"This book is about thinking differently about faith, a faith that is not so much defined by what we believe but in whom we trust. In fact, in this book I argue that we have misunderstood faith as a what word rather than a who word—as primarily beliefs about rather than primarily as trust in." (PE - TSOC)
Okay... I realize I have only scraped the surface of amazing and transformative "Rocket Reads". There are so many books and so many authors that I want to dive into, but they take time to digest. Especially when I start one book and the author has so much more to say than can be said in only one volume. So I find myself shelving all other authors for a time and three books later, I emerge very thankful for spending time with one author. Dr. Peter Enns is one such author that redirected my course for a few months.
"And each time we do—each time we deal with something outside of our familiar patterns of thought and have to think on our feet and decide how to proceed—our ordered world grounded in a certain faith gets left behind bit by bit until “certainty” becomes past tense."
(PE - TSOC)
"The Sin of Certainty" was the first book to give me permission to really doubt and give a voice to those doubts. It was the first book that I read that invited me to ask the questions that I never felt I could ask. I had read books before that were written by authors that were exploring their questions and doubts, but I didn't think to follow them, I just saw them as on the fringe. Maybe I didn't feel safe until Peter Enns showed up in my library.
"When faith has no room for the benefit of doubt, then we are just left with religion, something that takes its place in our lives along with other things—like a job and a hobby." (PE - TSOC)
Once I had read "The Sin of Certainty" I started to listen to Pete Enns and Jared Byas' podcast "The Bible for Normal People" . I enjoyed the conversations they had on the Bible. I had long since given up on ever enjoying reading the bible again. I felt I couldn't read it again without the unwanted religious rules defining for me how to read and how to believe what I was reading.
Pete and Jared had real conversations with real people about real problems the bible presented. Pete and Jared are both biblical scholars and I was amazed at the places they were inviting me into. I decided I need to read more. So I dived into two more books of Pete's
"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 photocopier/FAX machine/scanner/microwave/DVR/home security system. It’s not a legal contract—make sure you read the fine print and follow every word or get ready to be cast into the dungeon. It’s not a manual of assembly—leave out a few bolts and the entire jungle gym collapses on your three-year-old."
"When we open the Bible and read it, we are eavesdropping on an ancient spiritual journey. That journey was recorded over a thousand-year span of time, by different writers, with different personalities, at different times, under different circumstances, and for different reasons." (PE - TBTMS)
Can you realize how liberating this was for me to understand this? I can understand dismissing this if it was written by an "disgruntled at the institutional church" blogger like myself... but this is written by a biblical scholar with a PHD, not just some fly by night free lance writer with an ax to grind.
"Using Bible verses to end discussions on difficult and complex issues serves no one and fundamentally misses the dimension of wisdom that is at work anytime we open the Bible anywhere and read it."
(PE - HTBAW)
Pete's books are an invitation back into a book that doesn't need religion to be real. There has to be something more to this book that was defined for me all my life. How can I read it again without all the "infallible" and "inerrant" labels on it.
"When we come to the Bible expecting it to be an instructional manual intended by God to give us unwavering, cement-hard certainty about our faith, we are actually creating problems for ourselves, because—as I’ve come to see—the Bible wasn’t designed to meet that expectation." (PE - HTBAW)
I am still a work in progress. Reading the bible is still not a priority for me. I wonder if making that journey will still be painful for me. I want so much to discover some of those stories that were written to be stories. I heard today (in another book I am reading by Rachel Held Evans) ... "a story doesn't have to be historical to be true".
Thank you, Pete.
"Sometimes the biggest challenge to our sense of certainty about God is just getting out of the house once in a while and seeing that we are just people like everyone else with a limited perspective and not the center of the universe. And when we leave our village and interact with real live flesh-and-blood people who see the divine and the world differently, we cannot help but be affected somehow—and perhaps threatened." (PE - TSOC)
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