The biblical writers were human like us, and nothing is gained by thinking otherwise. Someone might say, Well, okay, sure they were human, obviously, but the biblical writers were also inspired, direc...
The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say About Human Origins. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012. *Goldingay, John. Theological Diversity and the Authority of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids:...
The Creator is being reimagined all the time and can be reimagined through the lens of any culture, of any time and place. No one culture, and certainly not the (largely white male affluent) Western c...
The Bible shows us that obedience to God is not about cutting and pasting the Bible over our lives, but seeking the path of wisdom—holding the sacred book in one hand and ourselves, our communities of...
Testament Can Teach Us. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2011. Kugel, James L. How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now. New York: Free Press, 2008. *———. Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to...
So let me say it in a way that the ancient Israelites couldn’t: when we are in despair or fear and God is as far away from us as the most distant star in the universe, we are at that moment with Chris...
Protestant church tradition developed over several centuries when Christians were not yet forced, by virtue of the culminating evidence, to see the Bible in its ancient context.
Probably for the first time in my life I was beginning to comprehend that trust was a habit I would need to cultivate.
Perhaps her long dark night fueled her life, where she kept moving anyway, as an act of trust so deep it cannot be rationally explained—and indeed would look foolish if anyone tried. And the result wa...
One of the great comforts of Israel’s epic is that it contains raw expressions of fierce doubt and lack of trust in God embraced by the ancient Israelites as part of their faith. I am thankful to God...
One more ball to juggle, but let’s sum up the first two: (1) Israel’s dismal story of the monarchy is the meat of the Old Testament, and the origins stories are an introduction to that main story. (2)...
Mother Teresa. According to her own journal, she was in her dark night more or less from 1948 until near the time of her death in 1997.
Jesus, who is wisdom incarnate, gives us access to the Creator to reveal hidden things and invites us to seek out our sacred responsibility to perceive God’s unscripted presence here and now.
It is only to admit that what we have cannot be explained as an early (second-millennium-BC) document written essentially by one person (Moses). Rather, the Pentateuch has a diverse compositional hist...
It is a fundamental misunderstanding of Genesis to expect it to answer questions generated by a modern worldview, such as whether the days were literal or figurative, or whether the days of creation c...
If, in full conversation with the biblical and extrabiblical evidence, we can adjust our expectations about how the Bible should behave, we can begin to move beyond the impasse of the liberal/conserva...
I think part of what it means for God to reveal himself is to keep us guessing, to come to terms with the idea that knowing God is also a form of not knowing God, of knowing that we cannot fully know,...
I like a prayer book and liturgy to guide me in my faith rather than falling back into my comfort zone of controlling reality with my learned and carefully chosen words, and without leaving it up to m...
I feel that if we do not engage Scripture with future believers in mind, we will unwittingly erect unnecessary and tragic obstacles to belief. Part of what drives this book is my concern to help preve...
Doubt is sacred. Doubt is God’s instrument, will arrive in God’s time, and will come from unexpected places—places out of your control. And when it does, resist the fight-or-flight impulse. Pass throu...