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| Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Cover Image May Vary) | 
 enlarge | Author: Rob Bell
Publisher: Zondervan
Category: Book
List Price: $14.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (114 reviews)
Sales Rank: 931
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.7 x 0.6
ISBN: 0310273080
Dewey Decimal Number: 261
EAN: 9780310273080
ASIN: 0310273080
Publication Date: July 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
God never changes, nor do the central truths of Christianity. But our understanding of those truths is in constant flux. Christians will always be exploring and discovering what it means to live in harmony with God and each other. Now in softcover, Velvet Elvis offers original and refreshingly personal perspectives on what Christianity is really about.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 109 more reviews...
A Fresh Look at Faith October 7, 2008
Velvet Elvis is Rob Bell's first book. In his own words, it is "for those who need a fresh take on Jesus and what it means to live the kind of life he teaches us to live." It was with this book that Bell introduced his writing style, which is not unique per se, but is original when compared with the rest of Christian nonfiction.
This book is a fresh look on faith, and some people don't like that. Honestly, this is my least favorite of Bell's books, but he does make several good points. People often say that he isn't a very deep writer and his ideas are shallow, but I would dispute that statement completely. Yes, Bell is not a theological behemoth. But most people are not concerned with theology. They are concerned with having peace, and Bell shows that Jesus is the way to have that peace (there is a section called "Yoke" for instance, in which Bell describes what Jesus actually meant when he said my yoke is easy). I don't feel as if he needs to apologize for not being systematic and concerned with definition of terms.
Bell gives a very short history of his church, and some personal break downs of his own. In the end, this book is a fresh look at Jesus and the Christian faith, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
 Honey and Poison October 5, 2008
What good will it do if you mix truth and error, and present it to a child in the faith to feed on? Why are we doing this to the little ones in the faith ?
One quote from this book says a lot about Rob Bell's attitude towards the Good News of Jesus Christ. Even if he doesn't believe it wholeheartedly, it opens him, his students and followers up to tolerating all kind of future heresies. The history of the faith teaches us that it takes one concession to evil for errors to creep into the church and end up ruining lives. Doctrines are walls to protect the believer. They're neither prison bars nor optional guideposts. Creation in 6 24 hrs days is different than the Virgin birth. You can still have atonement and salvation without 6 24 hrs days creation, but you can't if Jesus had an earthly father!!!! God is His Word, and His Word is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father. We know about Jesus Christ through the historical Christian faith. Hence we can't have God without the Christian faith, because without it we don't have Jesus Christ who is the only way to the Father. While God is beyond all description, we can't be with Him without His historical self-revelation of Himself. He chose to become what He is not by nature, that we may become what we are not by nature (but by grace). If God chose to become man, that men may become like God, then that means that God who is beyond all description chose to confine Himself that we may experience Him. Now Rob Bell wants to downplay the importance of this confined description of God, which is our only means to move from what is limited to what is beyond description. He wants to do away with the bricks of doctrines which guide our way and protect us from wandering aimlessly, the incarnation of God, the voluntary self-confinement of God, His self-emptying, for the God who is beyond description but can never be accessed. He takes away the bricks of historical christianity, the narrow way to heaven, to give you a trampoline to jump on which will never get you up enough to God. God had to come down to you.
I saw it mentioned in one of the posts. Rob Bell relies too much on Rabbinic interpretation that he forgets that the Rabbis rejected Christ and still do. This means that many of his views about the Gospels will be tainted with anti-Christian views, resulting in confused paragraphs like the following on page 17:
"What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry's tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? But what if as you study the origin of the word virgin, you discover that the word virgin in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word virgin could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being "born of a virgin" also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse?"
Throughout the centuries Church fathers and apologists answered definitively these claims. To even speak this way about the apostles, the disciples of Christ and the New Testament reveals hidden doubts in the soul of the author. Even though I know that he's trying to prepare his readers for future "definitive scientific" proofs against the faith, I'd like to remind him that if these claims are true, then there is no need to prepare them for it's better for them to lose their faith in that "lie" and to move on with their lives. But what if the faith is not a lie, as all the faithful throughout Church history found out, and it is the only way for a true relationship with God, and for this reason Satan keeps on slandering it to keep people captive. If this is the case, what is Rob Bell doing exactly ?
