Finding common ground in A LANGUAGE OF HEALING FOR A POLARIZED NATION with Wayne Jacobsen, Arnita W. Taylor and Bob Prater

"Our differences cannot be an excuse to vent our anger and animosity. We can hold two differing views and argue for them passionately without resorting to contempt, suspicion and accusations. If we can manage this, we'll not only learn more about each other, but we might also find ways to work together for our shared interests,  guarding our own dignity by giving it to others." LOH

There was once a book that made a real difference in my life.  That book was a team effort by three people who took a story and shared it so millions could be inspired and changed by its message.  Since then, there have been books that have come out of all three of those authors, and some of those have been life changing for me as well, but there was something special about a book that did so much because three people worked together to make their message available to a world that needed to hear it.  

I wonder if there is something in the story of the making of a book that says something that the book and it's message can't do alone.  

Now, this year, in the chaos of 2020, a new book has come out entitled "A Language of Healing for a Polarized Nation" with a subtitle of "Creating Safe Environments for Conversations about Race, Politics, Sexuality, and Religion" 

One of the authors that was a part of that team that produced that life changing book that sold millions, risked another relationship adventure to produce another life changing book.  It's a very different book, in a very different genre, with a message addressing a very different issue... but something about this book rings with a similar hope.  Three voices sharing a message, each bringing their own gifts to the table.  Could this be a more timely project?  I don't think so.  Let me introduce you to the authors: 

"We've got to help humanize people who are different than us." WJ

Wayne Jacobsen, co-author of "The Shack" book, has been a pivotal influence in my journey for the last twelve years.  My library boasts a lot of books that have Wayne's name on the cover.  This book shares space on the shelf with reads like "Finding Church", "Beyond Sundays", "A Man like No other" and "So You Don't Want to go to Church Anymore".  He is also hosts the God Journey Podcast.  

"It's important to find people who celebrate you rather than tolerate you." BP

Bob Prater is someone I got acquainted with when I started listening to his podcast "A Christian and a Muslim Walk into a Studio"  He teamed up with his Muslim friend Emad and the two of them have conversations about their stories, their journeys and issues that pervade the world they both live in.  I really enjoy the banter between these two (the politics not so much) .  I missed their conversation when they ended their podcast, but I discovered that they just moved the conversation to Youtube and Facebook.  The conversation continues and that is a real good thing.  

"In an orchestra, a soloist can produce beauty, but eventually, she sits down to contribute to the greater beauty of the whole." AWT

Arnita Willis Taylor is the author that makes this book what it is... and I am sure that Wayne and Bob would agree with me.  In fact, I think they already have.  The only exposure I have had to Arnita is through this book and she opened up my eyes to a whole new world, and for that I am thankful.  

"Learning to communicate with people around you, especially those with whom you hold significant differences, Is not without its risks and rewards.  But is it worth it?" LOH

I think it is.  And when I read the conversations between Wayne, Bob and Arnita... I am understanding that they all think and feel like it is worth it. 

I have a confession to make: I am Canadian and this book is written by three Americans addressing mostly American issues.  It was good to learn about the issues that are so prevalent in their world and how this "language of healing" is helping them to navigate the waters they live and work in.  But as the chapter 2 title says "What's in it for me?", I have to figure out how this language fits into my world, my culture, my relationships and my country.  

"Compassion, although technically a noun, is at its core an action word.  Being moved without taking action is simply pity.  Compassion will not allow us to feel and not act on behalf of others." LOH

I want to learn how to have conversations with people.  I remember conversations came easy when we all were on the same page.  As soon as the different opinions came out, then the emotions heated up and the conversations ended.  It seemed like the only time conversations were possible was when everyone agreed.  I think I am getting better and being brave and inviting myself into a space where I can be a part of those conversations where disagreement is more present than agreement. 

There were two books I read that had a great impact on me... both were conversations and both were diametrically opposed points of view, but what I came out of those reads with was an appreciation for a love that triumphed over difference.  The books are "Why I Left, Why I Stayed" by Tony and Bart Campolo and "Undivided" By Patricia and Alana Raybon.  

