275 Rob Bell on Life's Meaning and Interpreting Faith

"True progress is when you leave behind what can't make it into the new world." - Rob Bell If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/275 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 275 with Mr. Rob Bell.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. I am so excited for this, as I am excited for every guest, because I handpick every guest. I curate and facilitate the individuals that come on this show. And I take it very seriously who I bring on, because I want to make sure it leaves the biggest impact in your lives possible. And someone emailed me recently and said, you know, I love all of your podcasts and the ones that I feel like I want to skip over, because I don't know who the person is, or I don't think it'll be relevant to my life or my business. I tend wanting to skip over, but then I actually go and listen to it and I realize those are some of the most impactful interviews

• 1:15Lewis Howes?

  out there on your show. So, thank you to you guys for trusting me, for constantly diving in, even when you're not sure how it's going to relate to you. I'm thinking and preparing and asking the questions to make sure it relates to you on all areas of your life. So even if it's a spiritual leader like Rob Bell, who we have on today, you may not think it's going to pertain to your business in any way, or your health, or your relationships. But I'm telling you, you're going to find some incredible golden nuggets in this one for all areas of your life. And even if you find one good idea. From all these different episodes that you can apply, it's gonna be worth it. So, thank you again for trusting me, for listening to all the episodes, for downloading,

• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  for sharing it with your friends. You mean the world to me. It's because of you that we're able to grow this audience and grow the movement of greatness. I'm trying to impact 100 million lives, and I can't do it without your help. So, thank you so very much. What we're talking about today, we dive in pretty deep, and this is gonna be a two-part series with Rob because we went pretty long. So, I wanna break it up for you guys so you can digest it and take it in and consume this information and start applying it. So, we'll do one right now and then another in a couple of days. And we talk about, we go all over the place, to be honest, and we cover a lot of great things. I ask him right off the bat, you know, why are we actually here? You know, Rob Bell, for those that don't know him, he is Time Magazine's one of the

• 2:44Lewis Howes?

  most top 100 influential people in the world. He toured with Oprah for a summer all around the country, talking about leadership and spirituality and wellness and all these different topics. He's trusted by many. He built one of the largest churches in the country back in Michigan, and he's got his own podcast, he's got a number of books, a New York Times bestselling author. He's an incredible human being and an awesome guy. I go over and hang out at his place with him and his wife and his kids, and we watch football on Sundays, and just an incredible human being. So, if you don't know who he is, or if this is your first time being aware of him, make sure to check out the show notes at lewishouse.com/275 to learn more.

• 3:28Lewis Howes?

  And we dive into some topics about why we're actually here. You know, I ask him, why are we here? What's the purpose? What's the meaning of all this life? What do we put our faith into when something terrible goes wrong? When something tragic happens? When we're... Unsure or uncertain of what decision we're supposed to do. What are we putting our faith in? What should we put our faith in? Should we put it in God or the Bible or something else? What should we put our faith in? How spiritual traditions have let us down in contemporary and modern society and how some things from the past traditions don't apply to us today and which ones we should be following. A new perspective on religious stories and

• 4:09Lewis Howes?

  how we can apply those today, how we make interpretations around everything we read and believe. We also talk about marriage, divorce. We talk about same-sex marriage. We talk about a lot of these different ideas and challenges that people go through, feeling guilty, feeling unsure, uncertain, questioning their own faith. Doesn't matter what religion you're in, but questioning these things. So I urge you to pay full attention to this episode and the second part, which will come out in a couple of days, and make sure to share this with your friends because I think you're going to get a lot out of these two episodes. So without further ado, let me introduce you to the one and only Rob Bell.

• 4:53Lewis Howes?

  So welcome, everyone. This is the School of Greatness Podcast with Rob Bell, my good friend. We're here in West Hollywood at his little jam band studio in the back, your backyard, little, what do you call this thing?

• 5:04Rob Bell?

  Well,

• 5:05Lewis Howes?

  Studio.

• 5:06Rob Bell?

  We call it the back house.

• 5:07Lewis Howes?

  The back house.

• 5:08Rob Bell?

  Formerly a garage, now the world headquarters of whatever, and my one son's bedroom.

• 5:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's nice. It's so cool. I was like,

• 5:15Rob Bell?

  Drums.

• 5:16Lewis Howes?

  This is the, this would be the best place to live if you were like a 16 year old.

• 5:19Rob Bell?

  Right. My, my 15 year old son Preston has his room back there.

• 5:23Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 5:24Rob Bell?

  So you live in the middle of LA and you're 15 and there's Uber. The universe likes you.

• 5:29Lewis Howes?

  Yes. You've got your own bathroom, your own like room, drum set.

• 5:32Rob Bell?

  And then this room is surfboards, drums, bass guitars, my desk, where I do all my work, and it's just great.

• 5:38Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 5:39Rob Bell?

  And here we are.

• 5:40Lewis Howes?

