Inerrant, Infallible,... NO!... "INSPIRED" by Rachel Held Evans

What business do I have describing as “inerrant” and “infallible” a text that presumes a flat and stationary earth, takes slavery for granted, and presupposes patriarchal norms like polygamy? (RHE) 

Inerrant: incapable of being wrong.

Infallible: incapable of making mistakes or being wrong.

Inspired: The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative

"Inspired" is my second read of Rachel Held Evans. I shared a blog post on her other book "Faith Unravelled" back in February.  I admitted that I cried when I wrote the post, because I didn't want it to end.  Well... books end, and, in this case, so do people.   Great authors like Rachel Held Evans write books and in those books... they leave a great legacy.   This is one such book.  

This isn't the first book that I have read that has challenged the "inerrant" and "infallible" labels that some Christian denominations have put on their Scriptures. It is however the first book that has a hope of inviting me back into a space where I just may want to read the Bible again, instead of  it scaring me off for good.  

Pete Enns, gives this endorsement of this book

“Rachel Held Evans models a spiritual journey that many are yearning to take: growing into adult readers of the Bible without feeling as though they are leaving the faith of their youth in the process. With her characteristic honesty and warmth, Rachel gives many the language and permission they desperately need to leave behind their guilt and fear, and to read the Bible anew with the joyful anticipation the sacred book deserves.”

—Peter Enns, author of The Bible Tells Me So

I don't know if it was my parents, the boarding school I attended for Grades 10-12; the bible school I attended after high school; or years of church and multiple denominations that enforced in me that the Bible was "inerrant" and "infallible"... but somehow I came away with the belief that everything in that book happened the way it was written.  I never questioned any of it in my early years, and was never invited to question it until now.  I just believed it. 

 

If the Bible of my childhood functioned primarily as a storybook, then the Bible of my adolescence functioned as a handbook, useful because it told me what to do. I turned to it whenever I had a question about friendships, dating, school, body image, friendship, or any number of adolescent concerns, and it never failed to provide me with a sense of security and direction.

But their assurances, however sincerely intended, proved empty when, as a young adult, I started asking those questions for myself. Positions I’d been told were clearly “biblical”—young earth creationism, restrictions on women’s roles in the home and church, the certainty of hell for all nonbelievers—grew muddier in the midst of lived experience, and the more time I spent seeking clarity from Scripture, the more problems I uncovered. (RHE)

Kudos on Rachel for diving into her doubts at such a young age.  I think with me, my aversion to confrontation had me ignoring the bumps in the Bible more than asking questions about it's inconsistencies. 

Looking back,  I may have shook my head at a few things, but not until my fifties, did I dare believe that the book of Job was a great stage play and Genesis was a beautiful story written by some Hebrew refugees in Babylon, hundreds of  years later,  trying to figure out where they came from.  But even with my discoveries... I am still plagued with a denominational culture that has this as their doctrinal statement.  

"Our Association accepts all the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments as a whole and in all the their parts as the divinely inspired, revealed, and inerrant Word of God, and joyfully submits to this as the only infallible authority in all matters of life and faith." ( from an unnamed denominational website outlining their beliefs) 

(Even if the "Association" that is accepting of that creed, I will be a little gracious and won't hold every attendee to it's rigid claim." )

 

How can you have "inerrant", "infallible" and "inspired" all in the same sentence and it be true?  I listed the definitions of all three words at the beginning of the post.  If this was Sesame Street, I would be singing. "One of these things is not like the other."  Are historical facts and authentic records inspired? Do documented facts need inspiration?  I am going out on a limb and saying "NO!".  

I am a poet and a story writer. I have often claimed inspiration for my literary works.  Inspiration is about creativity.  Poetry and stories are not infallible or inerrant... but they can be inspired.  

