Insurrection: To Believe Is Human To Doubt, Divine

What a powerful, thought-provoking piece. Honestly, if you are not prepared to question your faith initially and perhaps change your perspective on why you believe what you believe, don't even pick it up. It will break you, cobble you back together, and then help you realise there's more to faith than you ever thought possible.

Strip away all comfort and joy you have ever received from your religious life and what are you left with? According to Rollins, nothing less than the most authentic way to live.

In Insurrection, Rollins uses the death and resurrection of Jesus to describe how we can live an authentic life. When we participate in the crucifixion on Jesus, all of our religious crutches are knocked away from us as we feel the despair of doubting God’s very existence. It’s only then that we can truly live.

Rollins is a great story teller and writer. He has a winsome way of using anecdotes to help you see everyday events differently. While I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, hearing the stories, and thinking through Rollins’ argument, I couldn’t show more help but disagree with his main premise.

For Rollins, unless you come to a crisis point where you receive no religious consolation, you’ve never truly lived the crucifixion and resurrection life. I know many people—myself included—who, despite times of doubt, receive equally genuine comfort from the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit is no existential crutch!

For Rollins, people who claim to be well are unable to admit that they’re really sick. People who claim to be happy are secretly in despair. While that’s certainly true for some people, you can’t paint every follower of Jesus with that brush. show less

If you have been following Peter Rollins four a while you will find nothing new in this latest release, it is simply all those messages, thoughts, parables and stories woven together in a beautiful but very disruptive package. It is an incendiary bomb into established religion, it is a call to let go of belief and structure so that we can truly encounter the divine and live the resurrection life. It is a call to form prophetic Pirate islands within our world and within our established churches where we live the resurrection life as if there was no other option available, not in protest but as a the only natural reality.

If you are a Christian, a theist, an atheist or a/theist you may enjoy this book but I doubt that it will leave you show more unshaken. show less

I've been constantly told by former pastors and leaders it's ok to question faith - but this idea of doubting in order to step into true faith was very new to me.
The idea of tearing down the foundation and getting back to what really matters, thus experiencing and being part of our own spiritual walk and dedication is something that intrigued me.
Being born and raised in Southern California where everyone can say they are Christian but noone really is a Christ follower, makes me realize how religion has faltered in the western world and we need to be shaken up. We need to be stripped down to where Christ's journey is as much our journey as it is a story we tell to make ourselves feel better about who we are, have been and are show more becoming.
Even going further as to say out of the few actual Christ-followers only a smaller percentage live like Christ, love like Christ, experience like Christ.
More than anything, this book inspires me to question, to doubt, to learn, experience and grow. The more connected you are, the more you actually ARE. show less

Bit of a mind-stretcher. A rather unsystematic theological exploration of what we can learn anew about Jesus’ moment of abandonment from God as he hung on the cross. Rollins takes us into unfamiliar territory and it’s a challenge to make sense of it all. Interesting.

Lots of great little stories in this book, as always from Rollins, but I was irked by the feeling that Rollins was proclaiming himself as some kind of a new Messiah, and by his guilt-inducing rhetoric. Thought-provoking, but not my favourite Rollins book. Two stars = it was okay. I struggled to like it.

Introduction: There is a fire in the building : please step inside -- Part 1. Crucifixion. I'm a Christian! I'm a Christian! -- To believe is human : to doubt, divine -- "I'm not religious" and other religious sayings -- I don't have to believe : my pastor does that for me -- Part 2. Resurrection. Story crime -- We are destiny -- I believe in the insurrection -- Neither Christian nor non-Christian -- Bonus feature: Full-length video tag : Rob Bell interviews Peter Rollins