Pete Rollins: You Cannot Hear the Revelation Without Heeding It

Pete Rollins always wigs me out a little bit. My philosophical vocabulary is sorely lacking – continental philosophy all the more. So when I try to listen to someone like Rollins or Caputo I know that I’m barely reaching for the low hanging fruit. If I could change one thing about my life it would probably be that I would have majored in Philosophy in college instead of Biology, then maybe I’d be more conversant. Still I find Rollins to be a gracious conversation partner for neophytes like me.

I’ve heard him tell these stories a few different times, always pointing to the reality that the gospel isn’t an idea you can know or understand apart from the experience of it because the gospel is not, strictly speaking, an idea. The gospel is an experience of the living God through Jesus Christ which transforms us in ways too profound to be explained by mere rational abstractions. You cannot hear the revelation without heeding it. If you hear without heeding, you have never really heard. Here’s a brilliant clip, well worth the 3 minutes it takes to watch it.