We’ve been instructed to reject any trace of poetry, myth, hyperbole, or symbolism even when those literary forms are virtually shouting at us from the page via talking snakes and enchanted trees. (RHE)

It is no more beneath God to speak to us using poetry, proverb, letters, and legend than it is for a mother to read storybooks to her daughter at bedtime. This is who God is. This is what God does. (RHE)

I am closer to to being okay with the messiness of the Bible narrative, but still wondering how much is accurate.  What do I trust as actual history?  So Adam and Eve, Jonah and Job are characters in a story... if that's the case, what about Jesus?  

I guess I am still a work in progress... much like Rachel Held Evans.  There weren't that many conclusions to her struggles in this book, but there were stories.  Her love for story radiates through this book.  Maybe I can find myself again in the pages of the Book... because if I remember well, it was the stories that I liked so much.  The stories of Jesus are still compelling to me. 

 I tell people... Jesus makes sense.  I don't know for a inerrant or infallible fact that he was who they say he was, that he did what he did, or that those red words are what he said.  The more I read, the more I investigate and the more insights I uncover in my search, the more doubts I have.  But the story is good.  And maybe that is inspiring enough for me.  

Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world—all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. (RHE) 

That's the Jesus I want to know!  

Rachel credits a lot of people on her journey of discovery.  I am now grateful to add her to my list of "cover artists" that have made the music special for me.  

My journey back to loving the Bible, like most journeys of faith, is a meandering and ongoing one, a story still in draft. And like all pilgrims, I am indebted to those who have gone before me, those saints of holy curiosity whose lives of faithful questioning taught me not to fear my doubts, but to embrace and learn from them. (RHE)

This Canadian learns about "EXECUTING GRACE" with Shane Claiborne

"There are some fourteen thousand books written on the death penalty, and I didn’t want to write another “one of those.”

One of my favorite writers once told me, “Don’t write unless you cannot not write. Make sure it is a fire in your bones, a passion that cannot be contained.”

This book chose me." (SC)

This is my first and so far, my only Shane Claiborne read.  But it was a "Rocket Read". A read that sent me on a trajectory into a different and strange space.  I just read this last year. 

 I am a Canadian.  We don't have the death penalty here.  This would seem to be NOT an issue I would not find myself drawn to... but I am.  

"And these are the words of Jennifer Lemmerman, the sister of the slain MIT police officer: “Whenever someone speaks out against the death penalty, they are challenged to imagine how they would feel if someone they love were killed. I’ve been given that horrible perspective and I can say that my position has only strengthened.” She went on to say, “I also can’t imagine that killing in response to killing would ever bring me peace or justice." (SC with JL) 

I can't relate to most of the stories shared in this book, but it was impossible for me not to have compassion for both sides.  Maybe I can be glad I am Canadian, I could just shuffle this issue off to south of the border and forget about it.  Only one problem.  I don't want to.  I just don't know what to do about my compassion right now.  I want to get involved somehow, but am at a loss to figure out how.

"In replacing “an eye for an eye” with “love your enemies,” Jesus teaches us to wear evil down with love. He teaches us that no one is beyond redemption; all of us are better than the worst mistake we’ve made."  (SC) 

"All of us are better than the worst mistake we've made."  That I can get behind.  That I want to communicate to a few people in my life... including me.  

The death penalty seems to me like the easy way out... for governments, for victims and for the ones to be executed.  It seems like a whitewashing of the problem.  I think Shane Claiborne tries to get that point across numerous times and the question is asked... 

 

"How can we kill people who kill to show that killing is wrong?"(SC)

When you put it that way...  Who can't figure that out?  I have listened to a few interviews with Shane Claiborne and he has mentioned that in the U.S. the majority of the executions are done in the Bible Belt.  I just heard him say in an interview yesterday something like...

"The Death Penalty isn't still active in spite of the Christians, it is active because of the Christians." (SC in an interview with Jonathan Martin) 

REALLY!!!

