Rob Bell and my family, a parable

My kids don't have to struggle to be my kids that I love so much. They don't have to do anything. If they want to participate in that relationship all they have to do is rest in being my kids. I don't require that they love me, though I like that, they don't have to do special practices altho hey, if they give me a little red two-seater as I have requested, I'd love it.

I haven't given them a booklet on how to maintain that family relationship because thankfully at some point we developed a healthy "spirit" of the family that they can either grow in or grow away from. I'm not even requiring that Scott love me the same way Tim does, and I certainly don't need Jenny to keep track of Jesse's way of being with me.

As we love each other, our being with each other will grow and develop and change if it needs to, to allow us to continue to love each other in ways that work.

Are there specific ways of being and doing that will enhance the relationship? Yup! Could we develop and use a booklet to enhance the growth of love in the family? Sure enough.

But without referencing the "spirit" of the family, even following the instructions in that booklet won't produce more closeness in fact it could lead to disjointedness.

I have to wonder if part of the enjoyment of my family is that I just plain and simply think my kids are the best. Thinking of them, and the fact that they are where they are, just gives me pleasure.

Guess you ran afoul of this, Rob Bell

"lacking god's power to create tangible things, the false self creates by use of ideologies, definitions, social myths and words. The false self give it's own name to life and then like a self-proclaimed demiurge, demands that all of life conform to it's wishes.

What is enacted here is the tragic error of naming the elephant and then trying to ride home on the name given, instead of on the elephant itself.

This whole process frequently occurs in religion as well. We give God a name. We than equate God with the name we have given him, and in doing so we make ourselves, in effect God's God. Instead of acknowledging God as the source of our identity and existence, we make ourselves the self-proclaimed source of God's identity. God then becomes the one made in our image and likeness.

Those engaged in the undertaking of naming god see themselves to be participating in a holy work. They are the God-definer, the definition makers. They give shape to the ultimate perimeters of life.

Of course, one of the procedural principles is that God is everything and we are nothing. But they define what this means. They mark off those who properly grasp it from those who do not. Thus, while maintaining that they are nothing, they turn their nothing into a nothing that defines itself and thereby make that nothingness into a kind of everything to which all who which to know the truth must listen. This is a far cry from the true theological inquiry but it is not a far cry from the stance of the Pharisee who is always with us in the form of a deep-seated universal tendency within ourselves, It is the false self expressing it's futile, odious outcry against the Creative sovereignty of the divine freedom.

Once the false self gives birth to it's own dark gossamer existence as cut off from God, it begins to function as it's own God by passing final decision and judgements upon everything under the sun. A whole system of formulas, laws and ideologies is created to form not only one's relationship to others but to God as well. Both self and God become equated with the definitions given to them. Both God and self become cogs in a smoothly running system of self-creation."

From Merton's Palace of Nowhere, James Finley.