"Speaking the language of healing isn't a matter of semantics alone; it's also a matter of developing your character. When we are more at peace with ourselves, we will not be threatened by those who have different perspectives or beliefs. In fact, they can add to our own experiences and enrich it." LOH

I realize that this journey to learn "A Language of Healing" starts with those people closest to me.  If I can't have this conversation with the people I love, then my efforts really mean nothing.  And this doesn't mean a banter on social media, this means personal conversation.  

Thank you, Wayne, Bob and Arnita for taking the time to have a conversation and share it with the world... and I hope you share it with the world.  As much as the topics of conversation you have may seem primarily American, it is the idea that you had a conversation that really needs to be shared with the world... even though we have very different issues and stories, we can still learn from your journey and from your conversation and find some common ground in our own worlds.  

One suggestion: I downloaded the audio to this book, and listened to it before I read the book.  It was important to me to hear this conversation in the voices of the authors.  It made all the difference to me.  I have the book now, but when I read it, it is Wayne, Arnita and Bob's voices that I am hearing, not my own.  This audio book is available on Audible.  

I highly recommend this book for anyone... even in Canada.  We have our polarizing issues here too! They may be somewhat different, but how we address them... well that is something we can learn from "The Language of Healing for a Polarized Nation" I will end this post with a little wisdom from each author: 

"It is a genuine awareness that my group doesn't have all the wisdom, nor will it alone create the environment in which others can flourish. Those who have different experiences and cultures will have ideas that can benefit us if we choose to be exposed to them." WJ

When I look at people on a macro level, I realize we're all parts of humanity.  Everyone wants compassion; all people want equity; all people want to love and be loved. AWT

"When we allow others to be themselves, it becomes a key for connecting with the genuine in both ourselves and others.  I have a tendency to more completely trust others when I sense that they are being genuine with me." BP

Finding my soul sister in BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

 

"God was too great and the world was too wide to allow for so little curiosity." BBT

I am going to thank Jen Hatmaker for introducing me to Barbara Brown Taylor. I wondered why Jen found this woman so fascinating and then I read two of her books in my silent month of November and I understood.  This woman and her wisdom and understanding of life are transformative. 

More recently, I have downloaded books in to my E-Reader before committing to add them to my library.  They are cheaper to purchase and it gives me a way to test out a book to see if it will be a valuable addition to my book shelf.  I didn't do that this time.  I ordered Barbara's books "Holy Envy" and "Learning to Walk in the Dark" without the pretesting process.  These books were going to be my companions during my month of silence.  Turns out... both were amazing choices and definitely valuable additions to my bookshelf. 

HOLY ENVY: Finding God in the Faith of Others

"The God of your understanding is just that; the God of your understanding.  What you need is the God just beyond your understanding." (Rami Shapiro: quoted in "Holy Envy")

Barbara taught a World Religions class for a couple of decades in Piedmont College in Georgia, USA.  She had the opportunity to invite her students into the worlds of very different world views and cultures of the major world religions.  She not only taught about Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity... she  brought her students on field trips to experience communities and people whose worlds revolved around these expressions of faith.  Her inspiration for the class and the book came from a Swedish Theologian by the name of Krister Stendahl. 

Three rules of religious understanding: 

1. When trying to understand another religions, you should ask the adherents of that religion, not it's enemies. 

2. Don't compare your best with their worst. 

3. Leave room for Holy Envy. 

The book is a journey for Barbara.  A journey through her class program, a journey into the worlds and lives of very different people and a journey taken with some cautious but eager to learn students. 

"Those who were religious would learn more about their own faith, and those who were not would learn how other people answer the big questions of human existence: Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? When we die, is that it? Whether the students agreed or disagreed with other people's answers to those questions, taking them seriously would help them ask better questions of themselves." BBT

This book gave me so much, but most importantly it brought me comfort that my choice to embrace people in their differences would not only be okay, but would benefit me in my life.  

I spent a great portion of my life in a culture and religious environment that tried telling me that it was my job in this life to change the world and its inhabitants to fit into my mould of religious belief and world view.  But thankfully, I was invited into the story of one person, much like Barbara Brown Taylor, and it changed my perspective.  