Is that the group of people who call themselves "Christians" or followers of Christ, but haven't met Jesus yet.  Are those the ones who will faithfully attend a Good Friday service and forget that the one they are remembering was a man who was executed.  

"When we miss the central message of God’s love and the cross gets twisted, it can be used as a weapon. Some of the most horrifying things in history have happened at the hands of Christians with poisonous theology, divorced from grace." (SC) 

Again... I'm a Canadian.  I must not understand the issue.  I definitely don't understand "Killing someone to show that killing is wrong."  And then there is forgiveness.  Where does that come in to play?  Is that not a given in the life of a Christian?  Or is forgiveness just something Jesus (believed to be "God in flesh") did when he was getting executed... and not meant to be something we do?  

Shane doesn't seem to think so.  I did a search in my Ibook version of the book and came up with over 75 references to the word forgiveness.  That must be the point he was making in this story.  

Who makes this hit home harder than this mom. 

"Aba Gayle, a mother whose nineteen-year-old daughter was murdered, knows both the poison of anger and the power of forgiveness:

"I knew that I didn’t need the State of California to murder another human being so I could be healed. . . . It’s time to stop teaching people hate and start teaching people to love. The whole execution as closure idea is not realistic. . . . Anger is just a horrible thing to do to your body. Not to mention what it does to your soul and spirit. Forgiveness is not saying what he did was right—it’s taking back your power." " (SC with AG) 

What I admired most about the book, is that is far from being one sided.  No one wins when some one is killed... even and especially when it is the government authorizing the killing. The stories shared here are from all sides.  Families of victims, family of executed inmates, prison staff, government officials... no one escapes the pain of killing another human being.  

"No matter whether a loved one had been killed by a deranged gunman or by the government, the pain the members of this group felt was the same; the tears were the same; the trauma was the same."  (SC) 

I am still stuck.  I feel so far away from the people, the issues and the prisons where the killing is being done.  I want to put this book into the hands of everyone making decisions in the American governments and say with enthusiasm...

"WAKE UP!!!" 

Thank you Shane for doing what you can to make a difference.  I hope America appreciates you... because I know this Canadian does!!! 

The book that became my friend... HOW TO SURVIVE A SHIPWRECK by Jonathan Martin

"What if God doesn’t choose to save us in spite of our failures, losses, and embarrassments, but precisely through them? What if it is not avoiding falling that strengthens our faith, but the falling itself? Before the shipwreck, we still maintain illusions of our control. So long as we still think we are in charge of our lives, there is no space for God—we are still clinging to life. It is only when our hands are too weak to cling to life anymore—because of sickness, death, addiction, failure—that we can find life. This is what Jesus means when he says we have to lose our lives to find them. That’s not a metaphor for “giving up a lot to follow Jesus.” It’s not a metaphor for anything. It’s a way of saying what it sounds like: The only way to find God is through losing." (JM) 

I took my Mom to a Christmas Eve candlelight service last year and the pastor shared this exert.  He just read this and later commented that it was from Jonathan Martin's book "How to Survive a Shipwreck".  

"Heh!" I thought, "I read that book."  

I opened my Ibooks the next morning (Christmas Day) and found my copy and highlighted this portion in the book.  

I read this book in 2017,  the year my nephew died.  I found out about from a friend's social media site.  It intrigued me, because, I was in the middle of my own shipwreck at the time.  It seemed to be what I needed at the time.  

"Nobody survives a shipwreck on their own. When your ship goes under, there are a handful of people in your life who will stay with you. It’s no time for saving face or maintaining credibility—it’s time to put real weight down on somebody else who can help carry you. Let your ego drown in the watery grave. The only way you have of saving yourself is to let someone outside of you do the saving." (JM) 

Oddly enough, I highlighted that in September of 2017, because I felt very alone in my shipwreck.  I felt tossed in a sea and no one else was with me.  My family were all being tossed in their own sea, how could any of them be there to help me calm my storm.  This book was a friend for me as I rocked back and forth amid the tumultuous waves.  