  It's awesome. And we recorded a podcast here. Rob's got an incredible podcast called the Rob Bell Cast.

• 5:45Rob Bell?

  Robcast.

• 5:46Lewis Howes?

  Robcast.

• 5:47Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 5:48Lewis Howes?

  And,

• 5:49Rob Bell?

  And you were on.

• 5:50Lewis Howes?

  I was on and then after me, this is my claim of fame. I was on and then after me was Oprah. So I became before Oprah and I get to brag about that. And I just got back from a book tour. And every stop I went to, I'd ask people about how they found me. And so many people said because of Rob Bell's podcast. So you had a lot of fans out there. And so many people loved our first podcast. It was probably about a year ago, maybe about nine months ago. Cause before you moved here.

• 6:15Rob Bell?

  Yeah, right, right.

• 6:16Lewis Howes?

  It was probably like March-ish or something.

• 6:18Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 6:18Lewis Howes?

  2015, so people loved it. They still talk about it.

• 6:22Rob Bell?

  It was so much fun.

• 6:23Lewis Howes?

  And you've got a book coming out in a few months. We're gonna have you come back on for that to promote the book. But I wanted to start off the year, uh, 2016. A lot of people are going through transition. It's a time to think, reflect. Um, you know, a lot of people went through struggles last year that I talked to. A lot of people that were going through heartache, breakups, losing their jobs. You know, uh, challenges, sickness, disease, people dying in the family. Just a lot of heartache, struggle that happened. Not for everyone, but I just felt like it was happening for a lot of people.

• 7:00Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 7:01Lewis Howes?

  And I feel like you're my spiritual, you know, you bring me back to like grounded in a spiritual sense. Every time I get like distracted or feel like what's the point or what's the reason? What's the meaning, the purpose? I'm like, I need to talk to Rob. I need to like get grounded and talk to Rob. And I think of it as a reflection of like, I think other people are feeling the same way. Cause I hear the same things happening. So I thought I'd ask you some questions about purpose, life, God, the Bible. Um, because I'm always so interested and I'm gonna start with this. There were some questions that people sent in via Snapchat, actually. I had people texting me questions as well. So I'd like to ask a few things. And the biggest question is, why do you think we're actually here?

• 7:48Lewis Howes?

  Big, big, easy question to start off with. But what do you think we're all here? And do you think that it's on purpose? Or do you think, uh, that there's a reason for us all being here? Or do you think it's kind of by accident or a chance that each one of us are here?

• 8:04Rob Bell?

  Well, the, the one interesting thing about hu- human beings for thousands of years, since wherever we first sort of emerged here, is we can't help but look for meaning. So.

• 8:17Rob Bell?

  You can remove any what they call a meta-narrative, any larger purpose. You can say, "We're just, we're just happened to be here. We, we just emerged and we just, it's all an accident. You die, the lights are turned off, that's it." Right. But then the same person who says to you, "There's no point to any of it. There's no larger story, there's no divine being," or forget that nonsense, will also say, "Oh my word, this show on Netflix I've been watching is blowing my mind. It's so powerful, it's, it's just so meaningful." So, you cannot avoid this fundamental human longing to make sense of this. Yeah. There's this great story about this master teacher Akiva.

• 9:02Rob Bell?

  And Akiva lived about 2,000 years ago. One night, he's walking home to his village. And it's late at night, it's foggy, and there's a fork in the road. And he misses the turnoff to his village. And he ends up at the gates of this massive Roman, Roman military fortress. And he hears a rustling on top of the gate. And a soldier yells down, "Who are you and what are you doing here?" And Akiva says, "Excuse me?" And this guard yells down, "Who are you and what are you doing here?" And Akiva says, "How much are they paying you?" And he's like, "What?" And Akiva says, "How much are they paying you?" And the soldier's like, "Uh, 10 denarius a week."

• 9:46Rob Bell?

  And Akiva says, "I'll pay you twice that to come to my house every morning and ask me those two questions." Ooh. "Who are you and what are you doing here?" So, what's interesting about the modern world is that we were taught to multitask. We were taught to do internships. We were taught, already by the end of junior high, you're being taught, "Hey, next year in high school, your grades are gonna count because colleges are gonna look at that." Yes. Then it's like, "Well, you gotta pad your extracurriculars for colleges. Then in colleges, you gotta get the right internships. You get that job." We were taught how to succeed, how to multitask, how to make money,

• 10:29Rob Bell?

  how to impress your boss, how to be the first one there in the morning and the last one to leave the parking lot at night. We were... We were raised in a world that taught us how to do this. But that's a very, very different set of questions and skills than

• 10:48Rob Bell?

  how to orient your life in such a way that when you wake up in the morning, you actually have a sense of joy and wonder about this day. That's a completely different set of muscles and skills. And so you have lots of people who are taught how to climb the ladder, how to be very successful, but they were never taught, how do you live your life in such a way that you wake up in the morning with a sense of, can you believe we get to do this? Right. And I think you have a crisis now because you have people who have nice cars and nice houses and vacation and nice places. And they know how to network and they know how to strategery. We know. How to hack the system. Yeah.

