seeds so in Genesis 1 there is a dimension of the SCOTUS spirit this God has no physicality and then at the same time there is this physical universe that's being brought into existence and each thing in the poem is more complicated than the thing before it light and dark will sky and water you can actually you can actually hold water land and see dirt you can actually hold dirt so each thing tree is more complicated advanced more detailed more precise than rocks and then fruit is more complicated more design than trees but then the seeds can fall on the ground to produce another tree maybe this would help frisbee iPod now somebody going ah so in this poem each thing that's being created is slightly more advanced and complex than the thing after it it's going somewhere more arrangement more design more creativity and so you have this see the see too significant because a tree can produce fruit and then the seed is its ability to reproduce after seeds then you have animals then God creates a man each thing more advanced than the thing before it God creates the man steps back and says I think I can make something study more advanced any girl power in the room whatsoever ha ha and so she shall be called woman because when the man firsts are he said whoa man God said it is not good for the man to be alone he won't know what to wear actually this is fascinating in Genesis 2 the creation of the woman comes right after the naming of the animals which is like what's the point well the man is told to name the animals and nothing is a corresponding strength and so then God makes this woman as a corresponding strength or now if there's a day if there's a scene that would've been brilliant how about the naming of the animals would that have been brilliant a picture God the God character Adam hey Adam or maybe just hey because there's no one else there okay here's the deal there's dears a deal we're gonna bring these animals in we're gonna bring them in one by one we'll bring them a two by two later and we're gonna bring them in then you just name them whatever you want to name them so you picture Adam like okay he's gonna bring hippopotamus picture God like yeah okay eponymous there's a as a database angel uh how do you want me to spell that anyway you want they bring in the next one Adams like start Nick kind of gaze groove on you do this uh duck-billed platypus yeah God is like says Wow angels over here like seriously where did you get this guy you know I could start over that's something stuck on my sandal and I took it maybe you don't listen but by God wants to be encouraging seriously out of you're the man no seriously you are you're the man so but like couple days into it or a couple day a day into a Natomas just whipped ah he's thought every possible he's so tired not one creative idea left one more one more okay can you do one more yes I can do one more Oh dog God's a dog hey wait that's my name backwards look oh one more really yeah one more well okay uh cat cat hey wait I didn't make those that's funny I don't care here you are so anyway uh-huh yeah yeah now uh this poem is proposing things that no one had ever proposed it's a brand new idea in human history see everything in the creation story fits into one of two categories it's either purely physical rocks dirt trees seeds at either water it's either purely physical or it's it's spiritual it's spirit it's I am its action it's either in material or material it's either physical or non-physical everything in creation is either one or the other a tree has physicality but no spirit I am a spirit with no physicality fruit physical no spirit spirit spirit but no physical everything is one or the other angels spirit no physicality sky water physicality no spirit and then in this creation story the human being is physical dust and yet is breathed into by spirit there is nothing in the entire created realm that is totally spiritual and totally physical is a human being spiritual or physical the answer of course yep now this has profound implications for how you and I understand what it means to be human you are here maybe you've heard somebody say well I'm just not into spiritual things are you are you a human being yeah too late the issue is not whether you're a spiritual being or you have a spirituality the issue is whether your eyes are open and you're aware of it you cannot deny what is central to your makeup as a human being in the Hebrew language there is no word for spiritual if you would have said to Jesus Jesus how is your spiritual life what what do you mean because to label one area spiritual is to label other areas not spiritual it's absolutely foreign to the world of the scriptures it's absolutely foreign to the worldview of Jesus the assumption is that you are a fusion of two realms and a human being occupies a totally unique place in the entire universe how you handle your money how you handle relationships sexuality forgiveness reconciliation business school work play recreation everything we do we do as an integrated being 100% physical 100% spiritual these first Christians latched onto this right away whatever you do whether in word or deed do it in the name of Jesus Christ what were they saying every act is a spiritual act it's whether or not you're aware of the implications of what you're doing now this has profound implications for how we understand what it means to be part of a church because it's possible for religious institutions and for churches to actually work against an integrated holistic spirituality what can ever so subtly happen is that we emphasize certain things and in the process de-emphasize other things what can happen ever so subtly is people begin to see God as dwelling in a certain place sometimes it's only with a certain person or a certain group of people sometimes it's a building sometimes it's an hour on a particular day of the week and whatever so subtly happens is it creeps in that God is there and obviously something powerful happens when people gather for the purpose of worshipping and pursuing this one true God but ever so subtly what can happen is God is there and if God is there ever so subtly God can seem less and less here but you and I are a fusion of these two realms we are both and so perhaps maybe a more biblical way to understand what a community our church is is it's a group of people who are bonded together in their pursuit of God obviously they're learning to see God in each other and God is powerfully present in their midst but these are people who are being given eyes to see the divine everywhere they go what does Jesus saying to his first followers whatever you do for the least of these you've done for me what is he trying to teach them he's trying to teach them to live in such a way that every single interaction they have they will be fully aware of the God who is present in that interaction he's teaching them that all of life is drenched in the divine the issue is whether our eyes are open enough to see it now this creation poem that begins the scriptures has God creating