The gods are not angry

At the risk of stealing Chris's thunder, we went with them to see Rob Bell's lecture "The gods aren't angry." I read Velvet Elvis on Chris's recommendation and I can see why he's such a big fan. Rob is sufficiently liberal, especially in his view of the bible, that I at least feel like we can have a common starting place. The main theme of his talk was that we're loved and accepted by God don't have to live lives as slaves to guilt and shame. I've heard lots of sermons with the same theme, and those were always my favorites. Unlike those sermons though, Rob's point of departure was a mini-history of human religion as a response to the anxiety of human finiteness and powerlessness (to borrow some terms from Tillich, as Rob also did). He then moved through the revolutionary view of God offered by the earliest stories in the bible, a view pushed even further by Jesus. He finished with a few very moving stories relating all of this to our (post-) modern lives. I really enjoyed the lecture. My quick summary: Stop living just to seek approval and beating yourself up when you don't get it. You've got it, now go live and love fully.

"You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!"

Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations