Book review: Jesus Wants To Save Christians

★★★★★

Ouch. Several months ago, Harper One sent me a short collection of Rob Bell reprints to review. I slowly worked my way through them, enjoying each one, and somehow left this one sitting on the shelves. Too many other obligations. I just now picked it up, and read it in one sitting.

I couldn’t put it down. Forget Velvet Elvis. Forget Love Wins. This 180-page sermon, this little obscure work, is for Bible groupies Bell’s real masterpiece. It’s definitely my new favorite, so maybe that says something about co-author Don Golden, a name I hadn’t come across before.

From the Exodus, to the Temple construction, to the Eucharist, Bell and Golden reveal a surprising thread that weaves its way throughout the Bible. This “new perspective ” opens up what the Bible means to Americans today, living in the world’s most powerful nation, boasting the greatest military, yet holding the strongest responsibility for the world’s impoverished. America is an empire, and the Bible has a lot to say about empires.

“I hope you see that there is a common humanity we share with everybody alive today, and everybody who has come before us,” writes Bell in the preface. This little book accomplishes just that.