Reimagining the God of the Bible is what Christians do. More than that, they have to, if they wish to speak of the biblical God at all.
N. T. Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision or What Paul Really Said.
Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (often implicit) stemming from the belief that God’s Word requires a literal reading.
Trust—not clarity, not certainty, but trust in God. And all of that poured out to the people around her.
The Adam story, then, is not simply about the past. It’s about Israel’s present brought into the past—even as far past as the beginning of the human drama itself.
Should we be the least bit surprised when we, along with some biblical writers, find ourselves wandering beyond the words in the Bible as we think about what God is like, sensing that the God we see t...
I’ve learned to be fine with not knowing.
I was drawn to authors and others who were explicitly outside of the Christian tradition . . . Such as Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth), Robert Bly (Iron John), Don Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements...
I need a place to let go and fall back from my familiar patterns and trust God to catch me.
For Christians, then, the question is not Who gets the Bible right? The question is and has always been, Who gets Jesus right? The Gospel writers and Paul couldn’t have made that any clearer.
When Christians feel crushed by such people of God, faith is exposed as something that just doesn’t work here and now. And if something doesn’t work, intellectual arguments for staying in the faith lo...
We understand today that the physical universe is bigger and older and operates very differently than how the biblical writers, and all other ancient people, thought. Many Christians stumble over this...
We have to die, and the choice is ours. If we don’t, we are still holding on to something. And if we are holding on, we aren’t really following. Just sort of following. Standing around. [Oh God, what...
Think of the resurrection as God unexpectedly going off script and bringing into the present time a bit of the future.
There’s an irony: the passionate defense of the Bible as a history book among the more conservative wings of Christianity, despite intentions, isn’t really an act of submission to God; it is making Go...
The Bible isn’t a cookbook—deviate from the recipe and the soufflé falls flat. It’s not an owner’s manual—with detailed and complicated step-by-step instructions for using your brand-new all-in-one ph...
The Bible isn’t a book that reflects one point of view. It is a collection of books that records a conversation—even a debate—over time.
That is the lesson we learn from the Old Testament, Israel’s story. God meets the ancient Israelites as they are able to understand him—as a warrior who slays his enemies, human and divine; a deity wh...
Rounding out our list of early Christian writers is Augustine (354–430), especially his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis, where he shows, among other things, how much intellectual effort is require...
Rather than focusing on the badges that define our tribal identity (our church, denomination, subdenomination, doctrinal convictions, side of the aisle, whatever), a trust-centered faith will see the...