If you want a fresh look at the Christian Faith as was always believed, check out the lectures of Cyril of Jerusalem which he gave to the new converts in 4th century Jerusalem. It's free on the web or you can buy the church fathers' volumes here on Amazon.I promise you you'll find all the good things that Rob Bell said in his book (honey) without all the poisons, in fact in those lectures you'll find the antidotes to those poisons. For the Christian faith has been around for so long now that every objection has been answered by the people who actually lived in the early centuries, who spoke the original languages and even died for what they believed.
 Walk the Talk September 18, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Two things I like about this book are (1) it does a great job of encouraging people to be more like Jesus, to live the way Jesus taught us to live, and (2) it brings some new perspectives and makes the reader think.
Velvet Elvis is difficult to review because it bounces around a lot of topics and it is hard to tell where Rob Bell is going with it. The difficulty starts with the title. There's no Velvet Elvis in the Bible, and there aren't other books about Velvet Elvis. The best clue you can get from the title is that sometimes Bell is not going to just come out and say, directly, what he has to say. The title comes from a painting in Bell's basement that is dated. Bell asserts that a painter can't paint a velvet Elvis, then say "No one can ever paint anything again because I painted the velvet Elvis and there is nothing left to paint." No theologian can write a book on theology, then say "No one can ever come out with a new interpretation of the Bible, because all of the true interpretations have already been written." There are always new painters making new paintings. In the introduction and first chapter, Bell says that from time to time someone comes along and presents new interpretations of the Bible, and now Bell is that someone. In about 30 A.D., Jesus was that someone. His authority was established at His baptism, by John and by God (the Father). Bell bases his authority on Matthew 16:19 (and 18:18), "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
Velvet Elvis has an introduction, seven chapters (Bell calls them movements) and an epilogue. It is difficult to discern a unifying theme. It is like a bunch of thinly related (sometimes unrelated) essays. In most of the essays, you learn that a lot of Christians have it wrong, or do it wrong, but usually the solution is not clear. The most frequent theme is that we should be more like Jesus, we should want to live our lives according to His teachings, because that is the best way to live. The trouble is that Bell does not teach a high view of the reliability and authority of the Bible, and he injects doubt in theologians that have gone before him, so we are led to doubt what Jesus really taught. For example, "They aren't first and foremost timeless truths" and "When people say that all we need is the Bible, it is simply not true." (Page 62, 68)
Rob Bell is angry with a lot of Christians. Christians whose faith is like bricks - hard and solid. Bell prefers a faith that is like trampoline springs - flexible and able to make us jump higher. Bell says that belief in the virgin birth of Jesus is a brick, and what if it could be proved that Jesus had a human father? Maybe the Bible lies about that, or maybe the word virgin, in the first century, meant a woman who became pregnant the first time she had intercourse. But on page 31, he quotes Mary, from the Bible, saying "But how can this be? I'm a virgin". There can be no doubt about the meaning of the Greek word that is translated as virgin. Mary affirmed that she had never known a man, so she can't see how she be pregnant. This is the low point of the book. I think about the apostles. Didn't they have faith that was more like bricks than trampoline springs? When Paul was beaten and stoned and shipwrecked and imprisoned, yet kept faithful, didn't he have some bricks of faith? If faith is all trampoline springs and no bricks, you can pick and choose what you want to believe, perhaps using some Bible verses as a guide, and you can create your own religion. That is really close to what the Old Testament calls idolatry, something that man creates and worships. I tried to find out what denomination Bell's church is, and it appears to be non-denominational. Which means there is no earthly authority over Bell's teaching, so he has enormous freedom to interpret the Bible. Maybe Bell teaches the truth, but I worry about a pastor who has so much independence.
