your own experience or reflections, my wish is to create the space where you can meet this God and experience this God’s love.
I’m fascinated when Jesus talks about how he’s water. It’s hard to build a systematic theology around water. Try building a denomination around water; it’s very fuzzy and nebulous and ambiguous—unless, of course, you’re thirsty. Then you know exactly what the water is.
Or when Jesus says he’s light. Light can be hard to get your hands around; it can be hard to quantify or systematize—unless you know you’re far from home, and then light shows you how to return to the place from which you came.
Jesus speaks in metaphors and parables, because ultimately he comes to bring us a living, breathing experience of the love of God right here, right now. At the heart of this book is this simple, beautiful, compelling declaration that this love wins. So I hope this guide helps take you to places you haven’t been before, places that are thrilling and convicting, that fill you with wonder and awe. May the peace of God be with you the whole way.
When my publisher shared with me the idea for this companion guide and asked if I could suggest who should help put it together, my first thought was my friend of twenty years Dave Vanderveen. I was of course thrilled when he said he’d do it and then continually surprised with the fresh insights and people and ideas he has brought to this project.
We have found that a lot of people are preoccupied with the question, “Is there life after death?” That’s a good question, an interesting question, and one that has received a good deal of speculation and discussion. But that isn’t the question that Jesus came to answer.
He came to answer a better, more urgent, more pressing question: “Is there life before death?”
And to this question Jesus repeatedly, emphatically answered, “Yes!”
That insistence of Jesus—that we can have full, overflowing, vibrant, pulsating, dynamic life right now—is what Love Wins is about and it’s what this companion guide is about.
What’s possible right now?
What is God doing in the world right here in our midst?
What does the resurrection life Jesus gives us look like at this moment in time?
My hope is that as you discuss Love Wins you will find yourself returning to that question and that insistence over and over and over again. My prayer is that you are not sidetracked for any significant amount of time with questions that we cannot answer, because we are speculating about things that haven’t happened. My desire is that the book and now this companion will produce a profound sense of urgency and immediacy that there really is bread for the hungry and water for the thirsty and light for those who need to find their way home.
So here’s to the discussion.
Enjoy.
And now, a word from Dave.
by David Vanderveen
Some of the Pharisees said, “Obviously, this man can’t be from God. He doesn’t keep the Sabbath.” . . .
The man replied, “This is amazing! You claim to know nothing about him, but the fact is, he opened my eyes! It’s well known that God isn’t at the beck and call of sinners, but listens carefully to anyone who lives in reverence and does his will. That someone opened the eyes of a man born blind has never been heard of—ever. If this man didn’t come from God, he wouldn’t be able to do anything.” . . .
Jesus then said, “I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing will be exposed as blind.” (John 9:16, 30–33, 39, MSG)
When the blind are being healed, arguments about keeping the Sabbath seem absurd. They miss the point entirely. Jesus’s words are clear about those who cannot see the light, who refuse to look away from their own interests and their own doctrines when the good news shows itself in surprising ways among us.
We all wear filters, lenses, and, in some cases, blinders when we read the Bible. No one experiences the gospel message in a vacuum. When a book appears that generates dramatic and enthusiastic interest about the underlying truth of the good news of Jesus, it demands our attention. We need to make sure we are not like those pretending to see, but are actually blind. Being open to investigating and exploring what is before us helps prevent blindness.
The problem many of us face is how to really listen—particularly as we become more comfortable with the patterns and boundaries through which we interpret the world around us. Are we truly open to God’s surprises? Will we let God confront us in gut-wrenching ways with his good news? Will we let God break through our own ideas about who God is and to speak to us in fresh ways?
The most important thing for reading Love Wins and The Love Wins Companion isn’t discovering the “right” beliefs about Christianity or salvation. The important thing is seriously to engage the material in the books, really attempt to read them without running the ideas through the blinders you may have, before trying to discern what the Holy Spirit may be saying through these words. Those blinders might have come from a specific Christian tradition or from another faith or no faith, whether you call yourself a believer, agnostic, atheist, or just someone looking for ideas. Dive into Love Wins and look around. Engage the ideas and voices in The Love Wins Companion. They are for those who wish to see.
We recognize that people will have different purposes for reading this companion to Love Wins. Some will want to explore more deeply the ideas in Love Wins as individuals; some will want to do the same in a small group or even in a class. We have tried to make this as open-ended and flexible as possible for all these uses. Each chapter from the original book has a corresponding section in this companion that includes an overview and introduction by Rob Bell; a general introduction of the new material by me; Bible studies and exercises for study; discussion questions for groups; and, finally, related “readings” of articles, blogs, book excerpts, and interviews to explore more deeply the ideas from the original chapter.
To get the most out of this companion, we recommend following these principles to avoid “blindness” or unnecessary division:
1 Don’t be overly focused on ending up with the right answer. This worry often hinders our ability to hear the real question and wrestle with the issues. Relax, drop your preconceived objections, and try to respond directly just to the text in front of you. The goal of both books is for you to understand what the Bible actually teaches. In the end, you might not agree with everything these books say, but we want to make sure you truly hear the questions and ideas first in case God has something new to say to you.
2 Focus on loving the people you are discussing these issues with—regardless of their opinion or yours. This is the explicit teaching of scripture. “No matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love” (1 Cor. 13:3, MSG).
3 Recognize that we all read the Bible through a lens and not in a vacuum. No one “just reads the Bible.” The church has been wrestling with these texts for two thousand years. There are dozens of major traditions and hundreds of minor ones that all read the biblical texts in certain ways. We are not saying the Bible is unclear or impossible to understand. But we are saying that you have filters that shape how you are reading the Bible. If you haven’t identified your lenses and filters, take