"My best view of divine reality, is still a partial view." BBT

"A world view is a wave, but not the entire ocean." BBT 

My longest friend, I call her, is a woman who was raised and still lives and practices her Hindu faith.  I had the amazing opportunity to spend two weeks in her home back in 1991 and just take in her story and her culture.  Even then, I didn't feel compelled to change her or convert her to my way of believing.  I let her and her family teach me what they believed.  Maybe inside my head I had conversations about things that didn't make sense to me, but I tried not to let that influence my education.  I was there to spend time with her and learn from her.  I was not on a Christian missions trip, and to this day, I am so glad those voices in my head trying to convince me otherwise, didn't have the final say.  Today, I still have a friend (for forty years), and she still embraces her Hindu faith, and if it gives her a full life and helps her answer those questions, then I couldn't be more happy for her. 

"Though I am retired from teaching religion, I am not done searching the scriptures, history, and tradition of my faith for good reasons to engage other people in theirs. Other days I do it because I'm starved for the God I did not make up." BBT

Thank you Barbara for confirming in me that embracing others on their journey can teach me more when I stop and learn, instead of planning to move in and conquer.  

[On a side note: I used to enjoy "missions trips" but what was enjoyable was the practicality of my experiences.  I helped clean houses in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, I helped build a house in Juarez Mexico... Even through I was taught that evangelism was the motivation for missions, for me, it was never the motivation or the joy.  The joy was always helping and lending a hand where there was a need. ]

LEARNING TO WALK IN THE DARK

"Without benefit of maturity or therapy I had no way of knowing that the darkness was as much inside me as it was outside me, or that I had any power to affect its hold on me. No one had ever taught me to talk back to the dark or even to breathe into it. The idea that it might be friendly was absurd. The only strategy I'd ever been taught for dealing with my fear of the dark was to turn on the lights and yell for help." BBT

The introduction on her book cover says it best: 

"Follow Barbara Brown Taylor on her journey to understand darkness, which takes her spelunking in unlit caves, learning to eat and cross the street as a blind person, discovering how "dark emotions" are prevented from seeing light from a psychiatrist, and re-reading scripture to see all the times God shows up at night. With her characteristic charm and wisdom, Taylor is our guide through the spirituality of the nighttime, teaching us how to find God even in darkness and giving us a way to let darkness teach us what we need to know."

I am convinced that Barbara Brown Taylor is an Enneagram 4... like me.  Subjects like Envy and Darkness are familiar ground for those "Eeyores" that dwell on the bottom of the Enneagram.  

This book was a fun journey into the idea that darkness is not the enemy.  There is something of value to be learned in the dark.  I understand the desire and even need to light up our world, but what beauty awaits us in the places we so fear to go.  This book is a journey into those places and what they can teach us. 

"Back in the cave, I do not know what I am doing either, but I like it. There is no way to tell time, which means there is no rush. There is no light, which means that I do not have to worry about how I look. There is no one beside me, which means that I do not have to come up with something to say. Above all, there is no threat." BBT

Now that doesn't sound like a place where fear dwells, but a place where one can find peace.  Maybe fear compels us to turn on the light, whereas peace finds a chair in the darkness and sits down. 

This amazing author and woman has a beautiful way of seeing the poetic world that dwells all around her.   I need more like her in my world and my life.  I am thankful for the insight she has given me and if all I can do is pass her name along and invite someone else along on the journey of discovery, then I will do just that.  

I will end this post with three of my favourite BBT quotes.  