• 11:31Rob Bell?

  And there's this sort of existential thud when you're driving into work and you've just stopped at Starbucks with what the, what is the point of any of this? And the problem is there are great, there is great wisdom and there are traditions. Traditionally, the power of the spiritual tradition is it gave you rituals. It gave you practices. It gives you stories and metaphors that would help ground you and center you, would help remind you the point of it all. I mean, you can look at certain traditions that have prayers about how to work through the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, the loss of place, the loss of,

• 12:12Rob Bell?

  like there are, in the tradition I come out of, like the Psalms are about what to do when you're faced with injustice, when you've been wronged, when someone's persecuting you, when an enemy just keeps coming at you, whether it's your annoying brother-in-law at the Thanksgiving Day dinner, you know what I mean? Or it's a coworker who just won't let up. There are prayers that you say to help you get all that out. You know what I mean? And I think for many people. This, the spiritual tradition let them down. It became boring, judgmental, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-intellectual. It became, and so...

• 12:54Lewis Howes?

  When you mean, the spiritual tradition, what do you mean?

• 12:57Rob Bell?

  I think for many people, they...

• 12:59Lewis Howes?

  Their religion, or their...

• 13:00Rob Bell?

  They grew up with some tradition that failed them at some level.

• 13:06Lewis Howes?

  And what was the tradition that you grew up in?

• 13:08Rob Bell?

  I grew up, we would go to Christian churches.

• 13:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:11Rob Bell?

  And I actually, I loved, I thought the Jesus message, love, grace, generosity. How do you worry less? How do you become more courageous? How do you love your enemy instead of being consumed with bitterness?

• 13:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:25Rob Bell?

  I thought all that was, like, this is awesome. We all, this is great.

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:29Rob Bell?

  But then there was this whole other world of narrow-minded judgment. And I was like, I can't do that. Like, I can't do the whole package here.

• 13:39Lewis Howes?

  And traditions that have been like thousands of years old, essentially, right?

• 13:43Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 13:44Lewis Howes?

  Or however...

• 13:45Rob Bell?

  Right, right.

• 13:46Lewis Howes?

  All these traditions are, that worked maybe back then.

• 13:48Rob Bell?

  Exactly.

• 13:49Lewis Howes?

  But as we evolved and grow...

• 13:50Rob Bell?

  Exactly, didn't keep up. Or, part of it sometimes is the ability to go back through and say, now, like in the Hebrew tradition, they have this word shalom, this Hebrew word, which means, the root word means wholeness. And it's the idea of everything in its right place. And so there's shalom, there's peace with yourself, you're comfortable in your own skin. There's peace with each other.

• 14:16Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:17Rob Bell?

  There's peace between tribes. There's peace with the soil.

• 14:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:20Rob Bell?

  Our proper treatment of the earth. So in this one beautiful word, shalom, you have this whole way of understanding this wholeness that we all long for, a sense of oneness, a sense that everything's in its right place.

• 14:36Rob Bell?

  So you have these rich linguistic traditions that just give you language for stuff.

• 14:39Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh.

• 14:41Rob Bell?

  You have what to do with loss, grieving, disorientation. What happens when the rules that you were given for how the game works don't work anymore? Think about how many people in business were taught... You have a product, you advertise the product, people buy the product, you make, and all of a sudden now they're like, no one wants our product.

• 15:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:01Rob Bell?

  You know what I mean? No one wants VHS tapes.

• 15:03Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Or the publishing world too.

• 15:05Rob Bell?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 15:05Lewis Howes?

  The book world.

• 15:07Rob Bell?

  Think of how many different areas of business, it doesn't work at all like it used to. And you have people who were like, man, I was awesome in the old world. And in the new world. So that's a profound disorientation, which has very real spiritual consequences. I used to know who I am. Our business, we used to know.

• 15:25Lewis Howes?

  We used to have an identity.

• 15:26Rob Bell?

  Our company, yeah, we used to be whatever company, Company X. And we were great. And now, what, what happened?

• 15:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Rob Bell?

  Like, think about Detroit and the auto industry and sort of, wait, what, we used to, we used to run this town.

• 15:43Rob Bell?

  And.

• 15:44Lewis Howes?

  You're saying that like spiritual ideas, spiritual practices, or religions, religious beliefs, could no longer work now that used to work, or could be outdated, or could be?

• 15:56Rob Bell?

  Or sometimes it just, the hard work is taking, what was the incredibly helpful, inspiring, useful practice there? That we need to let people know about, that we need to make accessible, that it got drowned out in the sea of boredom or irrelevance. And I, and I think what happens is for many people, it was all, progress is awesome. But the problem is when everything that's back there got left behind. And that true progress is when you leave behind what can't make it into the new world, but there's some rich, profound wisdom back there.

