Last week, I took part in a day-long conversation about the Bible with 20 or so biblical and theological scholars. And by “took part,” I mean I was there to listen, observe, and soak it all in. The conversation revolved around two main questions: what is the Bible? and what should we do with it? Because our gathering included participants from evangelical, mainline, and Catholic traditions, we didn’t all come (or leave) with the same answers. But the conversation was good, really good.

Walter Brueggemann was supposed to discuss the importance of genre in the Hebrew Scriptures. But as we had the good sense to hold our event in the Midwest in January, adverse weather in Chicago kept him on a tarmac in Cincinnati (thus leaving my plan for getting a selfie with Brueggemann in tatters).

It’s just as well. I’ve been told that Brueggemann does not suffer fools, and more than a few of us (scholars included) would have been in full-blown geek-out mode if he’d been there.

Still, we had Brueggemann’s paper. And his blessing to read it in his absence. So for 20 minutes, I got to pretend I was Walter Brueggemann.

I can’t share his paper with you, but I will share a couple of key points I took from my experience impersonating one of the world’s most admired Old Testament scholars:

1. Neither fundamentalism nor rationalism are equipped to deal with the Bible.

For Brueggemann, reading the Bible well requires navigating between two extremes: the literalist impulse of fundamentalism and the historicist impulse of rationalism. One treats everything as literal, historical fact, imposing modern expectations of “accuracy” and “precision” on ancient texts. The other denies any meaningful connection between the text and reality.

Both reflect a reductionist approach to the Bible. Both fail to consider the importance of genre when reading scripture—the codes, if you will, through which the authors described (and critiqued) reality for their audience. We all use codes to explain reality to members of our respective communities. Learning these codes is part of the initiation process into a new community. These codes shape the way parents speak to their children (in the stories they tell), the way churches speak to parishioners (in their liturgies), the way businesses speak to their target audiences (through advertising).

If this didn’t make things challenging enough, we also have to recognize our anachronistic habit of importing our genres into the Bible, when ancient literature had its own unique genres—something Gregory Mobley, author of Return of the Chaos Monsters, noted in his response to me… er, Brueggemann.

One thing we can draw from this without getting too deep into the weeds of genre analysis is that the biblical writers were not mere reporters or scribes taking dictation from God on high. Nor were they simply making stuff up. They were poets and artists, skillfully crafting a story. They weren’t giving a dry report of who did what, where, and when so much as they were envisioning a new, God-soaked reality.

2. We must rediscover the artistry of the Bible so we can read with our imaginations.

Artistry was one of the recurring themes of Brueggemann’s paper. It’s not a word you’ll find in many commentaries or Bible studies. It’s not one I heard often in seminary. The text was something to be parsed, analyzed, and systematized into concrete theological propositions.

But how do you dissect a work of art without robbing it of its power? According to Brueggeman, this is exactly what we’ve done with the Bible. In a 2013 interview with Krista Tippett, he said:

What the church does with its creeds and its doctrinal tradition is flatten out all the images and metaphors [of scripture] to make them fit into a nice little formulation, and it’s deathly. So we have to communicate to people: if you want a God who is healthier than that, you’re going to have to take time to sit with these images and relish them and let them become part of your prayer life and vocabulary and conceptual frame—which again, is why the poetry is so important. The poetry just keeps opening and opening and opening, whereas the doctrinal practice of the church is always to close and close and close until you are left with nothing that has any transformative power.

Acknowledging the artistry of scripture is essential to understanding its impulse toward justice. The “prophetic imagination,” a phrase that might as well be synonymous with Brueggemann’s name, is the creative envisioning (or perhaps summoning) of a new, more just reality—long before one exists, when the existence of one seems impossible.

Prophets, Brueggeman says:

…are moved the way every good poet is moved to describe the world differently. Those who control the power structures do not know what to make of them, so they try to silence them. And what the powers finally discover is that you cannot silence poets.

It never occurred to me to think of prophets primarily as poets, even though most of what we label “prophecy” is poetic in form. As Brueggemann reminds us, we pay a heavy price for neglecting the artistry of scripture.

If we read everything literally—flattening the Bible, as Brueggemann says…

Or if we read everything skeptically…

If we dismiss everything as ahistorical fabrication…

Or if we treat prophets like sanctified fortune tellers, divorcing their message from its original context so we can look for signs of “fulfilled prophecy” in our day…

…then all we’re really doing is reading the Bible on our terms, rather than its own.

By reading the Bible this way, we’ve managed to do what the ancient powers could not do: silence the prophets and poets of the Bible.

Reversing this trend will take a mighty act of imagination. That’s what I learned when I spent 20 minutes being Walter Brueggemann.

