Currently Reading: Blue Parakeet 4 (fin)

While on my . . . vacation? Sabatical? Study break? Whatever it was, I was able to finally finish Scot McKnight's The Blue Parakeet. Published by Zondervan, just came out, yada yada yada. When I last reviewed, McKnight had discussed how we read the Bible, compared it to how we should read the Bible, and suggests that the Bible is first and foremost, God's story.

The question becomes how do we live out the Bible? The final chapters of his thesis argue that we all discern aspects of the Bible whether we admit it or not. For example, what does the Bible have to say about abortion? about stem cell research? premarital intercourse? . . . nothing. They weren't around back then, and so the Bible cannot directly speak to them (premarital intercourse is impossible when intercourse is the action that makes one married). The issue is, if it is God's story, how can we discern proper actions in a world that is different than it used to be. In other words, how is God speaking in our ways in our days.

The problem: the Bible does not directly speak to all of life, so how do we choose?

The solution: "We discern--through God's Spirit and in the context of our community of faith-- a pattern of how to live in our world." (129)

Ultimately, all biblical interpretation must be done in community of some sort. If not, anyone can have a valid interpretation of Scripture simply because their discerner says so. However, not everyone agrees on how to discern. "Seeking unanimity on all things is unwise; permitting discernment at the local level can sometimes create too much diversity, but it is wiser to have local discernment with some problems than having everyone under lock and key. (130)"

An observation of this very thing: Vineyard 101...for Reno vineyard, it was important to focus on doctrine and right belief because of their context. For Yerington, it will focus less on specific doctrines because we pull from a greater variety of traditions since we live in a small town and are a melting pot of various church traditions, whereas reno is a bigger city with more options, and maybe less background in theology.

Scot makes a great key focal point here, it is much easier to take shortcuts. The shortcuts mentioned in chapter 2. It is way easier to "interpret the Bible literally" and make it into a rule book than to try to understand what parts are contextualized and what parts should be modified for a different culture. It's phariseeism vs. becoming all things to all men. McKnight suggests that "our discernment should never become rules or laws" (132). We need to become chameleons-changing our colors but keeping the same body (or core) (142).

Here is my biggest frustration with this book...there is never a "how to", just a "what we need." Surely it is important to read through tradition, but how? Sure God is speaking in our days in our ways, but how do we know? McKnight cops out by simply suggesting "in community". But then again, this isn't the purpose of the book. The book is more of an expose than a how to manual. He reveals what we do rather than how we should. It would be very long indeed if McKnight worked out all of these issues, and quite frankly i'm glad he doesn't.

What he does do: give a specific example of how to discern, and how various people have discerned. Regarding: women in ministry. McKnight uses this as a case study, and does an excellent job of showing how to discern the role of women in ministry today. I didn't agree with everything he said, but he lays a really convincing case for his position. Unfortunately, he also chooses to omit the other side because "most people know it". He also uses suspect dialog processes, by mentioning a very convicting evidence, and then saying it isn't valid for some reason. This is similar to asking a jury to strike a damning evidence from the record and just pretend like the prosecution didn't bring it up. It is imposible to do fully. It would be better if he was upfront before describing the evidence, to prepare the reader, but I digress.

What his discussion of women in ministry did do for me: give me evidence to feel free to believe what I knew was okay all along. I believe that women can be pastors and teachers mostly because I have been pastored and taught by women. If they can teach in colleges and seminaries, why can they not lead a church?

So what do I think of the entire book? It was excellent. Not Jesus Creed excellent, but a very challenging work for me personally. It is readable enough for a non-scholar, but well thought out in a way that the smartest of us can learn as well. If someone wants to know more about reading the Bible, and needs to rethink how we have always done it, this book is an excellent starting point. If you want an easy, non-challenging, cliche ridden read, turn to another book. This is for people who are willing to be kicked in the face in love.

I would give this book 4.5 of five stars because I disagree with some of his dialog techniques in his case study, and the meat of the book was fairly short in comparison to his case study (which would be a great book on its own if it were more flushed out). It is recommended reading for anyone who reads the Bible consistently, or is interested in what the Bible should mean for living today.

It's the kind of book that keeps me thinking at random times throughout the day, "How is God speaking today in our 2000's Western Nevada ways?" And any book that can engage me outside its normal reading is great imho.

Blue Parakeet part 3

Since I don't have immediate access to my pictures today, i will throw in another Blue Parakeet post. Eventually I will sum up the entire book into one review, after I finish it.

After McKnight points out the fact that we all come to the Bible with our own assumptions and presuppositions, suggests various errors we use when reading the Bible, and presenting the idea of wiki-stories, he gets to the meat of his ideas. How do we read the Bible as story?