"When everything else in and around you is dead or dying, the soul will not yet go quietly. Your soul is not dead yet, just because it decided not to be; it claws its way back up through all the grief, without your consent, like some kind of animal." (JM)

The storm in me was more than just the loss of my nephew, his death had catapulted me into a universe that was void of a controlling Creator.  My religion was being stripped away over the years, but his death purged what remained of my faith.  Now it was all head space for me.  All I had left was what made sense to me, and that wasn't much.  

"There are some losses that in their way mark you forever, and some things you never get over. And because you loved this person or this life and career you built, or valued your dignity, when the bow broke, everything in you screamed." (JM) 

I will never get back to what I had before. That ship not only sailed, but it was destroyed in the storm.  I was able to swim away from the wreckage, but not undamaged.  

"The gospel doesn’t fulfill our quest for significance, but exposes its essential folly. It gives us something better than meaning—namely, love. The love of God gives us unfathomable value despite our objective smallness. But it still leaves us blissfully unimportant." (JM)

It was in this space, that Jonathan's book found a home.  As I go back through the highlights, I am remembering just how much of a friend it was.  There was so much wisdom in its pages and so much that I resonated with.  I didn't feel judged, but embraced by such profound thoughts.  

"Oftentimes, we develop an entire religion out of a system of “shoulds” and “oughts.” At our earliest stages of development, this is no big deal. It’s a classic exchange between parents and children—“Why can’t I do that?” “Because I said so!”

But we aren’t built to live in this stage for long. If we do not deal with what lives in our depths, we will live as fragmented, repressed, and often secretly angry people. This is why bad religion often turns out to be more toxic for people than no religion." (JM) 

When I see how many people actually are reading my blog since I started it up again, I feel safe being authentic.  I think it has been swept under the radar and most have forgotten about it.  And now, I find that my desire has changed.  I no longer want to rant at the "church" for its inadequacies, I just want to find others who have been rattled in life's cages and have found the space to be open about it. These people give me courage.  So it is there stories, their books and their wisdom I want to share here

Sometimes being thrown into the ocean is God’s way not of abandoning us but of saving us. (JM) 

I have been somewhat open about the two things that are still alive in my arsenal of spirituality.  Love and Creation.  I stripped down to those two, and since then, it has been a slow climb up, but Love and Creation are still there, in my face, reminding me that I am not forgotten.  

I am going to end off with another segment that I heard during that Christmas Eve service last winter.  It gave me hope that somewhere past my lost religion and search for something authentic, that there is not only a Love and a Creation that makes sense to me, but a God who is real. 

Thank you Jonathan Martin... for a great book... and oh yeah... an amazing podcast to boot

"God is only found in dirt-floor reality. God is only found in the vulnerability of a manger with the stench of manure, teaching us how to be human by relying on other humans. God is only found on the cross, with his insides exposed, leaking out to the world for the sake of its healing."

"When we can’t see life from the underside, we can’t see the people around us for who they really are, nor can we see the world for what it truly is."

"When we’re too proud to be on our backs—in a manger or on a cross—we can be as honest as we know how to be, but the world we see is still founded on lies. When we can’t see life from the underside, we can’t see the people around us for who they really are, nor can we see the world for what it truly is. It is blasphemy to take the posture of the high place from which we look down at everyone else, at the world we see only as below us. It is a posture that the God who made the world is far too humble to take himself."