and then God resting and there's a fascinating thing that happens in the middle of the poem sometimes Hebrew poets would work in what's called a chiastic form which means that they would hide or they would plant the meaning of the poem somewhere in the middle well if we were to look at the middle there are seven days and so the fourth day is the middle day in the fourth day we're told that there are Sun Moon stars which is well what does that have to do with the meaning of the poem the explanation for the Sun Moon and stars is God made the Sun Moon and stars in order to mark the days the years and the seasons now seasons is an absolutely giant word in the Bible it's central to the life of somebody who follows God it was central to the world of Jesus so anybody reading this poem that word seasons planted right in the middle would have jumped out to them particularly because the poem begins with God creating and ends with God resting why is seasons significant seasons is a reference to two things first seasons is a reference to the Sabbath who is one of the original audiences of this poem a group of Hebrews who had been slaves in Egypt now what was life like in Egypt in Egypt they worked seven days a week making bricks they had quotas of bricks they had to meet bricks bricks bricks bricks every day all day bricks in Egypt your Worth and value came from meeting your quota of bricks you were as worth as much as you produced this was life in Egypt God rescues these people from life in Egypt and now he's trying to teach these people what it means to be a human being not a human doing God is trying to teach these people what it means to be human you are not a machine and in Egypt their Worth came from what they produced and God is trying to teach these people your Worth does not come from what you produce your value does not come from bricks your value comes because you are rescued and redeemed children of the one true God so what does God say every seven days work six days but then take a day and do no work rest reflect play whatever feeds your soul take one day a week to remind yourself that you are not a machine so the seasons first and foremost is a reference to the Sabbath the need for a rhythm of creating and resting secondly that wasn't enough in the scriptures it's not just every six days then take a day and Sabbath rest play saying dance whatever feeds your soul but there were seven major feasts throughout the year where God said play you will have fun and so seven times a year there were these giant feast the feast of Sukkot in the fall literally an eight-day celebration singing dancing adult beverages whatever giant the seasons the Sabbath and the seven feasts were essentially God's Way of saying somebody get me a DJ now there was in the culture at this time there were several other creation stories the central creation story that was popular among the masses when this Genesis poem emerged essentially taught that the world came about because of conflict it's still surviving got a library and read up on it essentially the belief was that the world came about because this God was was mad with this God and this God was jealous with this God kind of like big-time wrestling meets soap operas in the sky and there was a smack down here and there's a love triangle here and out of this conflict came the earth so the essential belief among most people at the time of Genesis 1 is that the earth came about because this God was upset with this God and out of their primeval conflict in battle we got the world we know this poem charges on to the scene and it's similar in many ways to those poems it speaks of land and seas and dirt and creating and shaping and forming in clay it speaks of many of the same elements and yet it makes vastly different claims this balm arising out of the same culture says no no no we are not here because of divine conflict we are here because this one true God who exists in some sort of loving endlessly giving generous community this one God is so filled with joy and beauty and creativity it's as if this God can't help but create I mean this God starts creating things and then and then this God complements himself like man that's good this God loves to make things so much this God just makes things and makes things and make things and just loves mixing this God makes things and then says to them okay now you make more and you make more this God loves to make things that can make things this God makes people in this God's image and says them now you take care of it and share in my joy this poem was absolutely radical in human history because it said we're not here because of conflict we're here because of joy were the result of divine creativity that said I can't help but give and spread what I have to more and so planted right in the beginning of this poem is this word seasons God creates God rests and right in the middle is season so you do the same create but then take time to enjoy what you've created a couple years ago I noticed this disturbing habit that my boys had developed when they would say my name and they were quite young at the time they would say dad dad dad I was gonna have a stutter what was the problem here and I would notice dad dad dad and it began to bother me and then one day we were playing I think it was Legos or something we're down on the floor and I heard the Dada Dada Dada and Ike and I noticed it at about the second Dada and was fully there by about the third Dada and I realized at that moment that I've been there playing with them and yet I had been somewhere else thinking about a meeting thinking about things I have to do thinking about emails thinking about phone calls to make when I was done with them and I realized that I was there with them but I was actually somewhere else and I realized that my boys had gotten used to their dad being here but actually being somewhere else and so over time they had just realized it takes about three tries to get dad here in Exodus chapter 24 God says to Moses Moses come up on the mountain and stay here and then the rabbis point out that the literal translation of that the word to stay is the word hi-yah that means to be so the verse literally the command literally reads Moses come up on the mountain and then when you get on top of the mountain be on top of the mountain which is kind of like something from the school of redundancy school I get it if I'm on top of the mountain I'm on top of the mountain that's where I am and the rabbi's say oh no no no no no this command is brilliant they say God understands human nature God understands that Moses will spend all sorts of energy getting up to the top of the mountain and when he gets to the top of the mountain he'll immediately begin thinking and planning how he's going to get down and in the process he won't ever be fully present on top of the mountain and he'll miss it why does this creation poem have this refrain evening morning evening morning a Jewish Sabbath begins sundown Friday night it goes through the night and then it goes into