• 16:34Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 16:35Rob Bell?

  That we need to bring with us. And maybe it needs new language, maybe it needs new images and metaphors, maybe it needs

• 16:43Rob Bell?

  all new ways of talking about it and thinking about it. But that's the power of sort of the work we get to do.

• 16:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What do you say you put your faith in?

• 16:56Rob Bell?

  Well, some people would begin with, "I put my faith, I believe there's something happening in the universe. I don't believe we're alone."

• 17:07Rob Bell?

  Uh, some call it spirit, force, uh, energy, being, uh, God. And some of those words get loaded down for people with a bunch of associations. I think there's something unfolding here. How come we don't have, have practiced slavery? And yet, several generations ago, in this country, people had slaves. So why are there certain things that were culturally acceptable? A generation ago, there were establishments in America where there were two drinking fountains for people of two different skin colors. In the 60s, 70s? Not that long ago. So what is happening? Think about restaurants now where all of their food is locally sourced. Um, think about non-GMO, think about organic.

• 17:51Rob Bell?

  How come there's a, there's a growing awareness that we're doing some terrible things to our planet? Or think about triple bottom line with businesses. It's no longer enough just to make money. You have businesses saying, "Is this a good place to work? Are we good to human beings? Are we good to the earth? How come there's something within us that says, if you're an NBA owner and you say horribly racist things, you shouldn't be allowed to keep your NBA team?" Although those things were completely accepted a generation ago by in certain places in the country. Yeah. So, I think, what would you call that? What is unfolding that we all have a sense that we're so glad certain things aren't done anymore?

• 18:37Rob Bell?

  And then, in the same breath that we say, "I'm so glad we don't do that primitive barbaric stuff." We also, right now, could all point to 10 or 20 or 50 or 1,000 things that we think we have a long way to go in that area. Whether it's the pay of women in the business world, whether it's, you can go down the list of things where you're like, "Urban education should be better." Right. Child labor or in other countries or something. What is it within the human heart that we have this awareness? The great Deschardens wrote, "Progress is the soul of the universe."

• 19:13Rob Bell?

  So what is it moving the whole thing forward? Even when we say Syria ISIS, that's, that's bad, terrible, awful, brutal. How come we all have the sense that certain things are wrong and we should leave those things behind and move into a better future together?

• 19:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:30Rob Bell?

  And one of the words people use for that is God. What do you call, what is moving this whole thing forward?

• 19:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:38Rob Bell?

  And whatever language you use for that, that's, that's fine. But to tell, to say there's nothing going on here. We're just randomly here. Come on.

• 19:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, just something.

• 19:46Rob Bell?

  It's too weird and mysterious and beautiful and inspiring.

• 19:49Lewis Howes?

  No, I'm interested for people that, you know, are, have a strong faith in their religion.

• 19:54Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 19:55Lewis Howes?

  You know, I don't even know all the different religions that are out there, but.

• 19:58Rob Bell?

  There's quite a few, huh?

• 19:59Lewis Howes?

  A few. Do you know how many there are out there?

• 20:02Rob Bell?

  Well, as soon as you name it, someone would invent one tomorrow.

• 20:04Lewis Howes?

  Right, okay. Well, the, what are the, there's probably.

• 20:06Rob Bell?

  And like, what was that study? I think it was in England. They did, they did like a survey of religions and like more people said they were Jedi than some.

• 20:13Lewis Howes?

  No way. Oh my goodness. Um, I mean, in all these different religions, some of them focus on the Bible as their, as their book to have faith in and with the word of the Bible. But they have different Bibles essentially in other religions, right? I mean, I'm pretty ignorant to this.

• 20:28Rob Bell?

  Sure.

• 20:29Lewis Howes?

  Um, but they all have a different faith, a different belief.

• 20:31Rob Bell?

  Right, right, right.

• 20:32Lewis Howes?

  Different system that they believe is true for whatever the reason we're here and things.

• 20:37Rob Bell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:39Lewis Howes?

  And I mean, people are asking questions about the Bible, so I want to speak into that because that's what you, you did study or you do study and you, you believe in, right? And I wanted to ask, someone asked a question about your take on relationships and the Bible. And well, first off, before we go into that, how do you, how do you view the Bible? And, cause you used to preach, you used to have a big church in Michigan, you used to preach and you used to talk about lessons in the Bible, but then you stopped doing that, right?

• 21:04Rob Bell?

  Uh, I still talk about the Bible.

• 21:05Lewis Howes?

  Still talk about the Bible.

• 21:06Rob Bell?

  I find it endlessly fascinating. The first thing about the Bible, the Bible is a record of evolving human consciousness.

• 21:12Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 21:13Rob Bell?

