Inspired: Slaying Giants
Like many people, I was shocked and saddened at the recent death of Rachel Held Evans, the writer and blogger who helped so many people see that Christianity is a organized religion of beloved and acceptance, even when then many of its adherents fail to be loving and accepting. I read her blog off and on for years and very much appreciated her book Searching for Sunday.My own faith journeying was not unlike hers in that we were both raised in conservative evangelical churches and eventually made our way to the Episcopal church, while retaining a lot of business concern for and interest in our more evangelical brethren.
I've had her most recent book,Inspired, on my shelf for a few months, and my sadness over her death got me to pull it off my shelf and read information technology. It'southward similar to Searching for Sunday, except that instead of examining behavior nearly the church,Inspiredlooks at how Christians have understood the Bible. In her view (and mine), the Bible is a drove of books of dissimilar genres and styles, and it's important to consider the culture and worldview from which each book came when determining what information technology ways. The Bible is ultimately not a literal history text (although it contains true stories), nor is information technology an instruction manual on how to live life (although it contains a peachy deal of good wisdom and advice).
Much of what Evans discusses here was not new to me. I studied the Bible at a adequately progressive seminary, and my church'south Education for Ministry program explored many of the same questions she tackles, but with greater depth. However, as withSearching for Sunday, I would have found this book immensely helpful, even life-changing, had I encountered it during the years when I was struggling with how my own attempts to empathise the Bible in a literal mode led me downwardly paths that fabricated no sense. Evans sums up my own feelings during that flow:
The truth is, yous can curve Scripture to say just virtually anything you lot desire information technology to say. You can bend information technology until it breaks. For those who count the Bible as sacred, interpretation is not a matter ofwhether to pick and choose, merelyhow to option and cull. We're all selective. We all wrestle with how to translate and apply the Bible to our lives. We all get to the text looking for something, and we all have a tendency to notice information technology. And so the question we have to ask ourselves is this: are we reading with the prejudice of love, with Christ equally our model, or are we reading with the prejudices of judgment and power, self-interest and greed? Are we seeking to enslave or liberate, burden or set free?
In each chapter, Evans tackles a different sort of Bible story — origin stories, deliverance stories, war stories, wisdom stories, resistance stories, gospel stories, fish stories, church stories. She introduces each of these chapters with her ain riffs on the biblical stories, ofttimes bringing them into a modern context. (These were clever, simply not particularly my favorite parts of the book. I imagine they are the sort of thing that will totally work for you, or actually won't piece of work much at all.) Each chapter then goes on to talk most some of the controversies surrounding the different narratives, how Evans herself has grappled with them, and what diverse scholars and preachers have had to say well-nigh them.
My favorite chapter was the i on war stories, in which Evans writes about how difficult it is to reconcile the idea of a loving God with the triumphant stories of violent conquest in much of the Bible. And it's not just the stories that are troubling, there's besides the tendency of so many Christians to avert asking difficult questions nigh them at all. It'due south in the Bible, so it must be ok. But that'south non skilful plenty:
When you can't trust your own God-given conscience to tell yous what'south right, or your own God-given mind to tell you what's truthful, yous lose the capacity to engage the earth in whatsoever meaningful authentic way, and you get an easy target for authoritarian movements eager to exploit that vacuity for their proceeds. I tried reading Scripture with my conscience and marvel suspended, and I felt, quite literally, disintegrated. I felt fractured and fake.
Instead, Evans encourages readers to wrestle with the text, every bit Jacob wrestled with God in the desert. She doesn't come to any conclusion about how to read these texts, other than to keep wrestling, looking to the stories in the margins, specially of women. And don't settle for unsatisfactory answers:
I'm in no blitz to patch upwards these questions. God save me from the day when stories of violence, rape, and indigenous cleansing inspire within me anything other than revulsion. I don't want to get a person who is unbothered by these texts, and if Jesus is who he says he is, then I don't think he wants me to be either. There are parts of the Bible that inspire, parts that perplex, and parts that exit you with an open would, I'chiliad nevertheless wrestling, and like Jacob, I will wrestle until I am blest. God hasn't let get of me yet.
Source: https://shelflove.wordpress.com/2019/05/14/inspired-slaying-giants-walking-on-water-and-loving-the-bible-again/
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