"If your faith depends on being God's only child, then the discovery that there are others can lead you to decide that someone must be wrong -- or that everyone belongs, which means that no religion, including yours, is the entire ocean." BBT

"Engaging the faith of others is the best way to grow your own." BBT

"I asked God for religious certainty, and God gave me relationships instead." BBT

Understanding now why LOVE MATTERS MORE by Jared Byas

"No matter how much we expand our own experience of the world, we will never know everything." (JB)

"It sounds simple, but it’s so important for us to understand that we are limited. In other words, we are not able to grasp absolute truth or reality as it really is. Yet in certain parts of Christianity we have made absolute truth an idol, and God has been replaced. We are deeply afraid of what it means for us if humans do not have access to absolute truth. And that fear comes out in hurtful ways." (JB)

First of all... let me say that if I were to die right now and the last book I read was a book with the title "Love Matters More".  Then I will be okay if that is the legacy I leave behind.  I am okay, if no other message is conveyed at my memorial, than "Love Matters More".  This is the cherry on the ice cream sundae of my library of books.  The title says it all.  Even if anyone forgets what Jared Byas wrote in the whole book... if they can walk away with these three words and implement them in their day to day life... I think he will have done what he set out to do.  

"This is my first memory of a Christian trying to love me who clearly spent way more time learning what to believe than how to believe. I have heard my entire life that Christianity is about love, but what I saw—through our programs, services, and interactions—is that Christianity is about belief. I’ve come to realize that fear about being wrong in our beliefs has crowded out the clear message of Jesus’ life and death—the unmistakable emphasis in the Bible and in thousands of years of church tradition—love matters more." (JB)

Okay... I was kind of kidding... reading the book is still a good thing to do and as I will point out in the blog... there is a lot of wisdom within the pages.   And I'm sure Jared did a lot of hard work on those words past the cover, but I wanted to emphasize those three words and how transformative they can be.

I mentioned in my last post on Rob Bell's book "Love Wins" that love in action has to matter more than beliefs.  Jared Byas is confirming the same thing.  So maybe this is something to think about a little more.  Why has there been such a focus on beliefs, when it seems obvious that Jesus was more about love in action, than he was about beliefs? 

The premise of this book is addressing a phrase, that seems vastly overused in the Christian culture. "Speaking the truth in love"  

"Honest conversations about how we experience people or how we feel about others can be an important part of love, even crucial. But something is out of whack when I hear story after story of people being hurt by people who are 'just telling the truth in love.'” (JB)

Love isn't something we need to tell people we are doing... we just need to do it.  In the church culture, so often people have felt it necessary to admonish others on their behaviour and found some out of context backup in the bible so that they could feel good about themselves when they "told the truth in love".  All the while, clueless to the damage they did to the person they were telling it to.  Jared wrote a book that is long overdue by decades.  

"One thing that helped me in this journey was to recognize that certainty is a feeling." (JB)

Okay... I thought I knew this.  But when my eyes glanced at this line it finally registered in my brain.  Certainty is a feeling... not a foundational cornerstone.  Wow!  So when someone tells me they "are certain" about something... I can understand that as they "feel certain".  Their thoughts may be coming out of their mouth as a belief about their unshakeable identity, but that's not what is actually happening... it is the expression of a fluid feeling.  

Jared Byas is a co-host with Peter Enns of one of my favourite podcasts: The Bible for Normal People.  Jared talks with Pete about this book in Episode 138 on the podcast.  So if at the end of this blog post, I haven't convinced you to get this book, go and listen to the podcast, and let Jared invite you into this conversation)  

"The real problem with “speaking the truth in love” is that at the end of the day, we want grace for ourselves and judgment for other people." (JB)

OUCH!  How often have I been the one who "wanted grace for me" and in the outcome... passed along my judgement to others.  I think I need a new definition of truth.  

"The New Testament also uses as its primary definition of truth the idea of faithfulness." (JB)

I know I am jumping around, so you will have to read the book to get the whole picture... but there were so many things that stuck out in this book for me.  Truth = faithfulness.  So truth isn't a set of ideas or opinions but a state of being faithful.  How might we honour someone if we chose to be faithful to who they are instead of who we think they need to be based on our world view? 

"Love has a way of changing our minds about what is true. It doesn’t change the facts, of course. It changes what the facts mean and leads us to wisdom. It changes how we see the world. And if we get enough people to change how they see the world, it changes the world. It is true in science, and it is true in the church." (JB)

I think something I need to take out of this book is the difference between two very different words. 

