from Harper Collins site : Christians have been defending scripture from attack for two centuries. In fact, argues Bible scholar Peter Enns, we have become so busy protecting the Bible that we are now unable to read it. In The Bible Tells Me So, he provides a revolutionary new perspective: "What if God is actually fine with the Bible just as it is? Not the well-behaved version we create, but the messy, troubling, weird, and ancient Bible has something to show us about our own sacred journey of faith. Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible something it's not meant to be, isn't a pious act of faith, even if it looks that way on the surface. It's actually a thinly masked fear of losing control and certainly, a mirror of our inner disquiet, a warning signal of a deep distrust in God. A Bible like that isn't a sure foundation of faith; it's a barrier to true faith. Creating a Bible that behaves itself doesn't support the spiritual journey; it cripples it. The Bible's raw messiness isn't a problem to be solved. It's an invitation to a deeper faith." Christians have had it drilled into them that their job is to defend the Bible against any challenge. But is this really God's plan? What if God wants us to debate and wrestle with what we read in scripture? In The Bible Tells Me So, Enns wants to do for the Bible what Rob Bell did for hell in Love Wins: expose Christians' fear-based contradictory beliefs and show a new way forward. Here you will find a revolutionary guide that will liberate Christians so they can truly engage with God's Word. ------------------------------------------------------- BR Note : Consider this passage from the book: "Sure, Jesus talks about loving your enemies, but Jesus also talks about throwing sinners into hell to burn forever." ----------- After reading an excerpt from the book I am not sold on the author's approach. It isn't ahistorical but it isn't good history writing either. It is a popularization more-or-less meant for Sunday School. Not Sunday School as it could be, actually serious school with deeply interesting classes that are challenging, but feel-good Sunday School that does not require much study at all, just some minimum. Yet the author is on to something crucially important, few people really know how to actually read the Bible. Instead they read what they expect the Bible to say, they read an interpretation supplied to them by their denomination or a local church community. They read "what everyone believes" rather than what the book really says. Sorry for the inconvenience, and I know this won't make you any money, it won't advance your career in any way unless you become a professor of theology, but if you want to read the Bible in its own terms it is absolutely necessary to learn the history of the times when it was written. This means, first of all, the history of the ancient Mid East, not just the history of Israel, as central as that is. And it means the history of religion of the ancient Mid East, not just the political history of the region and its countries even if you need some of that as a sort of scaffolding to understand many references in the text: Who was Nebuchadnezzar?, for instance. Evangelical "histories" won't do it. Sorry about that also, but they aren't "critical" -in the scholarly sense- because you know how everything will turn out before you begin, everything will miraculously agree with the denomination who pays the salary of the writer who writes the history. That kind of history is essentially worthless. A good place to start is with Bart Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted, a 2009 book written by a one time Evangelical who understands the Evangelical outlook, who shares most Evangelical values to this day, but who is clinically honest about the limitations of that outlook and suggests good alternatives. The point of everything is that it takes real work to understand the Bible's message. It is not simple, it is complex, multi-dimensional, and sometimes has views that are just about the opposite of what many (most) contemporary churches teach. BTW, this applies to churches that can be considered to be either "liberal" or "conservative." Both get some things right but both get some things wrong. Equivalence is not the point, I think that generally the conservatives get more things right, but when they are wrong they can really be off the wall, if you want my personal opinion. In either case either a Rightist or a Leftist interpretation is guaranteed to be in error. I don't mean this as metaphor at all, ANY predigested liberal or conservative interpretation will be wrong. Sorry for the inconvenience but a serious, scholarly education in the Bible is necessary if your objective is to be objective about what the Bible actually says. Billy
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