  Someone, someone says, oh, all that like genocide or all those commandments where God kills all those people. Hold on a second. That is somebody telling a story thousands of years ago. So the Bible was written by real people in real places at real times. So it reflects the consciousness, the worldview, the lens of that period. So Thousands of years ago. In the ancient world, people would go and you would slaughter another tribe in the name of your god. So it's not surprising that the stories from thousands of years ago are about people when they told stories and how their god gave them victory over that tribe and we slaughtered everybody. We didn't leave anybody alive.

• 21:53Rob Bell?

  It was a primitive barbaric world. So it shouldn't be surprising that people told primitive and barbaric stories. Right. What's really interesting, like, let's take Noah's ark. There's a story about Noah's ark and animals and there's a storm and the world is flooded. And Noah and his family survive and all these people die and people like, see, why would you ever believe in this barbaric story? But what's interesting at the time of Noah's flood, first off, there were lots of flood stories that came out of that period of history. So the Bible flood story, there were other flood stories. And the region that that story came out of experienced flooding on a regular basis. So it's not surprising that people would tell stories about floods.

• 22:35Rob Bell?

  Now, no satellite images, no Google Earth, no Weather Channel. So imagine thousands of years ago, you think the earth is flat. And every once in a while, flash floods come through and wipe out life as you know it. You can see how ancient people might have begun to say, maybe somebody's a bit pissed at us. Yeah. You can see where the idea of a divine force, where does this, why does this water do this? You can see how people told stories to try to make sense of these calamities. Yeah.

• 23:13Rob Bell?

  So that, so what's really interesting is if you look at the other flood stories at the time, people generally said, this flood happened because somebody somewhere is upset with us. And if, and if a wall of water comes through and wipes out a lot of your life, you can see where people would attribute that to some sort of larger anger, judgment. People do that nowadays. Right. You know what I mean? So now what's interesting like about the Bible flood story. Is at that time, the flood stories would generally end with the divine force, or God or goddess wiped everybody out, because that's what the gods do. The Bible flood story ends with God saying, "I'm never gonna do that again,

• 23:58Rob Bell?

  because my intention is to bless you." Right. So that story is actually a brand-new idea in human history. Because people had just assumed the larger forces in the world are against us. Sure. That story is primitive and barbaric, and people die, of course, that's what those stories are like. But what's really interesting is there is this twist at the end, where you have a brand-new idea in human history, which is that the ultimate word about us as human beings is not judgment, but it's blessing, and it's favor. So now, why is that interesting? How many people do you know believe the universe is against them? A lot. How many people believe that the odds are stacked against me? I've been dealt a bad hand. Many.

• 24:43Rob Bell?

  And then other times, you meet people, and they're like, "No, the world is like a place of love and generosity, and we pass it along." That's why people are so drawn to you, is because you have the sense of like, service. Yeah. You receive this extraordinary gift of life, and then you give back. Well, that actually reflects two very deep worldviews. Is the universe a place of scarcity and judgment, where the odds are stacked against me, and I'm hosed? Cosmically, I am hosed. Right. Or is there some sort of movement of love and generosity that I can enter into? It's both, it's whatever you choose, probably. Exactly. So what you have in the Bible thousands of years ago is this new idea of, you know, there's another way to see this whole thing.

• 25:27Rob Bell?

  And so the problem for many people in the modern world is they go, "Why would I ever find any meaning in these old, ancient, primitive, barbaric stories?" But if you really read it, and you ask, "What is the thing happening here?" In the ancient world, people were wrestling with this brand-new idea that you could live with favor and blessing. And so that's a view of the Bible that not many people have ever been exposed to. But all of a sudden, you're now tapping into thousands of years...

• 25:59Rob Bell?

  Of wisdom and history.

• 26:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:01Rob Bell?

  You're also realizing, wait, some of these questions human beings have been dealing with for thousands and thousands of years.

• 26:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:11Rob Bell?

  I'm not the first person to wonder, is there some better way? Is there some better story that I could orient my life around? And that to me is interesting.

• 26:23Lewis Howes?

  Right. I mean, the challenge I have, you know, I grew up in a Christian religion and the challenge I have is like some people put all their faith in what the Bible says, or these stories that are outdated. And my question is, how do we even know these things actually happened? How do we know like these?

• 26:39Rob Bell?

  Right, great question.

• 26:40Lewis Howes?

  People who wrote these stories were actually telling the truth of what actually happened, or is their experience or whatever? And are we taking this as like, this is how we should live our lives today? What people were saying thousands of years ago is how we should live our lives today.

• 26:54Rob Bell?

  Right, right. Great question.

• 26:55Lewis Howes?

  You know, should we be evolved from these theories or beliefs in some sense? Or how should we view that? And how should we live life based on this one book?

• 27:07Rob Bell?

  Yeah, great question. Anytime you have a book that a group of people find is a sacred, hold to be holy, sacred, a divine scripture, whatever, everything has to be interpreted.

