Q&A with spiritual speaker Rob Bell

As one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, a New York Times bestselling author and a featured speaker on Oprah’s 2014 "Life You Want" tour, Rob Bell knows how to reach an audience about spirituality. He hopes to do just that at the Carolina Theatre of Durham on Monday night as part of his "Everything is Spiritual" tour.  

Bell spoke to Arts & Culture Editor Sarah Vassello about his voice, Christianity and the need to create.

The Daily Tar Heel: I read that you’re trying to approach Christianity as an eastern religion. Is that true? What’s the intention behind that?

Rob Bell: I have no idea what that means. I don’t know who said that, and I don’t really have much interest in Christianity — it sounds like a big, bulky word, you know what I mean?

When I was young, I first heard a lot of stories about Jesus, and I found Jesus utterly compelling, and I still do. And his message of grace and love and compassion and nonviolence has shaped me, and I believe it’s something the world needs more than ever. Learning how to worry less, learning how to forgive, learning how to live intentional lives of love and compassion — I think we need his life and teaching and message more than ever. I always found Jesus terribly, terribly compelling, and I still do more than ever, but as far as trying to promote a particular religion or something, I just think he’s way bigger than any sort of label or category.

DTH: What brought you to this path?

RB: I love to make things, whether it’s talk or a podcast or a film or a book or to create an event. I love to create spaces where people can hear whatever it is they need to hear.

It started a long time ago with me. It started with a sermon — I wanted to recapture the sermon as the art form that it is as the guerrilla theater that meets performance art. It’s just beautiful. When Martin Luther King does “I Have a Dream,” that’s just beautiful and provocative and unsettling and visionary and disturbing and healing, you know what I mean? That’s a sermon, and for so many people this spoken word art form in our culture has been hijacked — hijacked for politics, hijacked to raise money to build bigger empires, hijacked with just basic religious propaganda, just telling people what they’ve already heard a thousand times and thinking that’s new life. 

So I started out, and then I got the chance to write some books, and then we started going on tour and doing clubs and theaters, and so it’s all been sort of the endless evolution because I think we want to be inspired. We want language that helps explain our experiences. We want to understand our interior life better so we can act in the world with more intentionality. That’s what I do, and I love the work. I love it now more than ever.

DTH: You’ve gained popularity through Oprah, TIME magazine and your New York Times bestselling books. Why do you think you and your ideology are gaining traction? What it is about you that makes you such a compelling voice? 

RB: I would be deeply suspicious of anyone who would answer that question about themselves. I have absolutely no idea. I do know curiosity has saved me on many occasions.

I think what’s interesting is when people follow their curiosity. I just keep getting the next idea of the thing that I want to make, so I throw myself into it and make it with everything I have. I keep learning, and I have experiences, and then I try to show people what I see. I’m just trying to be true to the work — just being true to my own experience and the new things that I’ve stumbled across. The work itself is the joy. The creation is deeply satisfying to me, so the fact that it connects from time to time with people, that blows my mind.

DTH: Is your tour part of this need to constantly create things?

Yeah, the first "Everything is Spiritual" tour was in 2006, and I remember at the time thinking, “I wonder if there will ever be an 'Everything is Spiritual' tour part two.” It was probably about a year and a half ago that had my first insights and ideas about this one. I remember thinking, “Oh, my word, this is 'Everything is Spiritual' tour part two; that’s what this is!” From there, it was just the work and the hours to create the structure and to figure out how it all flows. It’s about an hour and 45 minutes one-man show, and then it was just the hard work of figuring out how to bring it to life. To bring it out here and to share it with people is just fun and extraordinary. 

RB: What is it that you do in your one-man show?

It’s basically me talking. I have a massive white board that I had custom made. In this particular tour, I’m talking about what we now know about the universe, how it’s expanding and how it’s been expanding for at least 13 billion years and then what we know about our heart and how our hearts work and how our moments of peace and joy and love and connections are moments when we expand and move beyond ourselves. So what we’re learning from science about the nature of the universe and what we know about our hearts are very similar, so I’m making a number of connections between those two things.

And then, of course, that raises a whole compelling set of questions, and then I have some very practical ways of thinking about how we live all of this out in everyday life.

DTH: Why is Durham a good stop for you?

RB: The thing about going all around the country and then going all around the world is that there are unique distinctives that make different area stand out, but then also human beings live in all of these places, and there are some very, very basic human questions, longings, desires, frustrations that are the same everywhere. So the people may have a different accent, they may dress differently, they may eat different kinds of food, the climate may be different — and those things are endlessly fascinating when I travel — but then underneath it all, people are asking the same questions everywhere you go. People are longing for the same things.

I’ve always loved the stop. The first tour, we came through North Carolina. There’s like a kindness and a warmth in the South that is always endearing to me.

DTH: What do you hope people get out of your show?

RB: I hope that people see that when we’re hurt, criticized, betrayed, misunderstood, when we try things and they don’t go the way we want them to, often times we retreat. We pull back, we withdraw, we say, “If that’s what happens when I give my best self to the world, why would I stick my neck out again?” Often times, when we say, “I’m not sticking my neck out again if that’s going to happen,” we lose out on all kinds of joy. One of the things that I’m exploring is the nature of the universe as it keeps expanding, and our joy comes when we keep giving ourselves to our work, to the people around us, to the things we love, to our craft, to our calling, so one of the questions that I ask is, “Is there any way that you’ve pulled back, even subconsciously, because you got hurt, because you got criticized, you were misunderstood, so you’re just saying enough of that?” We need you to give your best self and your best gift and throw yourself into your life because it makes all of our lives better.

And then I hope people see that science and faith are long lost dance partners. And that to somehow pit science against faith is ridiculous. Sometimes you need a scientist, but sometimes you need a poet. There are facts we are learning about how the universe is, and then there’s what we know about how our heart work, and those demand a different kind of language, they raise different kinds of question, and all of it can help us live lives that are more deeply satisfying and fulfilling. I hope people can see that these are not in conflict; they’re long lost dance partners. And obviously I hope people leave inspired. I hope people leave filled with life. 

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