TRUTH   OPINION

My opinion is just that... it is my opinion.  It might be true, but it might not be true... but in the end... I don't even have to fit my opinion anywhere on the spectrum of truth.  It can just be my opinion and that is good enough.  These are my thoughts, my opinions, my understandings... and truth doesn't even need to enter into the same picture.  Truth is a portrait all it's own.  And the beauty of that portrait can stand on its own... without my opinion discolouring it or covering it up. 

"We love well when we understand who someone is and behave according to who they are. We do not love well when we behave according to who we want them to be or who we assume they are because of who we are." JB

Jared, thank you for such an amazing read.  Like I said... "the cherry on the top". I still feel like I have missed so much of what this book has to offer... so I guess to finish off this post... the only thing I can say is... 

PEOPLE, PLEASE GET THIS BOOK AND READ IT.  AND THEN WALK AWAY WITH THREE WORDS THAT CAN TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE. 

LOVE MATTERS MORE

A must read and a must see... "Love Wins" and "The Heretic" by Rob Bell

Some communities don’t permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: “We don’t discuss those things here.”

My hope is that this frees you. There is no question that Jesus cannot handle, no discussion too volatile, no issue too dangerous. At the same time, some issues aren’t as big as people have made them. Much blood has been spilled in church splits, heresy trials, and raging debates over issues that are, in the end, not that essential. Sometimes what we are witnessing is simply a massive exercise in missing the point. Jesus frees us to call things what they are. (RB)

I started this blog post as a personal rant... and then as I started copying and pasting some of Rob Bell's quotes in... I realized that he did all the ranting for me... in the book "Love Wins" and even in the documentary "The Heretic".  

To say it again, eternal life is less about a kind of time that starts when we die, and more about a quality and vitality of life lived now in connection to God.

Eternal life doesn’t start when we die;

it starts now.

It’s not about a life that begins at death;

it’s about experiencing the kind of life now that can endure and survive even death. (RB) 

Maybe Eternity isn't as long as it seems to be.  I think the concept of existing forever to be... undesirable... but maybe that isn't what Eternity is about.  Maybe it is more about the moment now, than about a destination after death.  This makes now... the NOW that I find myself in... to matter.  Now has to matter for me.  Because Now is that I'm sure that all I have. 

If you believe that you’re going to leave and evacuate to somewhere else, then why do anything about this world? A proper view of heaven leads not to escape from the world, but to full engagement with it, all with the anticipation of a coming day when things are on earth as they currently are in heaven.

When Jesus tells the man he will have treasure in heaven, he’s promising the man that taking steps to be free of his greed—in this case, selling his possessions—will open him up to more and more participation in God’s new world, the one that was breaking into human history with Jesus himself. (RB)

I don't know if the chapter "Here is the New There"  encourages me or discourages me.  I wanted to find something that would encourage me that I don't have to exist forever, because in my limited mind... existing forever doesn't line up with how Love has expressed itself in my life.  Love lives in my limits.  How would Love look in a redeemed place, when Love has blossomed in the manure of my life?    I am still not drawn into the forever aspect of eternity, but the Now aspect of eternity that he talks about... now that I can get inspired about.  That "heaven" is more about Here and Now... than it is about the There and Then.   This is still a very grey area for me.  I have no conclusions.

First, heaven.

Now, hell. (RB) 

But, simply put, the Hebrew commentary on what happens after a person dies isn’t very articulated or defined. Sheol, death, and the grave in the consciousness of the Hebrew writers are all a bit vague and “underworldly.” For whatever reasons, the precise details of who goes where, when, how, with what, and for how long simply aren’t things the Hebrew writers were terribly concerned with.

Next, then, the New Testament. The actual word “hell” is used roughly twelve times in the New Testament, almost exclusively by Jesus himself. The Greek word that gets translated as “hell” in English is the word “Gehenna.” Ge means “valley,” and henna means “Hinnom.” Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, was an actual valley on the south and west side of the city of Jerusalem.

Gehenna, in Jesus’s day, was the city dump. (RB)

So Hell in the Old Testament refers to the place of the dead, which wasn't a big topic of conversation.  Hell in the New Testament is the city garbage dump.  So my question... if this is obvious to biblical scholars... why have millions of people been told that Hell is a place of eternal conscious torment for people who don't sign up to be part of Christianity's club?  When I look for an answer to this question... I can only come up with words like power, control and fear.  There is no Love painted in this of portrait of Hell.  

