Ebook Bitten by a Camel: Leaving Church, Finding God By Kent Dobson

Reading Book Bitten by a Camel: Leaving Church, Finding God By Kent Dobson ,Read Bitten by a Camel: Leaving Church, Finding God By Kent Dobson ,PDF Bitten by a Camel: Leaving Church, Finding God By Kent Dobson ,Read Bitten by a Camel: Leaving Church, Finding God By Kent Dobson ,Read PDF Bitten by a Camel: Leaving Church, Finding God By Kent Dobson Click here for Download Ebook Bitten by a Camel: Leaving Church, Finding God By Kent Dobson PDF Free Click here Ebook Bitten by a Camel: Leaving Church, Finding God By Kent Dobson For DOWNLOAD Review "The thing is, Kent actually has been bitten by a camel. It's not a metaphor. Even though it is. And that's the brilliance of this book: Kent has done the hard work of becoming a particular kind of person honest, open, following the questions wherever they lead. This book comes out of that pursuit out of that kind of life and it's really, really inspiring. Kent has been this kind of friend and teacher to me for almost twenty years, and I'm thrilled so much of who he is and where he's been has been captured in this book." --Rob Bell, author of What Is the Bible? and Love Wins "Like all the best spiritual memoirs, this book is more about mystery than certainty, more about unknowing than driving stakes into the ground. If you re in the aching, foggy middle of a spiritual transformation, I think this beautiful book might be good company along the way. I appreciate my friend Kent's wisdom, bravery, and honesty in the pages, and I believe you will, too." --Shauna Niequist, author of Present Over Perfect "Kent Dobson has eyes of genuine wonder, ears of genuine curiosity, and a heart of a genuine love. This combination makes his journey up Mount Sinai like no other. It is both familiar and breathtakingly new, comforting and provocative. Kent's authenticity and openness is matched only by his learning and clarity of writing. Read this book and grow in faith and wisdom." -Rabbi Evan Moffic, author of The Happiness Prayer "This is a beautiful, honest, wise and liberating book that reflects the soul of its author. Anyone would enjoy Bitten by a Camel for its pitch-perfect prose and humane honesty, but people from the Evangelical background Kent and I share will find it

more than enjoyable. For them, it will feel like a lifeboat after a shipwreck, a cure for a chronic disease, or a path through a forest where you've been lost for a long time." --Brian D. McLaren, author/speaker/activist "If the term 'religious experience' is to mean anything at all, it must refer, not to an experience of something, but to an event that transforms how we experience everything. With a subtle blend of honesty, humor and personal insight, Kent Dobson has crafted a work that invites the reader into such an experience. He has wrought lessons from his own life and presented them in a way that will help the reader encounter a new depth and density to life, revealing a hope and joy that is anything but shallow or one-dimensional." --Peter Rollins, author of The Divine Magician About the Author Kent Dobson is a scholar and (former) pastor. He guides wilderness based programs designed to cultivate human wholeness and raise questions of the soul. He also leads pilgrimage adventures to Israel, and he is the editor of the NIV First Century Study Bible. Customer Reviews Most helpful customer reviews 11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. Does not appear to be a book by a Christian for Christians By Dutch Rikkers Review of “Bitten by a Camel: Leaving Church, Finding God” by Kent Dobson Kent Dobson and I have a number of mutual concerns about Christianity in America today. So I was looking forward to reading his book. Frankly, I was shocked by it. One reason for my reaction is that he, like Rob Bell, his good friend and a major motivator in writing the book, enjoy being radical and making shotgun statements like this one: under the heading “Run Like Hell”: “Like the hero’s journey in the archetypal stories of humanity, the first step is the hardest. The first step is to leave home. For many of us, leaving home means leaving the church. We must break our parents’ hearts and run. Many of us have to give the finger to the well-intentioned pastor and head for the exits, break with the conversation at the Thanksgiving table or we’ll never grow up. We have to say, ‘I can no longer accept the God of my childhood and my church and the cliché platitudes that pass as spirituality.’” I’m 75 and have been writing professionally for evangelical Christians in the church and for Christian organizations for at least half that time. The authors who have guided me, preached to me, and even shamed me—and thousands of other Christians—are George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, G. K. Chesterton, Carl Henry, and N. T. Wright. And that means that I expected the critical theological issues brought up by Kent to be more carefully worded, well argued, and thoroughly Christian. They aren’t. There is still a lot of anger in his soul, and that comes through clearly. So when I got into it, I felt like a deer in the headlights: “What is this wild thing rushing at me?” It didn’t seem like it was written by a Christian—for Christians. In fact, it is a major rejection of much that is understood as orthodox, creedal Christianity. It would, indeed, have been helpful for Kent to write out his new creed for us to compare with the creeds recited for centuries in the churches. (I refer to Kent by his first name because I know him. The same for Rob Bell, who is a shirttail relative.) Kent’s style is chatty and brash and self-defensive, but that is not to say that it’s not a good book—even an important book. In its own way it is well written. The issues he deals with are imperative for the church to consider and deal with, and they showcase the issues his generation especially will have to address. His approach to them, as I suppose is to be expected, is reactionary, and I think I catch an unspoken confession that some of his conclusions are not set in cement—and that would be a good thing. The book is likely to get a broad readership—somewhat like Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz” and Rob Bell’s “Love Wins.” Telling lots of stories, which always makes a book easier to read, Kent deals with the typical and historical Christian/church use of, understanding of, and attitudes toward the Bible and its authors (He is dubious about a divine Author). Many of his conclusions in this area would be considered controversial; hence inviting criticism and debate—which was probably one of his aims. The same could be said about his views on how to understand the person, works, and words of Jesus. He is clear in stating his position that what many Christians have believed through the ages about the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible is questionable, if not plain wrong. So he concentrates on the love and mercy of Jesus and how we all need to be more like Him—oddly

