Empire<\/strong>. Here Rob plays the politics card, and I don\u2019t think he does this as carefully as needs to be done. But, let\u2019s begin with America as Empire: war, money, power, and the empire whose power creates poverty elsewhere. OK, I can live with critique of America. But there\u2019s more to Empire than America: Is not Iraq empire? Is not Saudi Arabia empire? Is not Sudan empire? Is not South Africa empire? In other words, we take the blame that is ours but ours is not the blame of the world. I read this week that Sudan has enough supplies to care for its own, but it is shipping food supplies to other countries \u2026 and we need not get into all of where the money is going. The point is this: yes, oppression deserves to be denounced, but let\u2019s be fair \u2014 if we want to use \u201cempire\u201d as an ideology to be denounced, let\u2019s denounce wherever empire oppresses.
\nComparing Empire then and Empire now must be done with care. We are dealing with a pagan powerful nation \u2014 Rome \u2014 and a post-Christian nation whose constitution embodies ideals hammered out through a Christian history. Is the problem for Paul or Jesus Rome? All secular kingdoms and governments are Empire to me; now what? Some who critique the USA as Empire are expecting a Constantinian reality from the State. I don\u2019t. I expect all governments to be Empire-ish; my hope is in the God of the gospel and in the God of the church, local and global. My hope is that the Church will embody that countercultural and counter imperial gospel.
\nNow, some quibbles: this book, like two others of his I\u2019ve read, reflects Bell\u2019s oral style and that means way too much white space for my liking. More importantly, a New Exodus reading of the Bible deserves some more bibliography and some suggestions for exploration. There\u2019s lots out there, some of it academic \u2014 like the good stuff of Rikk Watts and Tom Wright \u2014 but there are so many texts to consider and so much good stuff on this, I think Rob should give some pointers to readers of where to follow this up.
\nThe cover is clever, and I\u2019ll let you figure it out.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most important thing that will come of Rob Bell\u2019s newest book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, is that Christians will be given an approach to reading the Bible that both makes sense of the Bible and makes sense of the world in which the earliest Christians lived. I\u2019ll sum it up with five \u201cE\u201ds. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1568],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biblical-studies"],"yoast_head":"\n
The 5 E's in Rob Be.e.e.e.e.ll<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The most important thing that will come of Rob Bell's newest book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, is that Christians will be given an approach to reading\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2008\/09\/17\/the-5-es-in-rob-be-e-e-e-e-ll\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The 5 E's in Rob Be.e.e.e.e.ll\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The most important thing that will come of Rob Bell's newest book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, is that Christians will be given an approach to reading\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2008\/09\/17\/the-5-es-in-rob-be-e-e-e-e-ll\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-17T05:20:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&l=ur2&o=1\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2008\/09\/17\/the-5-es-in-rob-be-e-e-e-e-ll\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2008\/09\/17\/the-5-es-in-rob-be-e-e-e-e-ll\/\",\"name\":\"The 5 E's in Rob Be.e.e.e.e.ll\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2008-09-17T05:20:36+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2008-09-17T05:20:36+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\"},\"description\":\"The most important thing that will come of Rob Bell's newest book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, is that Christians will be given an approach to reading\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2008\/09\/17\/the-5-es-in-rob-be-e-e-e-e-ll\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2008\/09\/17\/the-5-es-in-rob-be-e-e-e-e-ll\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2008\/09\/17\/the-5-es-in-rob-be-e-e-e-e-ll\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The 5 E’s in Rob Be.e.e.e.e.ll\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\",\"name\":\"Jesus Creed\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith in the 21st century\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\",\"name\":\"Scot McKnight\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. 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<\/em>, is that Christians will be given an approach to reading the Bible that both makes sense of the Bible and makes sense of the world in which the earliest Christians lived. I\u2019ll sum it up with five \u201cE\u201ds. But I will stake a claim on this: this is Rob Bell\u2019s best book to date<\/em>.![\"jwtsc.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.jesuscreed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/jwtsc.thumbnail.jpg\")
<\/a>