Product Description

Pete Rollins is inspired by the fact that all language fails when it comes to describing God. This, he says, is what nourishes poets and pilgrims alike as they try to capture, enact and incarnate truth. Such truth can only be lived - it cannot be reduced to mere words. From this starting point, he revisits the parables of Jesus - odd and unexpected stories that set hearers and readers spinning off course from what is safe and familiar towards some completely new kind of understanding. Parables are subversive; they never attempt to make faith simplistic. A parable does not primarily provide information about our world. Rather, if we allow it to do its work within us, it will change our world-breaking it - and us - open to wholly new possibilities. In the spirit of Jesus' parables, Peter offers some transformative stories of his own.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27325 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-31
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

About the Author
Pete Rollins is the founder and co-ordinator of IKON, an emergent church community in Belfast, www.ikon.org.ouk He is the author of How (Not ) to Speak of God and a contributor to Evaluating Fresh Expressions

Customer Reviews

A breath of fresh air
Peter Rollins has some really helpful insights into life with God here, presented in a form which avoids laying out various rules and principles and stays honest and sensitive to the difficulties and complexities of life. I can't say how much I appreciate writers like this who are finding new ways to present something of the radical, incomprehensible and bewildering truth lived by Jesus. Rollins doesn't patronize, over simply or pretend to have some neat little answer, yet manages to provoke genuine thought and response on some important themes. Neither does he only address a post-evang / PoMo-oriented type audience, but speaks in a way which includes and reaches, I think, any person on an honest search for G-d. As someone who feels sadness at the fragmentation of denominations and exclusion and judging of the other that so often occurs, I really appreciated this open and humble style of writing.

Reading this book won't change your life. Neither are you likely to find direct answers. With much of the content of this book understanding the truth contained is only possible by living it, experiencing it, and finding it out yourself through the course of life, rather than through some form of intellectual musing. It is there where I think Rollins has got closest to the teaching of Jesus, and that's why I think it deserves 5 stars.

deep thought in simple ideas
A genuinely lovely book. The parables seem so familiar and yet feel like they are unlocking some dusty old doors in your soul. Rollins doesn't provide a problem and solution rather he provokes you to stop and consider the implications of the story. In his explanations of each parable he introduces some simple philosophical ideas without getting bogged down by them and his language is instantly accessible. It's an easy read, quite short, but one that reveals more and more depth on repeated viewings - I've read it four or five times now! Although the title tries to scream controversy it's actually a gently subversive book, suitable for people from all christian persuasions because it doesn't attempt to bash you with a single point of view but rather it subtly undermines preconceptions and some of the safety zones we find so comfortable. It's a great gift for friends and one that will actually get read because as soon as you dip inside you know you'll have to read it all.

Powerful and intriguing parables for the 21st century
The good Samaritan. The workers in the vineyard. Lazarus and the rich man. We all love a good parable (when it's not pointed at us), and parables are at the heart of how Jesus presents his vision of life lived in relationship with God. But although they illuminate, they're also meant to shock, to disturb, to provoke questions and uncertainty. In this collection of thirty-three short parables for our time, each with a brief commentary, Peter Rollins does all of those things very effectively. Here, then, is a Jesus who, together with his disciples, scoffs every last crumb of the food meant for the five thousand. Why ? This (Rollins muses) is `how Christ is presented to the world today, at least in the minds of those who witness the lifestyles of Christians in the West'. Here, too, is a condemned heretic, whose shocking last request from the scaffold might remind us - if we have ears to hear - of Jesus' words to the self-righteous crowd that surrounds the `woman taken in adultery' in John's Gospel.

Most are no more than a page or two in length, in quite a large typeface. And that's just as well, because this is a book best read in small doses. Rollins' tales will (for the most part) so provoke, puzzle and inspire you that you'll need time to ponder - even to pray - before plunging in again. Like any collection, it's of course slightly uneven, and there's the odd `duff note'. But many of these parables continue to work their strange magic on me now, some weeks after I've put the book down...