ignoring the fact that almost all we know about Jesus is from what he considers our “messy” Bible. And he uses an incident in the life of Christ, recorded in this muddled Bible, in a way that has always gotten under my skin: how Jesus dealt with the woman taken in adultery by hypocritical religious leaders. Kent believes we all ought to follow Jesus’ example and get tough with our modern “Pharisees” and not condemn those we believe might have acted sinfully. Most Christians would agree with that. We are not and should not be in the business of condemning. And we surely have no right to pretend we’re perfect saints. Kent, however, like many other modern ethics prescribers, does not go on and deal with the final loving (we must assume) directive Jesus gives to the woman: “Go, and sin no more.” What does that mean? Having a gay brother and no doubt friends dealing with sexual identity and behavior issues, Kent understandably does not spend a good deal of time dealing with that heated topic—except to say that when he was pastor at Mars Hill, he and the elders agreed to disagree on acceptance of homosexual behavior (my assuming that Kent was on the acceptance side). This issue is obviously divisive in evangelical churches, but I really wish that as biological creatures who reproduce sexually we could agree that how a person has sex makes nobody special, and it certainly does not call for public “pride” celebrations on either side of the gender divide. There’s a lot I can appreciate in Kent’s intentions. Many of his doubts have been my doubts, many of his disappointments in the church and in traditional Christianity have been my disappointments, many of his uncertainties have been my uncertainties, and many of his questions have been my questions. I can say the same about his friend Rob Bell’s books. And I believe God is okay with our questions. But questions are no longer questions when you begin preaching what you believe are the answers. Frankly, I believe many of the questions raised by the Scriptures and our experience with God will always be questions. Kent questions just about everything commonly called Christianity, but then he provides us with the answers he appears to have committed himself to—lighting many fuses one after the other. In the process he holds up the torch to shed light on what are very legitimate queries about what the Bible is and what it means, but he also tends to chop up some of our ancient Scriptures so thoroughly that they lose virtually all of their integrity—somewhat like Thomas Jefferson did with his Bible: clip, clip. Yet a few of his uncommon conclusions may be right. Some of his harsh criticisms of traditional Christianity (“Churchianity”) could well be spot on. But the result of it all is that he offers us a vague philosophy, probably best described as spiritual positivism, and not a carefully nuanced approach to the theological and ethical controversies in the church, which, of course, is what the Bible calls the Body and/or Bride of Christ. Kent properly, in my opinion, magnifies the meaning of the Genesis creation account in such a way as to permit the belief in an ancient earth and even God-designed evolution of life on earth as do respected theologians N. T. Wright, J. I. Packer, Scot McKnight, and most earth scientists in evangelical colleges. And the Bible says plainly that the cosmic Jesus existed before all things and caused all things to be. Kent also believes, as I do, that the church has been horribly negligent in caring for and about the earth—the creation. Since I have been active in the evangelical creationcare movement for almost thirty years, and since Francis Schaeffer started preaching and teaching on creation care almost fifty years ago, I was hoping Kent would go a lot further in that area. But he had a lot on his book’s agenda, so he merely slapped our patties a bit. Kent comments throughout on the “messiness” of the Scriptures and the messiness of the Christian faith and the messiness of our efforts to live it out in real life. But how do we choose between the messiness of trying to live like Christians (live like Jesus) and the messiness created by throwing away most of historical and creedal Christianity and “giving the finger” to well-meaning (but apparently off base) pastors and Bible teachers? (Does that include, in retrospect, his dad and granddad?) He asks proper questions—questions we all must ask, but not without considering the authority of the Scriptures and the teaching of the Holy Spirit sent by Christ who established and empowered the church at Pentecost. Does most of that which the Body of Christ has taught and believed throughout history since the time of Jesus have to be thrown out, and thrown out without a hint of loss—or fear? Kent is extremely soft on the matter of the afterlife (having once told his preacher dad that he didn’t believe in it). He suggests that for all practical purposes Christians should live the life we now experience as