Saturday and ends sundown Saturday so a day goes from night today from dark to light I say this is because a day is a physical picture of the journey hat God has all of us on moving from dark to light moving from ignorance to awareness moving from error to truth does the writer have this refrain in here evening morning evening morning evening morning which is a way of saying wake up come into the light is the writer saying this in the midst of creation there's so much to do there's so much to accomplish there's so much to build so much to administrate so many emails to respond so many phone calls to return so much to create so much manage so much to order there's so much to do be careful that in your managing and creating ordering be careful that in the midst of creation you don't become so consumed in your work that you end up creating all the time and you don't spend any time resting and in the process you lose something and to that first audience perhaps you find yourself back in another sort of Egypt is the writer saying don't become a machine who's so caught up in everything you're doing that you miss the joy that wonder the aw of being a human in the midst of this whole world God has made I have learned that what you look for you will find if you want to be a cynic there's plenty to be cynical about if you want to be a skeptic there's plenty to be skeptical about if you want to be a pessimist there's plenty to be pessimistic about what you look for you will find but in Psalm 14 it says a fool says in their heart there is no God now this is fascinating because you and I would say somebody who rejects the divine we would say well this is somebody who's made an intellectual decision they've looked at the columns they've weighed the evidence and they've said there is no god but the psalm says know somebody who who rejects God who says there is no God this is somebody who's made a decision in their heart the psalmist says that is not ultimately an intellectual decision a cognitive ruling that person is made it's a posture of the heart you can look at this big mysterious world that God is made you can look at light and how it does all sorts of strange things a Benz and it distorts you can look at how the universe is not static how there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds these dials that are all perfectly calibrated to let this little blue and green ball produce human life and sustain human life you can look at the universe and its smallness with all of the quarks you can look at all of these odd little things that are indeterminate that have essentially a personality of their own string theorists are now saying that they believe they can prove at least 11 dimensions to reality they're now saying I heard the other day they're now saying they think they have a 12 and a 13th but string theorists are saying there are at least 11 dimensions to reality we can look at that and say wow even scientists are saying there must be more not it's all probably they'll just end up with it or someone like Bill Gates will figure it all out we'll be all set from there and you can look at all the since there's nothing more going on here yes spirit breath that's all just made up by religious people as a crutch to deal with the pain of life you can look at all of this and say there's nothing more there's nothing else going on it just is a bunch of stuff or you can choose to see wonder and beauty and awe you can see the quarks you can see the dimensions and you can see light and you can see photons and you can see the Stars and you can see the dials and you can choose to say whoa Wow unbelievable amazing you can choose with the posture of your heart to worship to be filled with Wonder and awe to believe that not only are we here for a reason but there is a big story being told and you and I each get to be a part of it what you look for you will find a friend of mine was in Malawi West Africa and there had been a terrible famine there and the people hadn't eaten and he had been working with several other agencies to arrange for food to be brought in so they had this giant celebration when food was brought and people who hadn't eaten in a while got to eat for the first time and my friend said if you want to see a celebration see people at the end of a famine eat he said it was unbelievable singing dancing just living in the moment of we can now eat and he says they set up this tent on'y out in the middle of this field and he says part way through the celebration he says they heard this unbelievably loud like whirling noise and they step out of the awning and they look to the side and they're headed towards the clearing was a tornado so he says we all stood and just watch the tornado come towards us like you do he says the tornado comes to the edge of the clearing stops goes around the perimeter of the clearing and then keeps on going in the direction it was originally headed in he says they're standing there watching it when one of the locals runs up to them and says do do you see the celebration here is so magnificent even the spirits have come to witness it what you look for you will find and what we are looking for and what you are looking forward I'm looking for is right here it's not over the mountain and it's not across the sea what we're looking for is right here the reality that Jesus came to announce to die for and to rise for he called the kingdom of God we might say the reality of God or the way of God this reality jesus said is here it's now it's among us it's upon us she just never taught that it's somewhere else he said things like look at those flowers have you have you watched the birds in a while notice in your conversations with the least of these you might even find God there he came essentially to articulate for us an integrated holistic spirituality that everything we're looking for is not over there it's not behind there it's not down there it's right here the issue is if our eyes are open to see it may you slow down so that you don't miss a thing may the eyes of your heart be enlightened may you be fully present right here right now may you come to see that the reality of God is at hand among us upon us near here and may you come to see that everything is spiritual Thanks

Channel: R Lee Sawyer

Views: 392,975

Rating: 4.7536073 out of 5

Keywords: Rob Bell, Everything, is, Spiritual, tour, speech, talk, sermon, message, World, creation, creator, God, earth, Jesus, Christ, word, Holy, Spirit, Live, Creature, Gospel, truth, Lord, Salvation, theology, doctrine, fine, tuned, Prophecy, Talking, mars hill, church, lesson, science, physics, evidence, divine, nature, observe, grow, righteous, love, compassion, forgiveness, life, prophet, healing, Egypt, Ancient, Energy, Consciousness, Light, History, Universe, force, gravity, quantum, big, bang, evolution, Sacred, Reality, Human, Wisdom

Id: i2rklwkm_dQ

Length: 78min 2sec (4682 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 02 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Nocturnal-Burst1]

So compelling