Well, that and one other thing: if you should ever be called upon to present one of Brueggemann’s papers for him, give it a read beforehand. He’s got one heck of a vocabulary.

Photo by Westminster John Knox Press

When I announced my book presenting the gospel for kids, I said we need to do a better job introducing them to our faith. I said the prevailing method of passing down our faith — getting kids to make some kind of decision before they’re old enough to question or doubt — isn’t right and it isn’t working.

I’m writing this book to give parents (including myself) another way of taking about faith with our kids. A way of telling the story of our faith, instead of just issuing them a checklist of beliefs. A way of honoring our kids’ natural curiosity, instead of (to paraphrase Rachel Held Evans) giving them answers before they’ve even had time to wrestle with the questions.

I wish I could say this alternative way is guaranteed to work. That I could promise your kids will grow up to be lifelong, committed Christians.

But I can’t. There are no guarantees. There are no perfect ways of doing this. Our kids have wills and minds of their own. They’re not ours to control. We can either choose to accept this while they’re young, or we can be forced to accept it when they’re older, when any illusions of control have long since evaporated.

Trischa Goodwin wrote a beautifully honest piece expressing the doubt that lurks in the heart of every parent who’s trying to do right by their kids…

What if… I’m just screwing my kids up in a different way than the way I was screwed up?

What if embracing their questions and not forcing them to accept my answers leaves them wishy-washy and completely unsure of anything?

What if not insisting they attend church with me every Sunday leaves them without a love for the Body of Christ?

What if allowing for discussion and not expecting immediate, unquestioning obedience undermines their respect for authority?

What if teaching them to respect other religions leads them away from Christianity?

What if I’m doing it all wrong?

I’ve asked these same questions. Sometimes it feels like it’s not a matter of whether I’ll screw our kids up, but how. And how hard they’ll have to work at disentangling the mess.

I think each generation tries to parent a little differently than the one before. We hold on to things from our upbringing that were good, and we leave behind (or try to, anyway) those that weren’t. Corporal punishment was a big part of my parents’ generation’s experience, a lesser part of my childhood, and it will have no part in my daughter’s upbringing.

The truth is, there are no true “parenting experts” out there. We’re all just trying to figure things out as we go. The “what if” questions that Trischa asked are important, because they reflect an awareness that we can’t make our kids turn out a certain way. We can’t write the ending for them.

As Trischa suggests near the end of her post, maybe the best a parent can do is:

Keep raising them in the most loving way I know how and continue to confess Christ and Incarnation and Resurrection and all the other mysteries in my daily life.

I think she’s onto something powerful. I would add just one thing: we also need to be willing to tell our kids we’re sorry when we do screw up.

A few weeks ago, my three-year-old threw a tantrum over something I had asked her to do (or stop doing). So I gave her a choice: start listening or sit on the step for a few minutes.

She declined both options and chose instead to escalate said tantrum. Which caused me to lose my patience as well.

I hate shouting, even brief outbursts, whether I’m on the giving or receiving end. So the minute I lost my cool, I regretted it. What most likely started as a three-year-old’s simple frustration at the difficulty of expressing herself, I had now blown out of proportion.

So I got down to Elizabeth’s eye level and told her I was sorry. I asked her to forgive me for losing my cool and raising my voice. I suggested maybe we both ought to sit on the step for a bit. I tried to show her that I was not “above the law,” so to speak.

The funny thing is, what was meant to be a time-out (now for both of us) turned into one of those cherished moments of conversation with my daughter.

It may seem trivial, but I tell my daughter I’m sorry because I want her to know that it’s safe to come to me when I’ve let her down. I want her to know she doesn’t have to fear the counterattack, that I’m not going to come roaring back at her with a laundry list of grievances which I’ve been storing up for just such an occasion. I want her to know she can tell me when I’ve screwed up.

Because I will screw up. I may try hard not to make the mistakes of others, but I’ll end up making mistakes of my own. Whether it’s in how I try to nurture my daughter’s faith or in some of the more mundane, everyday aspects of parenting, I will screw up.

I believe one of the most important things I can do for my daughter is being OK with that — and letting her know it’s OK to tell me when I’ve failed.

“I’m not saying you’re a heretic. Just that you’re a heretical promoter of heresy.” 

That, in a nutshell, is the gist of Ken Ham’s latest post addressing Pete Enns. (You might say Enns is Ham’s theological arch nemesis.)

[Background: Enns is an evangelical theologian who accepts the scientific consensus on evolution and has written extensively about its implications for the Christian faith — namely, the possibility that Genesis 1 is not a literal, scientific depiction of human origins and the overwhelming likelihood that the human race did not originate from a single primal couple, i.e. a literal Adam and Eve. Ken Ham is a longtime advocate for young earth creationism (YEC). He believes the very integrity of the gospel is at stake if you dispense with a literal, 6-day creation and a literal Adam and Eve.]

