Inspired Read online

  I would leave my faith a dozen times in the years following, only to return to it a dozen more. I got married, became Episcopalian, voted for Barack Obama, and discovered the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation. Armed with a library card and a blog, I delighted in informing people whose life verse was Jeremiah 29:11 (“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’”) that those words were directed at the nation of Israel during the Babylonian exile, not high school seniors, and I made sure to interrupt references to the Bible’s epistles with the knowing caveat, “if Paul authored the letter to the Colossians,” to the wry chuckles of other readers in the know.

  In short, I became something of a Bible bully.

  While the scholarship I’d encountered was sound, I used it to render the Bible into little more than a curiosity, an interesting religious artifact to study for sport. Beneath the incessant hum of objections, corrections, and clarifications lay a terrible silence wherein the Bible still fascinated me but no longer spoke to me, at least not with the voice of God. The Bible remained a stumbling block, but a fixture now cold and mute.

  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.

  Memoirist Addie Zierman writes an online advice column, “Dear Addie,” for people who have left legalistic religious backgrounds. Recently a reader named Megan asked for advice on how to engage the Bible when it comes with so much baggage, when it tends to trigger more doubts than it resolves. Zierman advised Megan to think of the Bible not as one of those Magic Eye books, which, with enough squinting and studying, reveal a single hidden image, but rather as a song that can be covered and remixed by a variety of artists. “Find your cover artists,” she wrote. “Find the voices that help you hear the same songs differently.”1

  Over the course of the last decade, I have discovered my cover artists—those scholars and poets, traditions and practices, that help make the Bible sing. From the rich history of Jewish interpretation, I learned the mysteries and contradictions of Scripture weren’t meant to be fought against, but courageously engaged, and that the Bible by its very nature invites us to wrestle, doubt, imagine, and debate. Liberation theology (which views the Bible through the lens of becoming free from unjust conditions) and feminist biblical interpretations showed me how the stories of Scripture could be wisely appropriated for social good by pointing us to justice. The spiritual practices of Lectio Divina and Ignatian meditation, which invite contemplative engagement with the text, helped me recover a devotional element to Scripture reading that had long ago gone missing.

  Through their faithful example, my parents continue to remind me the whole purpose of biblical devotion is to be “thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:17); and Old Testament scholar Peter Enns, whom I count as both a mentor and friend, has encouraged me to approach Scripture with a new set of questions, questions like, “What if the Bible is just fine the way it is? . . . Not the well-behaved-everything-is-in-order version we create, but the messy, troubling, weird, and ancient Bible that we actually have?”2

  These questions loosened my grip on the text and gave me permission to love the Bible for what it is, not what I want it to be. And here’s the surprising thing about that. When you stop trying to force the Bible to be something it’s not—static, perspicacious, certain, absolute—then you’re free to revel in what it is: living, breathing, confounding, surprising, and yes, perhaps even magic. The ancient rabbis likened Scripture to a palace, alive and bustling, full of grand halls, banquet rooms, secret passages, and locked doors.

  “The adventure,” wrote Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky in Reading the Book, lies in “learning the secrets of the palace, unlocking all the doors and perhaps catching a glimpse of the King in all His splendor.”3

  Renowned New Testament scholar N. T. Wright compared Scripture to a five-act play, full of drama and surprise, wherein the people of God are invited into the story to improvise the unfinished, final act.4 Our ability to faithfully execute our roles in the drama depends on our willingness to enter the narrative, he said, to see how our own stories intersect with the grander epic of God’s redemption of the world. Every page of Scripture serves as an invitation—to wonder, to wrestle, to surrender to the adventure.

  And so, at thirty-five, after years of tangling with the Bible, and with every expectation that I shall tangle with it forever, I find myself singing Psalm 121 to my baby boy each night. “He who watches over you will not slumber,” I sing into his sweet-smelling wisp of hair, as many thousands of mothers and fathers have done before. “He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”

  I am teaching my son the ancient songs and hearing them again for the first time. I am caught up in the story, surrendered to its pull.

  Citing G. K. Chesterton, author Neil Gaiman often noted, “Fairy tales are more than true—not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”5 In those first, formative years of my life, before I knew or cared about culture wars or genre categories or biblical interpretation, this is what Scripture taught me: that a boat full of animals can survive a catastrophic flood, that seas can be parted and lions tamed, that girls can be prophets and warriors and queens, that a kid’s lunch of fish and bread can be multiplied to feed five thousand people.

  At times I wonder if I understood my sacred text better then than I do now or ever will again.