Maybe you don't think Bell is angry. And maybe he isn't. But he says "sometimes when I hear people quote the Bible, I just want to throw up" and "this view of the Bible is warped and toxic, to say the least" and "it leads to a very destructive reading of the Bible that robs it of its life and energy" and "drop once and for all the Bible-as-owner's-manual metaphor. It's terrible. It really is." (Page 42, 53, 54, 62.) I wonder why it sometimes makes Bell want to throw up when people quote the Bible. He doesn't tell us. There are lots of points he starts to make, and then just doesn't follow through. He leaves it vague enough that the reader can understand it to mean something that he agrees with.
This is a complex book and requires some Christian maturity to sort it out. It is best read by those who have a broad and deep understanding of the Bible and Christian theology. It should not be the first Christian book you read, or it will bewilder you and might lead you to conclusions that even Rob Bell did not intend.
 Has a helpful, impactful Christian message August 13, 2008
Bell writes enthusiastically about his Christian faith and ministry. Although this book may read like a stream-of-consciousness trope at times, it is well-measured and often insightful and revelatory. Bell shares personal anecdotes from his own faith journey and events from his ministry to make his points. He also shares many Scriptures and helpful commentary on Scriptures. I think what makes this book so effective is that it is appropriate as an introduction to the faith and as a meaningful, forceful message to mature Christians and ministers.
Bell's writing style or rather his ministry style is edgy and relational. He walks the fine line of engaging the culture while maintaining his Biblical, Christian grounding. He uses illustrations and metaphors to convey Christian truths. And he does emphasize Christian truths. He preaches the good news of Jesus fully. What he calls good news for believers and unbelievers, and he shows why it is just that.
I think he makes a significant mistake early in the book by trying to side with post-moderns by saying if somehow it was proven that Joseph was indeed the DNA-proven father of Jesus it shouldn't shipwreck a person's faith--he then says that if one's faith could be undermined by the failure of one issue like the virgin birth then it is really not faith. This is a poor attempt to "relate" to those whose "enlightened" presuppositions prevent them from believing such things. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not the good news if he is not conceived by the Holy Spirit. Bell seems to deny the fact that their are non-negotiable truths in Christianity. Following this poor example, most of the book is orthodox and Scripturally-based.
I think his message is an important one for Christians to constantly hear. Some main themes are that we are forgiven and made righteous and holy by Christ's work on the cross--not our own works or goodness. This forgiveness is the begining point of what is to be a relationship with God through Jesus that is increasingly enjoyable and intimate. Bell encourages honesty in looking at oneself and asserts that all of us need God's complete healing to function in God's image through Christ. This is a book about God's grace and God's purpose for us--his desire for us.
Bell opens up the Scriptures through his illustrations and commentary, often from Jewish sources, on Biblical texts.
If there is any criticism to levy at Bell, it would perhaps be his snarkiness at times toward Christians who he may deem too fundamental, orthodox, old fashioned or not hip, etc. He may come across as being be overly critical of other Christians who are in fact just as sincere. The "post-modern" approach of questioning and engaging culture is working for Bell in his context. It could at times lead to inferences by some that Christianity is ambiguous and has no clear tenets that are non-negotiable. However, some Christians must engage in defending the faith against very real heresies. For these Christians, clarifying the answers to the questions against heresies is important. Without them, Christianity gets confused with other religions and philosophies like gnosticism. A "take what you like and ignore the rest," cafeteria style approach to Christianity is incongruent with Scripture's message. Bell doesn't necessarily promote this but could perhaps be read as such. And he does disparage those who do real battle over the authority of Scripture with those who would liberalize and undermine it. Without such as these, the church would have become completely heretical long ago.
Bell's message is effective for his purpose and ministry. Readers need to see it larger context of the Christian worldview and ministry. Bell himself advises readers that he is writing his story and contributing to the discussion--not trying to sum it all up. Some reades will certainly disagree with his downplaying conversion and traditional evangelism.
This overall is an exceptional book that I think ought to be taken up by all Christians and viewed as a whole.
Craig Stephans, author of Shakespeare On Spirituality: Life-Changing Wisdom from Shakespeare's Plays
Velvet Elvis August 11, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I love the way Rob writes and how he conveys his love for the Word of God. This was much more enjoyable for me than other books of postmodern thinking.
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