Ham is no stranger to controversy. In his recent post, he reminds us how a couple years ago he was disinvited from a homeschooling conference for being uncharitable toward Christians who disagree with him. (That was the explanation offered by conference organizers who largely share Ham’s interpretation of Genesis.)

But more damaging is Ham’s use of the nuclear option to shut down any honest conversation. He does so by forcing an impossible (and false) choice on his audience: either you accept what I tell you about creation, or you undermine the gospel. Sure, Ham won’t quite say you’re going to hell if you believe in evolution. But who wants to be accused of “undermin[ing] the authority of God’s Word and the gospel,” as he puts it?

In short, Ken Ham is a bully.

The irony is that Ham’s false choice is almost certainly doing more to drive people away from faith than toward it — because fear cannot nurture faith.

But Ham isn’t the only one who’s tried this tactic. I used to be that guy… constantly getting into arguments with my more moderate college friends over evolution, women in ministry, homosexuality… trying to make each disagreement a “gospel issue” so they’d have to choose between agreeing with me and renouncing the gospel.

I was never big enough or strong enough to be a physical bully. But theological bullies can do just as much damage.

Now that I see things from a different vantage point, I can appreciate what I put my friends through. (And, quite frankly, I’m amazed they put up with me.)

So for all those who’ve been bullied into conformity by threats of denunciation, allusions to some inevitable “slippery slope,” and declarations of heresy . . . let me say:

Human origins is not a gospel issue.

Women’s ordination is not a gospel issue.

How you vote is not a gospel issue.

Homosexuality is not a gospel issue.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter what you believe. Believing certain things about God is part of the Christian experience, which is why many of us reaffirm our faith every Sunday using the words of the Nicene Creed (while others do so in other ways).

And I do think the gospel has profound implications for how we see the world, for how we vote, and for how we treat women, gays, lesbians, and other historically marginalized groups of people.

But when defenders of the theological status quo try to make you choose between their view on [insert hot-button issue here] and apostasy, they are getting the gospel wrong.

There is something that can undermine the gospel. But it’s not evolution. It’s not questioning the church’s posture toward gays and lesbians.

For the apostle Paul, the only thing that could undermine the gospel was this:

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile…

Not “if the earth is more than 6,000 years old, your faith is futile.”

Not “if there was no historical Adam and Eve, your faith is futile.”

Not “if you let a woman preach, your faith is futile.”

And not “if you welcome gays and lesbians into your church, your faith is futile.”

Christianity is so much more than a belief system, but the one belief it does hinge on is resurrection — that is, belief in Jesus’ resurrection, which makes possible the resurrection and renewal of everything else.

To make the gospel dependent on anything else is to get the gospel wrong. And to do so in order to advance your own agenda and to pressure others into conformity is to become a theological bully.

The thing is, most people won’t sit around and take the abuse. They’ll just walk away.

Which is a pretty high price to pay for “winning.”

Today, as officials comb Boston in search of answers and in search of justice, may we remember that there is only so much we can say . . .

And so very much that we should not say.

Let no one say that 8-year old Martin Richard died yesterday because “God needed another angel in heaven.” God is not a sadistic collector of human specimens. There was no sudden shortage of angels in heaven precipitating yesterday’s carnage and devastation.

Let no one talk of “God’s plan” as if this were somehow part of it. To do so is to mistake God for some kind of cosmic terrorist. To suggest that we ought to bow down and worship such a God is spiritual abuse of the worst order.

If we talk of God, let us talk of the God who grieves with Boston. The God who grieves over death and violence — much as Jesus grieved at the loss of a friend. Let us see God through the lens of Jesus. In him we meet a God who renounces violence, who is making war on war, who despises death, and who beats swords into plowshares.

And let us not talk of Boston without also remembering the dozens killed in multiple car bombings in Iraq yesterday. The attack in Boston is closer to home, so it’s natural to feel it more acutely. But let it sensitize you to the dangers that millions face on a routine basis. Let it strengthen our resolve to work for peace, both here and abroad. Let us remember that every life is precious to God.

At the end of the day, all we can say is kyrie eleison.

Lord have mercy.

For Boston and Iraq.

This is something Preston Yancey wrote on his blog yesterday:

Preston has articulated something I think a lot of us feel at times.

Some of us think better when we think out loud.

Sometimes you have to start telling your story before you know exactly where it’s going.

Sometimes you need to give voice to unfinished thoughts in order to know how to finish them.