Every once
in a while someone writes a book that says exactly what you have been thinking
for a long time. In Pete Enns’ most recent book I found a description of the
Bible and how it works articulated just the way I would say it. In fact, I wish
I had said it!
In The Bible Tells Me So: Why defending
Scripture has made us unable to read it (HarperOne, 2014), Enns leads readers on a journey of new discovery.
Many readers of the Bible (ok, all of us) approach the Bible with certain presuppositions
about the way we think the Bible works. But as Enns points out time and again,
while we may approach the Bible with an “owner’s manual” or “rule book” mentality,
the Bible rarely behaves the way we want it to behave (p. 73). In fact, the more
we read the Bible and try to apply it, the more we realize that it is a complex
book that is not so easily tamed.
Enns’ goal
in this volume is not to tame the beast, but to help readers discover a new
appreciation for the Bible. And although
Enns has a PhD from Harvard and is probably too smart for his own good, this is
not an academic essay on the Bible that will help cure your insomnia. In many
ways this is a personal story in which Enns describes his own journey from an “owner’s
manual” approach to the Bible to informed believer. This is a book by someone
who found that the Bible is much more exciting and useful than a simple “rulebook.”
The central
thrust of the book is the importance of story. Enns notes the difficulty with holding
up the Bible to modern ideas of “history.” While he acknowledges that a lot of
history lies behind the Bible, he also gives a number of examples where the
Bible simply wouldn’t make the cut in documentary. But the problem is not the
Bible, but the expectations moderns readers bring to the Bible.
When we open the Bible and read it, we are eavesdropping on
an ancient spiritual journey. The journey was recorded over a thousand years
span of time, by different writers, with different personalities, at different
times, under different circumstances, and for different reasons.
In the Bible, we read of encounters with God by ancient
peoples, in their times and places, asking their questions, and expressed in language
and ideas familiar to them. Those encounters with God were, I believe, genuine,
authentic, and real. But they were also ancient – and that explains why the
Bible behaves that way. (p. 23)
Rather than
view this as a diminishing of the Bible, Enns argues that this is what makes
the Bible useful. The Bible is “Story” it is that which shapes the past in
order to help us make sense of the present (p. 99).
But it’s not
just the stories of the Bible that are complicated. The God we read about in
the Bible is also complicated and doesn’t always behave the way we would like.
At times God is loving and merciful and at other times he is vengeful and
violent. And try as we may to reconcile those contrasting pictures, it’s not possible.
Enns, however, invites his readers to embrace this diverse presentation of God.
God certainly is a multidimensional character in the Bible. Sometimes
he is up there and out of the way, unmoved and unmovable. But more often he is
the kind of God you can actually have a relationship with. Both are in the Bible.
Neither cancels the other out, but – ironically, perhaps – the biblical God
that is least Godlike is the one we tend to connect with more in our day – to –
day lives. A God like us is not a problem. The New Testament, Where God becomes
one of us, calls this Good News. (p. 159).
For Enns, it
is the revelation of God in Jesus that is most important. After demonstrating how Jesus, like the Bible,
didn’t always behave the way people would expect, Enns proposes that Jesus is
actually bigger than the Bible. That is, while the Bible is important and tells
us about and directs us towards God and Jesus, it isn’t the final word. Jesus
is the final Word (p. 195).
Enns concludes
the volume by suggesting that the Bible is unsettling and that it is supposed
to be that way (p. 239). Our attempts to tame the Bible, to make it behave will
never succeed and only frustrate us more. But that is not a reason for us to
give up. Enns suggests that an unsettled faith is a maturing faith (238). He
also warns that we shouldn’t expect more from the Bible than you would from
Jesus (p. 243). If we are willing to accept the mystery of Jesus as God come in
the flesh, we should also accept the mystery of how the Bible came to us with
human fingerprints all over it.
This is a
book that needed to be written. And if you know anything about Pete Enns and
his story you will know that he was just the person to write it. This book
should be read by anyone who has been raised in evangelical thinking, but found
that at times the answers it provided were unsatisfactory. It’s a book for
people who cling to their faith in God in spite of the messiness of the Bible
and the way it has been used over the centuries. It is a book that I think puts
into words what many have been thinking for a long time.
I highly recommend
it!