though it’s the only life we will ever experience, that we consider the hell we may experience now as the only hell anyone will ever experience, that we hold that the heaven we make for ourselves now as the only heaven we will ever experience, and that we trust that the kingdom of God that we believe we experience is the only kingdom of God we will ever experience. Beyond this life, this hell, this heaven, this kingdom of God is only mystery, and it’s better to not give much, if any, attention to it. He quotes one of his rabbi teachers who told him that what might happen after life is not an important question. And for practical purposes, he is probably right. These issues have certainly sidetracked Christians and the church and have kept us majoring on the minors for centuries—which seems to be Kent’s main point. For theological purposes, however, they cannot be ignored. And it seems a bit reckless for a former pastor to suggest we “run like hell” away from our pastors and our churches. Kent refers to the apostle Paul’s conversion in which that eventual pioneer theologian leaves the vain philosophies of Judaism, the proud misinterpretations of the Torah, and the Jewish penchant for always asking questions about it. On the road to Damascus to pursue followers of Christ, Paul meets, instead, the resurrected Jesus who sends him to the Christians and to the church to learn the truth about God the Father and even more about whom Jesus himself is as prophesied in the Old Testament: God with us. Yet Kent feels converted by leaving this church and forgetting much of its historical past and looking for God at what he terms “the edges of the faith” while attending mostly to the “hints and guesses” of extra-biblical commentators. Kent mentions that after Paul was converted he did not teach in the church for fifteen years. He seems to commend Paul for that. That makes me wonder if Kent might not have been wiser to also have waited fifteen years after this conversion of his before he recommended leaving the Body of Christ to find God. One might read Kent’s book and conclude that he is a heretic, but that would not be necessary. Kent proudly calls himself a heretic who is all the way down the “slippery slope” to its very bottom. Also one might read the book and consider it a message of great freedom. We can forget about hell—and heaven for that matter. What happens here stays here. We are all off the hook, in part because we are not born in sin, but born good. Therefore, Jesus death on the cross should not be considered an act of atonement. We don’t need a divine sacrifice. You’re okay and I’m okay. If that does not sound Christian, not to worry: that old operating system has been updated. We are now in a new age. Kent plans to muck around down at the bottom of the slippery slope and come back to “his people” with new, liberating, positively vibrating truths he hopes to discover. That left me wondering who his people are—and whether or not they will wait and see a need for his new thing. As the Preacher in Ecclesiastes says, “There is nothing new under the sun.” From the first century onward different paths away from the church have been hawked. I have a feeling about where Kent is headed, and I fear for him. I have greater respect for the thousands, if not millions, of Christians who lived and died over the centuries and stuck with the church in spite of its failures—seeking to refine the faith. Augustine made this observation in Latin: Ecclesia semper reformanda est: "the church must always be reformed." Karl Barth explained, “The church must continually re-examine itself in order to maintain its purity of doctrine and practice.” The simple truth is that you can’t reform the church by leaving it. Review by Dean Ohlman 8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Must read if you are deconstructing faith! By Jake Kircher Such a refreshing, honest and authentic memoir from a former pastor. Kent is so personal and easy to relate to from a number of perspectives. It's so nice to hear about a faith leader asking and wrestling with the same questions that they are supposed to have all the "answers" to. If you are deconstructing your faith, starting to look at church from a different lens, or even if you've never been to church at all, this is a fantastic read about faith and life and growth and church and where it's all going. 6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. If some of this Christian walk is secretly amiss for you, this is your book By Luxor 5 My Christian faith is nearly 5 decades old, but I'm still as much a seeker as ever. About this book and the author: Kent Dobson's dad was literally Jerry Falwell's right-hand-man, and that's the way Kent grew up, by birth a blueblood in the fundamentalist Baptist aristocracy. His dad eventually left, and started his own compelling journey. I first heard young Kent after he succeeded Rob Bell at Mega-church Mars Hill in Grand Rapids. Kent was by far my favorite podcaster of all time (and still is). Until one

Sunday--he suddenly announced he was giving his final sermon, and then he just left. This book pretty much picks it up at that point. Plenty in here that I surprisingly didn't know about the (un)surety of some of our western Christian extra-biblical bedrock beliefs. I bought two more books for my spiritual mentors (one is Christian, one is What-Ever). Can't wait for their takes. See all 27 customer reviews...

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