• 27:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:18Rob Bell?

  So when somebody says, I'm just doing what it says. No, you made a series of interpretations.

• 27:28Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 27:28Rob Bell?

  So, here's what I mean by that. Let's take, uh, let's take your hardcore fundamentalist Christian conservative friend,

• 27:40Rob Bell?

  who says, I just do what the Bible says.

• 27:42Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 27:43Rob Bell?

  Interesting, because when you came in the room, you didn't greet me with a holy kiss, and you're wearing two different kinds of fabric that have been sewn together. Leviticus in the Bible specifically prohibits wearing two different kinds of fabric, and the New Testament says greet one another with a holy kiss. So you didn't. You don't actually take it literally.

• 28:01Lewis Howes?

  Well, I only take certain things literally.

• 28:03Rob Bell?

  Exactly.

• 28:03Lewis Howes?

  I take these things literally.

• 28:05Rob Bell?

  Exactly.

• 28:05Lewis Howes?

  The ones I want to take literally.

• 28:07Rob Bell?

  So the moment somebody says we take it literally, no, you interpret it. Or in the case, most people haven't thought about it very much, and they're actually living according to somebody else's interpretations.

• 28:21Lewis Howes?

  To their parents' interpretations, to their church's interpretations.

• 28:23Rob Bell?

  Somebody somewhere told them this is how to read it. So here's an example. In the prophets in the Old Testament, there is a line that says, "To care for the poor is to know me," says God. So you have this great line, "You want to know the divine? Take care of the poor." That God is found on the underside. God is found in the suffering. When you take care of somebody who's hungry, thirsty, somebody who's been kicked around, somebody, an immigrant, when you make sure somebody has what they need to get through the day, that's, now that's religion. That's how you come to know the divine. So, there it is, clear as day.

• 29:08Rob Bell?

  But how many people, when you say, "What is the Bible about?" What are there, 2,000 verses about caring for those who, for the poor?

• 29:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Rob Bell?

  How many people, when you say, "What's the Bible about?" would say, "The Bible is about the responsibility we all have to take care of those who are hurting in our midst." That, that is not an answer many people would give you, and yet I would say, if you read the scriptures and that isn't one of the most apparent, loud themes that comes up again and again and again, it's what Jesus talked about again and again. So I begin with, everybody has some interpretation. And some things in the scriptures, we don't live in that kind of world.

• 29:57Rob Bell?

  So some just doesn't, it's not about, it's not a practice or a cultural reference point that we have any relation to. But, these are human beings who are struggling to find meaning and make sense of the world. And that's interesting. So like you can go way back, some, the book of Leviticus, for some people, like the most boring book in the Bible, has this one command, "Leave a corner of your field and don't harvest it."

• 30:29Rob Bell?

  So whenever you harvest your field, leave a corner of the field for those, for the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant among you. So that those who don't have land and don't have access to food can come, and they can harvest that corner of your field. Leave a corner. As a practice.

• 30:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:51Rob Bell?

  Always remember in your bounty and abundance to spread a little of that love around. So you're like, this is an ancient agricultural setting. A command that couldn't be farther from our life here in Los Angeles in 2016. And yet, you go just like an inch below the surface and you're like, how can I, in my life, leave a corner?

• 31:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:19Rob Bell?

  And suddenly you're like, now that's an interesting question.

• 31:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:21Rob Bell?

  Have I been blessed this year? Have I been given any skill, talent, resource? And how can I pass that along for the well-being of someone else? So as soon as someone says to me, oh, that's outdated, it's culturally outmoded, there's no relevance. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That image of leaving a corner is actually really compelling. So when someone says, did it happen? Was the person telling the truth? Um, I was like, wrong questions. Much better question, why did they write this down? What were they learning? Why did this endure? What was it in this story, image, metaphor, poem?

• 32:05Rob Bell?

  What was it that struck a chord with people that they felt the need to pass this along?

• 32:09Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 32:10Rob Bell?

  And now you're in a much more interesting, um, what does it leave? What does it mean for America?

• 32:16Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:16Rob Bell?

  To leave a corner for the rest of the world?

• 32:18Lewis Howes?

  So you're saying that, so you're saying that's almost irrelevant if these things actually happen the way the words are written?

• 32:25Rob Bell?

  Yeah, and actually, and it's also interesting. In the ancient world, they did not think about history like you and I think about history. So you and I, let's take 9/11. A good American now, what happened on 9/11? You and I would be like, well, to accurately tell that story, you would need to know how many people died? Yeah. How many planes were there? What were the names of the pilots? Yeah, what time? All that. But you could know all the facts about 9/11 and have no insight into what it meant. There are some people in the world who don't like us. Why don't they like us? Why do we have, is it 662 military bases outside of America? We have built military bases on Muslim holy sites. Yeah. We do that because there's oil there. We need oil to drive large cars.

• 33:11Rob Bell?