  My aim with this book is to recapture some of that Bible magic, but in a way that honors the text for what it is—ancient, complicated, debated, and untidy, both universally relevant and born from a specific context and culture. I write with two audiences in mind: first, those who share my evangelical background and find themselves navigating the great chasm between Scripture as they learned it and Scripture as what it actually is, and second, those who share my present affiliation with progressive mainline traditions and are itching to explore more deeply the background, significance, and relevance of the texts sampled in the liturgy each week. I hope to show how the Bible can be captivating and true when taken on its own terms, avoiding both strict literalism on the one hand and safe, disinterested liberalism on the other.

  I’ve arranged the book around various biblical genres, alternating between short, creative retellings of familiar Bible stories (“The Temple,” “The Well,” “The Walls,” and so on), and more in-depth explorations of those genres (“Origin Stories,” “Deliverance Stories,” “War Stories,” and so forth). Woven throughout are reflections from my own life and invitations for readers to consider how their stories intersect with those of the Bible.

  I tackle this subject not as a scholar, but as a storyteller and literature lover who believes understanding the genre of a given text is the first step to engaging it in a meaningful way. My focus is on the Bible as a collection of stories, stories best able to teach us when we appreciate their purpose. For the scholarship, I rely heavily on the work of Peter Enns, as well as the writings of Walter Brueggemann, Ellen Davis, Delores Williams, Nyasha Junior, Amy-Jill Levine, Soong-Chan Rah, J. R. Daniel Kirk, Scot McKnight, Glenn R. Paauw, and N. T. Wright. I’m more grateful than ever for the faithful contributions of these fellow pilgrims.

  A book about the Bible by a memoirist may seem like an odd undertaking, but anyone who has loved the Bible as much as I have, and who has lost it and found it again, knows how a relationship with the Bible can be as real and as complicated as a relationship with a family member or close friend. For better or worse, my story is inextricably tethered to the stories of Scripture, right down to my first name. Rather than attempting to rend the threads of my life from those of the sacred text, I hope to better understand their interconnectedness and, perhaps, to step back far enough to see a tapestry emerge.

  The Bible never refers to sacred Scripture as “magic,” which is understandable since the term carried even more cultic baggage in the ancient world than it does today. Instead, the author of 2 Timothy 3:16 declares, “All Scripture is inspired by God” (NASB). Here the writer has created a new word—theopneustos—a combination of the Greek theo, meaning “god,” and pneo, meaning “to breathe out” or “to blow.” Inspiration, both in the English language and in its ancestral languages, is rooted in the imagery of divine breath, the eternal rhythm of inhale and exhale, gather and release. The book of John describes the breath of God as blowing wherever it pleases. “You hear its sound,” the text says, “but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going” (3:8). It’s the invisible power of wind in sails, the strange alchemy of air on embers. You couldn’t track it down even if you tried.

  Inspiration is better than magic, for as any artist will tell you, true inspiration comes not to the lucky or the charmed but to the faithful—to the writer who shows up at her keyboard each morning, even when she’s far too tired, to the guitarist whose fingers bleed after hours of practice, to the dancer who must first learn the traditional steps before she can freestyle with integrity. Inspiration is not about some disembodied ethereal voice dictating words or notes to a catatonic host. It’s a collaborative process, a holy give-and-take, a partnership between Creator and creator.

  While Christians believe the Bible to be uniquely revelatory and authoritative to the faith, we have no reason to think its many authors were exempt from the mistakes, edits, rewrites, and dry spells of everyday creative work. Nor should we, as readers, expect every encounter with the text to leave us happily awestruck and enl
ightened. Inspiration, on both the giving and receiving end, takes practice and patience. It means showing up even when you don’t feel like it, even when it seems as if no one else is there. It means waiting for wind to stir.

  God is still breathing. The Bible is both inspired and inspiring. Our job is to ready the sails and gather the embers, to discuss and debate, and like the biblical character Jacob, to wrestle with the mystery until God gives us a blessing.

  If you’re curious, you will never leave the text without learning something new. If you’re persistent, you just might leave inspired.

  THE TEMPLE

  Where is your brother?”

  Even in the soft glow of the lamplight, Mama’s features look worn with worry. The challah has been baked, prayers have been said, and Papa has put down his tools and is bouncing little Hanan on his knee. Sabbath has officially begun, with or without Hannah’s delinquent younger brother.

  She’d done her best to track him down. As the sun receded over the vast Babylonian territory, she ran up and down the river Chebar, shouting Haggai’s name and knocking on nearly every door of their dusty little town known as Al-Yahudu, “the village of the Jews.”1

  “He knows the way home,” Hannah says, the familiar scents of home soothing her into blithe resignation. “He’s not a baby anymore, Mama. He’ll be an archer in the army in just two or three years.”

  Mama mutters something under her breath about cold desert nights and loose Babylonian women.

  Not two minutes after Hannah collapses at Papa’s feet, eager for another of his evening stories, Haggai bursts through the front door like a hungry puppy.

  “Sorry I’m late!” he shouts, breathless. “I was in the city.”

