The Bible Tells Me So by Peter Enns
(Format used for this read: Print–hardback)
So glad my new friends Lori and Megan told me about Pete Enns and this book….we are in the last week of our online 5 week course on this book and I just finished it today.
Here is a summary:
“Trained as an evangelical Bible scholar, Peter Enns loved the Scriptures and shared his devotion, teaching at Westminster Theological Seminary. But the further he studied the Bible, the more he found himself confronted by questions that could neither be answered within the rigid framework of his religious instruction or accepted among the conservative evangelical community.
Rejecting the increasingly complicated intellectual games used by conservative Christians to “protect” the Bible, Enns was conflicted. Is this what God really requires? How could God’s plan for divine inspiration mean ignoring what is really written in the Bible? These questions eventually cost Enns his job—but they also opened a new spiritual path for him to follow.
The Bible Tells Me So chronicles Enns’s spiritual odyssey, how he came to see beyond restrictive doctrine and learned to embrace God’s Word as it is actually written. As he explores questions progressive evangelical readers of Scripture commonly face yet fear voicing, Enns reveals that they are the very questions that God wants us to consider—the essence of our spiritual study.”
I have so much to say about this book I don’t even know where to start.
This book is not long in pages, but MAAAANNN…. it goes DEEP in your brain and your heart.
The past couple years I awakened to the fact that so much of what I think I “know” about the Bible and Christianity is from a Westernized conservative evangelical Protestant viewpoint.
How I read the Bible…
How I interpret Scripture…
How I worship…
How I live out my faith…
All from that filter alone.
To think that there is only one singular “right” way to do all this puts limits on God.
It puts the power of our Creator in a teensy, constrained, properly labeled box.
So I’ve been intentionally trying to listen and learn from entirely different lenses…it has been the very best thing and has enriched my faith walk in tremendous (and yet super uncomfortable LOL) ways.
Reading thru this book while doing a corresponding online course about it has been so educational, disorienting, and enlightening.
I’ve watched videos from the author and also other theologians/professors/etc digging deeper into SO MANY THINGS.
I’ve listened to and talked to other people in the course and received advice, support, wisdom and prayer. (Including the author himself which I have to say is BEYOND COOL)
And y’all.
The realizations I’ve had….
So.
Many.
Realizations.
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Is the best way to express it.
But also
❤️🙏❤️🙏❤️🙏❤️
I’ve realized that there have been times when I’ve been taught that the Bible should be the center of my faith….when in reality it’s Jesus that should be.
When it’s the other way around we make the Bible our idol…and let me tell you how convicting THAT is.
I realized the importance of knowing the history, the time period and the culture of the people who wrote each book in our Bible is HUGELY crucial to how WE should read it.
We can’t read it the way we as people of 2019 read things. We have to read it from the eyes and perspective of how the people of a particular time period would have.
The Bible is a messy, beautiful, wild, chaotic, contradictory, loving, terrifying and wisdom filled book. People have debated it and wrestled with it for a loooonnngggg time (I mean look at the HUGE number of denominations we have !) ….and we will continue to debate and wrestle…and that’s probably exactly how God wants it to be.
Mysterious and complex …just like us humans…and our Creator.
The list of resources the author used in writing this book is super extensive and I look forward to digging into many of those as I continue my journey in expanding my lens.
Definitely check this book out y’all…because the author is pretty darn funny too…and while Pete is crazy smart this is NOT an “over your head” academic wordy read.
(And if you do read it and you’re like 🤯🤯🤯🤯 and need someone to process thru it with…I’m here! 😃)
**To hear another Pete Enns book review, click here to see what I thought about his book “How the Bible Actually Works” https://brainglitterwithdani.com/how-the-bible-actually-works/