"No, the truth about God, ourselves, and the world can only be truly seen from the underside. That is where Jesus works his miracles." (JM) 

"THE SIN OF CERTAINTY" and other "Rocket Reads " BY DR. PETER ENNS

"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) 

NOT The Force it's "THE UNIVERSAL CHRIST" by Richard Rohr

"Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply." (RR) 

For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.” – Yoda

Maybe only a previous Star Wars Fan like myself can start to appreciate what Richard Rohr is talking about in his book "The Universal Christ"  

Or, maybe Yoda's claim about the force, just might distract others from what Richard Rohr is trying to communicate in this book.  I hope Star Wars philosophy won't prevent you from diving deep into this amazing revelation of "The Universal Christ" 

Disclaimer:  Richard Rohr isn't Yoda... and "The Universal Christ" is so much more than a mere "Force" 

I would be lying if I said the two didn't intersect in my brain as I read the book.  The only time I ever thought of God being revealed in nature... my mind moved me back to Star Wars Jedi beliefs.  

 

But God loves things by becoming them.

God loves things by uniting with them, not by excluding them.

Through the act of creation, God manifested the eternally outflowing Divine Presence into the physical and material world. Ordinary matter is the hiding place for Spirit, and thus the very Body of God. Honestly, what else could it be, if we believe—as orthodox Jews, Christians, and Muslims do—that “one God created all things”? Since the very beginning of time, God’s Spirit has been revealing its glory and goodness through the physical creation. RR

  I have moved this book into my top five "Rocket Reads".  Rocket Reads are those books that have a trajectory.  I read them and it doesn't take long before I am catapulted into a very different space in my journey.  Richard Rohr is not writer rookie on the scene of Progressive Christian thought.  He is a "seasoned" Franciscan priest that has spent decades discovering God.  I don't think I have admired too many people who have adopted the label Catholic, but I admire Richard Rohr.  Maybe because he is still discovering and what he is sharing isn't typical rigid Catholic revelations.  

This is the great Christian leap of faith, which not everyone is willing to make. We daringly believe that God’s presence was poured into a single human being, so that humanity and divinity can be seen to be operating as one in him—and therefore in us! But instead of saying that God came into the world through Jesus, maybe it would be better to say that Jesus came out of an already Christ-soaked world. (RR)

... and in Christianity, we have made the mistake of limiting the Creator’s presence to just one human manifestation, Jesus. (RR)

I don't think this takes away from who Jesus is at all.  If anything, it makes Jesus (and a possible relationship with him) make sense in a 21st century world.  Having removed myself from organized religion, I wondered how Jesus would remain real to me.  Well... this just may be the revelation I needed.

There is so much more in the pages of this book, and it seems that my feeble attempt at a "book report" will not do Richard Rohr's masterpiece much justice.  I guess one would have to read it to find out.  

The precise and intended effect of such a light is to see Christ everywhere else. In fact, that is my only definition of a true Christian. A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else. That is a definition that will never fail you, always demand more of you, and give you no reasons to fight, exclude, or reject anyone. 

I enjoy reads that are drawing me to a space where I can "have no reason to fight, exclude or reject anyone."  I am tired of religious rules the put walls between me and my fellow humans.  I am disgusted at the fear and lack of love I had towards people based solely on the fact that they are different than I am.  I am done with any ideology or principle that means I can't love the way I was created to love.  

Humans were fashioned to love people more than principles, and Jesus fully exemplified this pattern. But many seem to prefer loving principles—as if you really can do such a thing. (RR) 

 Love has to reign supreme.  It has to be like the "Universal Christ"... in everything... now we get to chose if that Love is for us.  I know I want to.

Thank you Richard Rohr.  You have given me an amazing gift.  I will not waste it.  

Love is a paradox. It often involves making a clear decision, but at its heart, it is not a matter of mind or willpower but a flow of energy willingly allowed and exchanged, without requiring payment in return. Divine love is, of course, the template and model for such human love, and yet human love is the necessary school for any encounter with divine love. If you’ve never experienced human love—to the point of sacrifice and forgiveness and generosity—it will be very hard for you to access, imagine, or even experience God’s kind of love. Conversely, if you have never let God love you in the deep and subtle ways that God does, you will not know how to love another human in the deepest ways of which you are capable. (RR) 

Richard Rohr talks about "The Universal Christ"