 Many people in our world have only ever heard hell talked about as the place reserved for those who are “out,” who don’t believe, who haven’t “joined the church.” Christians talking about people who aren’t Christians going to hell when they die because they aren’t . . . Christians. People who don’t believe the right things.

But in reading all of the passages in which Jesus uses the word “hell,” what is so striking is that people believing the right or wrong things isn’t his point. He’s often not talking about “beliefs” as we think of them—he’s talking about anger and lust and indifference. He’s talking about the state of his listeners’ hearts, about how they conduct themselves, how they interact with their neighbors, about the kind of effect they have on the world.

Jesus did not use hell to try and compel “heathens” and “pagans” to believe in God, so they wouldn’t burn when they die. He talked about hell to very religious people to warn them about the consequences of straying from their God-given calling and identity to show the world God’s love. (RB) 

I am more and more drawn to the idea that "beliefs" don't make one iota of a difference to the Creator... Love in action is the real deal.  That is definitely evident in the storyline of Jesus.  This is GOOD NEWS!  I will struggle with what I "believe" until my last breath... but until I breathe my last... I can love.  There is no struggle for me in that directive! 

And then, last of all, please understand that nothing in this book hasn’t been taught, suggested, or celebrated by many before me. I haven’t come up with a radical new teaching that’s any kind of departure from what’s been said an untold number of times. That’s the beauty of the historic, orthodox Christian faith. It’s a deep, wide, diverse stream that’s been flowing for thousands of years, carrying a staggering variety of voices, perspectives, and experiences.

If this book, then, does nothing more than introduce you to the ancient, ongoing discussion surrounding the resurrected Jesus in all its vibrant, diverse, messy, multivoiced complexity—well, I’d be thrilled.  (RB)

Unlocking a treasure and finding out "What is the Bible" by Rob Bell

"First, the Bible isn’t a Christian book. I say that because many people have come to understand the Bible as a book for a certain group of people to claim and own and then help them divide themselves from everyone else. But the Bible is a book about what it means to be human. And we are all, before anything else, human." (RB)

Before I go on to expound on what this book has done for me, I need to tell you a story.

Yesterday, I was going through some boxes of books and keepsakes that I have stored out at my Mom's farm.  I found a red pocket Gideon New Testament with Psalms that some people were handing out at my elementary grade school. 

I would like to confess that by now, my angst against religion has subsided, but I discovered yesterday that is just went into hiding.  It came out yesterday when I realized what that little red book was telling me. 

"I can't believe that anyone would think a child would get anything out of a Gideon.  It's like handing the King James to a kid." 

 It started something like that and went down hill from there.  It was a New Testament, but it opened up with a verse from Joshua that raised the hair on my back. 

This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success. (Joshua 1: 8) 

What is a preteen supposed to do with that introduction to a book so small, so thick and so unreachable?  That's right... unreachable.    The bible has been unreachable for me for a good portion of my life.   And the secret comes out. 

So back to my question... what does a child do?  Enters the guilt for not measuring up, not being or hope to being what that book told me to be.  What hope did I have to be prosperous, or successful, when I couldn't "meditate day and night" on something so foreign to me.  

But how could I even hope to understand that something lied deeper in those pages, when I was given what was a big locked treasure chest and instead of a key to open it, I was given a dirt shovel.  

I hope I somewhat redeemed myself by thanking my mother for making an attempt at downsizing the opening devise for that treasure by giving me the Living Bible, and a Picture Bible.  But when I think about it, as sincere as those efforts were, they still weren't the key I needed to unlock the treasure chest.  

Later on, I was given a NIV study bible at Christmas,  during my first year in Bible School.  Now I belonged, I remember the feeling.  The Living Bible paraphrase wasn't "good enough" for serious bible study.  I felt like that child that brought the wrong kind of bread in my school lunch.  