  “Just as I’d feared,” Mama says.

  Haggai moves with the restless energy of someone with news, someone with a story to tell.

  “They were celebrating the Akitu festival,” he says. “You wouldn’t believe all the food and drink! Women everywhere were dancing. They gave me figs and olives. And they told the most amazing story, Papa, the story of how Marduk became the most supreme god and established his throne in the great temple.”

  Mama and Papa exchange looks.

  Haggai, paying no mind to the tension in the room, straightens up, clears his throat, and with the authority of a wizened elder, relates to them the tale:

  “In the beginning, before the heaven and earth were named, there lived two wild and capricious gods: Tiamat, goddess of salt water, and Apsu, god of freshwater. These two gods mingled together to produce many other gods, filling the whole cosmos with clamor and chaos. Nothing was in its right place.

  “When the younger gods grew so noisy that Apsu couldn’t sleep, he resolved to kill each one of them. A battle ensued, but instead of quieting the noise, Apsu faltered and was killed by Ea, father of the great Marduk.

  “Enraged, Tiamat advanced on Marduk and his forces, backed by a massive army of demons and monsters, hurricanes and hounds.

  “But Marduk was a valiant warrior, so he challenged his great-great grandmother to do battle alone with him. The two fought and fought until Marduk captured Tiamat in a net and drove a great wind into her mouth so that she became bloated and slow. Marduk shot an arrow into Tiamat’s belly, cutting through her insides and puncturing her heart. Then he split her body into two pieces, flinging half of the corpse into the heavens to hold back the waters behind the firmament, and the other half to the earth to hold back the waters that rage below. From her hollowed eyes flowed the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

  “Then Marduk made the stars and moon and assigned the gods to various duties. He put everything in order—sky, land, plants, and animals. Among the gods he took the highest place, and from the blood of his enemies he created humanity to serve as their slaves. Finally, Marduk saw that a great temple was made in his honor, a temple from which he could rule and rest.

  “He lives in the temple, right here in Babylon, to this day,” Haggai concludes. “And the king is his emissary.”

  Haggai takes a bow.

  The house is quiet for a few minutes. Only the crackling fire joins Hanan in his cooing. Mama and Papa look sad.

  Finally, after what seems like a very long time, Papa invites the whole family to gather around him. “I have a story too,” he says, a twinkle returning to his eye, “one told to me by my father, which was told to him by his father, which was told to him by his father. It is an old story. So listen carefully.”

  “In the beginning,” he says, “before heaven and earth were named, there was Elohim—there was God.

  “Now the cosmos was formless and void. Nothing was in its right place. But the Spirit of God hovered over the chaotic waters and said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light, and it was good. God separated the light from the dark, calling one day and the other night. This is what God did on the first day.

  “Then God said, ‘Let there be water above and water below.’ So God made the firmament, a great dome to hold back the waters of the sky, and it, too, was good. God separated the waters, calling all that was above heaven, and all that was below earth. This is what God did on the second day.

  “Then God separated the land from the seas, and God said, ‘Let the land produce all kinds of plants—fruit and flowers, wheat and willow trees.’ And sure enough, the land sprouted. Grass grew. Grapes ripened. Trees stretched out their arms and dug in their roots. Lilies bloomed. All of this God did on the third day, and it was very, very good.

  “On the fourth day, God pinned the lights to the firmament: sun, moon, and stars. ‘Let these lights serve as timekeepers,’ God said, ‘to mark the days and years and special seasons.’ And God saw that the lights were good, each one in just the right place, each one with a special assignment.

  “Then, on the fifth day, God said, ‘Let the waters below teem with living creatures and let birds soar through the sky.’ So God stocked the oceans with sharks and eels and seahorses and fish, and God filled the sky with eagles and sparrows and hummingbirds and owls. The whole earth was swimming and flying, swarming and soaring, but still it wasn’t enough. So on the sixth day, God created all the animals of the land: cattle, camels, sheep, snakes, mighty stags and timid field mice, ferocious lions and wise little ants. And God separated all the creatures into families and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply! Fill up the earth!’ But still it wasn’t enough.

  “So God said, ‘Let there be people. And let them rule over my creation as my emissaries, little kings and queens, created in my image and of my nature.’ So God made people on the sixth day, and God told them to be fruitful and to multiply, to use all the plants and animals for their good and to be responsible with the world.

  “When God reached the seventh day, God saw that creation was in order. Everything was in the right place. The work was finished, and all of it was good. So on the seventh day God rested, which is why we rest today.

  “It is a holy day,” Papa says, “set apart to remember our good and sovereign God.”

  Their home is quiet for a moment.

  “You mean there was no great battle?” Haggai asks.

  “No battle,” Papa says.

  “No grandmothers getting split in two,” Mama adds.

  “And all people are God’s emissaries, not just the king?” Haggai asks.