  There are people who have said to us, please don't build military bases on our most holy sites. And we're like,

• 33:19Rob Bell?

  excuse me? We need oil. Yeah. So,

• 33:23Rob Bell?

  set aside from the brutality of terrorism and the taking of innocent life, there are some other questions that 9/11 raises about, are there ways that America has acted in the world that haven't been good and kind and generous? Yeah. So, in the ancient world, when you look at how they recorded history, they were much less interested in the actual precise facts of what happened and much more interested in, what did it mean?

• 33:55Rob Bell?

  How can we learn from it? You know what I mean? Yeah. So that writer isn't telling you this story the way that we tell a story. Because the writer is going for something much bigger. A deeper meaning. Yeah, and some scholars even talk about more than literal truth.

• 34:12Rob Bell?

  So like a friend betrays you and you say, man, I was like, I got stabbed in the back. But I don't actually, you're leaning back in that chair. So, there's actually not a knife in your back.

• 34:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 34:25Rob Bell?

  So what's interesting is, it's true that they stabbed you in the back. At a more than literal truth level. So a lot of people in, seeing themselves as very intelligent, sophisticated, say, "Well, the Bible, it's all that literal nonsense." But it's actually working at a much more profound level than that.

• 34:44Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 34:46Rob Bell?

  And so to take modern categories, and to, like, impose them on ancient storytelling.

• 34:55Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 34:55Rob Bell?

  You may, in the process of dismissing that, because, well, we all know that that doesn't whatever happen.

• 35:01Rob Bell?

  You may actually miss the deeper truth

• 35:03Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 35:04Rob Bell?

  that person was trying to convey.

• 35:06Lewis Howes?

  But you're, but you're also saying that it may not have been the actual literal truth.

• 35:11Rob Bell?

  Sure, sure, sure, sure.

• 35:12Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 35:12Rob Bell?

  Well, like, example would be Adam and Eve. The name Adam, in the first couple of chapters of the Bible, in Hebrew, is Ha Adam. H-A-A-D-A-M, although Hebrew doesn't have vowels. Ha means "the" in Hebrew. So, "The Adam" is how it reads. And "Adam" means essentially, like, "human" or "earth." So the name Adam means "the human."

• 35:40Rob Bell?

  So, when people say, "Well, did Adam and Eve happen literally?" The writer there, the poet, refers to Adam as "the human." It's not a name like Lewis or Rob. It's a generic name. I think the poet there is speaking of Adam and Eve as humans. And the story is about these people, who are here in this beautiful, mysterious, exotic, heartbreaking world. What are they gonna do with the lives they've been given?

• 36:14Rob Bell?

  The point isn't a literal man and woman. The point is, humans, from day one, have had this awareness that life is a gift. What kind of world are you gonna make? And I think the reason why the poet describes them in this way is because the poet is working at a much more sophisticated level. The poet wants you to read this account of Adam and Eve. This account of "the human and mother of living", which are these really broad, generic terms.

• 36:41Rob Bell?

  Because the poet wants us to read the poem and go, what am I, what kind of world am I making? You know what I mean?

• 36:47Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 36:48Rob Bell?

  So it's just a much more interesting story then. And then arguments and debates about whether they were literal people is so missing the point. You know what I mean? Like, come on, come on, come on. Let's get to the real question is what kind of world are we making?

• 37:01Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 37:02Rob Bell?

  And the problem.

• 37:03Lewis Howes?

  What if people want to know like, well, how did it start? Like, where did, where did humans begin? Did it start from explosion? Was there like, they just dropped down? Was it evolution? Like, what's your belief on, on that aspect of it?

• 37:15Rob Bell?

  I think.

• 37:16Lewis Howes?

  The first humans, how do they?

• 37:18Rob Bell?

  I think we evolved over time from earlier, less complex life forms.

• 37:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:25Rob Bell?

  And at some point, when featherless bipeds moved from hunched over to walking upright, we began to interact with each other. There's some belief that we were walking around interacting, but there was a 60,000 year period where we, before we invented language.

• 37:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 37:42Rob Bell?

  Oh, yeah. So, so you can sort of, you can sort of chart how at some point consciousness reached like a, almost a tipping point in humans for the first time in the history of the universe, what 13.8 billion years in, we developed the ability to reflect. Dinosaurs weren't going like, I just don't feel like my career is working out. So the idea of the ability, love, hope, reflection, pondering despair, the ability to, to stand outside of your life and reflect upon it, that relationship isn't fulfilling.

• 38:20Lewis Howes?

  So it didn't happen for a long time, thousands of years, we weren't able to.

• 38:22Rob Bell?

  Consciousness is actually, comes late in the history of the universe.

• 38:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 38:28Rob Bell?

  So as the great Rumi, the 12th century mystic said, what does a rock know of April?

• 38:35Rob Bell?

  So good.

• 38:38Rob Bell?

  Creation, rocks, don't have just book clubs, discussions.