As the years progressed, I collected bibles.  I collected different versions and even different languages.  Not only English, but German, Spanish and Greek... none of which I could read anyway.  It was all in an effort to get into that treasure chest with the right key.  

I kept that book and copies of that book around for all the years I was attending some form of "church".  It was the class text book and mandatory reading for passing the course.  But... I still didn't have the key to the treasure chest.  

It wasn't until authors like Peter Enns, Rachel Held Evans and Rob Bell introduced me to a library of books that were about humans like me.  Humans from a different time and place and culture... but maybe not so different in the grand scheme of things.  I just wasn't introduced to them as humans.  

"This is a book about a library of books dealing with loss and anger and transcendence and worry and empire and money and fear and stress and joy and doubt and grace and healing, and who doesn’t want to talk about those?" (RB)

I don't think I was given the chance by anyone, even me, to explore the stories from a human perspective.  I had convinced myself that the "Holy Bible" was a divine revelation of a people that were divinely inspired to divinely write a transcript  in a time of divine living.  Instead of a collection of stories about humans like me.  

"...you don’t have to believe in God to read the Bible. In fact, as you’ll see in these passages, the Bible is filled with people wrestling and struggling and doubting and shouting and arguing with this idea that there even is a god, let alone some sort of divine being who is on our side. If you have a hard time swallowing the god talk you’ve heard over the years, great—this book is for you, because these are exactly the kinds of things the writers of the Bible are dealing with in their writings." (RB) 

Lately my focus has been one of understanding my purpose on Earth.  I am not interested in living the rest of my life in pursuit of some cosmic dream I have no proof of attaining.  As fun as Southern Gospel music is... it no longer motivates me to be excited about life after death, Heaven, Eternity... I need something to give me purpose where I am... right here... right now. 

"That’s why the Bible is not a book about going to heaven.

The action is here.

The life is here.

The point is here.

It’s a library of books about the healing and restoring and reconciling and renewing of this world.

Our home.

The only home we’ve ever had.?" (RB)

Wow!!!... if this is true, maybe the key to that treasure is within my grasp!  It's not some hard to read rule book for how to get to Heaven... this is a right here, right now story and collection of stories about the right here and right now.  Humanity 101.  So they are stories from a different place, and a different time, but put into perspective... the humans of three thousand years ago, had the same struggles we have.  And for some reason, their struggles didn't get whited out of the pages that have survived for so many millennia.  There has to be a redeeming reason that the hard times made it into this library.  We are human.  Hard times are our reality.  

"When you read the Bible, then, you read it as an unfolding story. You don’t edit out the earlier bits or pretend like they’re not there; they reflect how people understood things in that time in that place. You read the stories in light of where they’re headed. The earlier bits reflect how people understood things at that point in history, but the stories keep going.

The Bible comes out of actual human history, reflecting the funky, flawed, frustrating world these stories came out of. And right there in the midst of those stories, you often see growth and maturing and expanding perspectives." (RB)

So thank you Rob Bell... and Pete Enns and Rachel Held Evans... and all those who have had a hand in getting the key into my hand so I can open up this treasure chest... we've come to know as the Bible.  

One more confession.  After reading this post, one might assume that I am going to be abundantly enthusiastic and start "meditating day and night" on the Bible... I can assure you that most likely won't be the case.  I don't live in the treasure chest, but it is there for those times when I need some inspiration, wisdom, comfort and understanding.  

I don't ever want to go back to the place where obligation and guilt were my companions.  I want to enjoy my journey and my helpful guides in this life.  I just hope that I can embrace this library in a new way as Rob Bell and the others so graciously have encouraged me.  

"Interpretation, incarnation, now then, a bit about invitation.

Jesus tells his disciples at one point that whatever they bind will be bound and whatever they loose will be loosed.

What’s he talking about?

Binding and loosing was a first-century way of talking about interpretation. Jesus tells his followers that it’s their turn to make decisions about what’s written in the Bible.

It’s as if he says,

You watched me do it.

Now it’s your turn.

Figure out what it means to put flesh and blood on it.

In your place,

at your time,

in your world,

figure it out.

He says at one point that it’s like someone who keeps bringing new treasures out of a storehouse." (RB)