• 38:43Lewis Howes?

  You know what I mean?

• 38:44Rob Bell?

  So even-

• 38:44Lewis Howes?

  It's too bad, we might get a lot more book schools.

• 38:46Rob Bell?

  Exactly. So, even the ability to think about your life, to reflect on your life, to have this conversation-

• 38:54Lewis Howes?

  Do they happen until when?

• 38:55Rob Bell?

  Happens 13, what, .6, 7, 8 billion years into the life of the universe.

• 39:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 39:02Rob Bell?

  So this is again to me, how do you explain the emergence of consciousness in the universe? How do we explain the idea of progress? Certain things are barbaric and primitive, we should leave them behind. Certain other ideals we're still working for. This story of how we're here, and how we got here, and how we began to reflect on how we got here. You know what I mean? So you think about your listener who's like, "I think there was a big bang, I don't think there's a big bang." Somebody coming out of a very rigid religious environment, somebody coming out of a scientific background, who's like, "Why would anybody ever fall for any of this religious nonsense?" Even these thoughts and discussions are brand new in the history of the universe.

• 39:43Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 39:44Rob Bell?

  Which to me is, just speaks to the great mysteries of, anybody who says, "There's nothing else going on here, we're just a collection of biology," come on.

• 39:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:53Rob Bell?

  Way more interesting than that.

• 39:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course. Let's talk about, you know, relationships, and sexual relationships, because the Bible has its specific point of view, but you're saying, you know, the consciousness has evolved from-

• 40:06Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 40:06Lewis Howes?

  -a point of view of, you know, no same-sex marriage, and those type of relationships are-

• 40:11Rob Bell?

  Yeah.

• 40:11Lewis Howes?

  -wrong, or bad, or not godly, or something, or whatever, you know, they're not considered normal. And now they're considered more normal in culture, and being more cautious. But still, some people don't believe that. What are your, what are your thoughts on-

• 40:24Rob Bell?

  Well-

• 40:25Lewis Howes?

  -everything that's evolving?

• 40:27Rob Bell?

  Exactly, exactly. Well, first off, when someone says, "The Bible is really clear and has a very definitive plan." Interesting, because in the book of Leviticus, there is something called "leverate marriage", which is, if your brother dies, and you're a dude, then you gotta marry his wife, and get her pregnant to carry the family line.

• 40:47Lewis Howes?

  That's what it says.

• 40:47Rob Bell?

  Yeah. So when someone says, "Well, the Bible's really clear," I'm like, "Really? You practice leverate marriage? Your brother dies, you're gonna marry his wife?" Secondly, you have Ezra and Nehemiah, you have a command, you can only marry somebody of your own race. Really? You can only marry somebody of your own race?

• 41:05Rob Bell?

  So when somebody says there's a very clear plan, or for example, the command, "Be fruitful and multiply." Well, if you're in an agricultural setting, and there's only a few of you, you need to have lots of kids because the very survival of your tribe and the human race is at stake.

• 41:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 41:24Rob Bell?

  We don't have that problem now. We actually have the opposite problem.

• 41:28Lewis Howes?

  Too many.

• 41:28Rob Bell?

  We have issues from overpopulation.

• 41:30Lewis Howes?

  But you would populate with the same person or multiple people?

• 41:33Rob Bell?

  Well, like just when it says, "Be fruitful and multiply", that would be a very powerful word when you need people to work the soil.

• 41:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:42Rob Bell?

  Because if you're not harvesting the land, you're not going to survive. Or when you think about a tribal consciousness culture, which is we're all part of tribes, at any moment, that tribe could charge into our village and slaughter us all.

• 41:57Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 41:57Rob Bell?

  So we need

• 41:59Lewis Howes?

  More army.

• 42:01Rob Bell?

  Yes, exactly. Which is why oftentimes in those Old Testament passages, it'll be like, Zohan, the son of Rumi Chab, had 314 men. And we're like, what a... Like those sort of long lists of who had how many camels can be so boring. At that time, that was like a really big deal because that was about the survival of everything.

• 42:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 42:24Rob Bell?

  So you have to read ancient writings in the context of how they came about.

• 42:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 42:35Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this first part of the two-part series. The second part will be coming out in a couple of days, so make sure to share this out with your friends. If this is your first time here, subscribe to the podcast over on iTunes. Just go to the app right now and click on subscribe. That way, they will automatically pop up. The future episodes will show up in your podcast app. Again, this is 100% free, so make sure to share this with your friends. LewisHowes.com/275. If you find this insightful or you found anything valuable, feel free to email a friend and let them know and say, "Hey, I know you've been going through some challenges. I think this will support you." Doesn't matter what religion or what background they're in, I think this could apply to all individuals.

• 43:20Lewis Howes?

  LewisHowes.com/275. I appreciate you guys so very much. I am pumped for the next episode. Stay tuned and we'll come back in a little bit. You guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.