McKnight frames this portion of his book in the crazy idea that our relation to the Bible is ultimately a personal one. For far too long, evangelicals in particular have engaged in Bible worship. That is, we worship the Bible and not the God who gives us the Bible to commune with Him. He uses my ever-favorite imagery of artist/creation analogy. I can feel that he is setting us up for some good ole fashioned imago dei theology. I think that comes in the next section. What is most important in this section is the fact that if God is truly relational, then everything we do as Christians should cause us to grow closer to Him. My new model for spiritual formation (which I'm totally psyched about) also reflects these thoughts.

"Too many stop short by asking only, 'how can I learn to understand the Bible? ' . . . The real question at the bottom of all them is this: "what is my relationship to the God of the Bible?" (84)

Ultimately, the Bible is a tool, an act of communication, what have you. Any communicative act is useless unless the listener understands that the act itself has little meaning, but the relationship between the speaker and listener gives true meaning. This is a step short of deconstruction (completely listerner-centered communication). Instead of asking, what can the bible do for me? we should ask, how does what I just read bring me closer to God by loving Him and loving others?

"The Bible invites us to listen to God (the person) speak in the Bible and to engage God as we listen" (89)

"A relational approach to the Bible believes our relationship to the Bible is transformed into a relationship with the God who speaks to us in and through the Bible" (90). I hate the cheasy image of the Bible as God's love letter, probably because I am lactose intolerant, but it is really a good illustration.

So what's the point? When we read the Bible as a story, we learn to listen to God as we read, are attentive enough to recognize God's voice, absorb what God says, and then act on it (99). God always speaks so that it will change us. His words are not empty and void (unlike this blog), but are full of tangible, redemptive, creative power. The Bible itself demonstrates what happens when we choose not to truly listen to God. i.e. David and bathsheba.

A true relationship is based on love. Love lets the other person's ideas and beliefs in front of my own. In other words, love is listening. Listening ends in a transformed mode of operation.

In his chapter labeled "the boring chapter", McKnight describes what he calls missional listening. The basic idea of the chapter is this: God speaks through the Bible for a reason and expects us to listen enough to act on our hearing. "Any method of Bible study that doesn't lead to transformation abandons the missional path of God and leaves us stranded" (105). So how do we know if we listen well? We listen in community. Both now and in the community who came before us. We listen with tradition. Every person should have at least one book by an early church father (if you are looking for one, try Augustine's Confessions).

Here is how McKnight breaks it down: If you are doing good works as a result of reading the Bible, you are reading well. If you are not (or your works are misdirected), you can probably grow in missional listening.

It's down and dirty discipleship. God allows us to join his redemptive process if we would just lay down our agendas and listen for His. If reading the bible is a waterslide, "the slide is the gospel, the walls are the bible and our wise mentors (tradition), and the water is the Holy Spirit" (112). The goal is to make it to the bottom of the slide in the place the slide directs (the soaking presence of God).

How many colleges, seminaries, teachers, pastors, etc. get this wrong? We say "read the Bible because that's what good Christians do", "learn the inductive Bible study process so you can understand it in its original context", "right belief comes before right action". We miss the point. Understanding is vital, but more vital is allowing God to transform us.

My personal favorite quote of this section: "What makes missional listening powerful, what leads the reader into a life of righteousness and good works (the outcomes Paul mentions), is the promise that the SPirit who hovered over the author is the same Spirit at work in the reader. Unfortunately, too many of us spend too much time arguing about the meaning of "inspiration" and not enough on the point of it all" (109).

I know I get bogged down in the details, historical context, meaning of greek participles, etc. Sometimes I need to just sit down, be quiet, and listen to what God is saying. Surely those previous things help me understand the Bible, but that's an awfully easy goal to attain. It is much easier to understand the Bible, and not let it through the fences erected in my mind of what God might require me to do. The sermon on the mount becomes an ethic of acting as Christians in a Christian community. Only once we let it into our hearts does it change our acting as a Christian community.

The significance of story in THE BLUE PARAKEET

After the introduction of his own journey of faith and experience of transformation through the Bible, McKnight gets down and dirty with the meat of his work in The Blue Parakeet, Nov. 2008, Zondervan. Essentially, the entire premise of this book is that we cannot read the Bible for what we want it to be, but we need to allow the Bible to inform us. In order to do this, we should be reading the Bible as a story. It is God's story. It has a plot and conclusion. It still unfolds today (though not with the authority of the Bible), and we are a part of God's story.

"What we are looking for in reading the Bible is the ability to turn two-dimensional words on paper into a three-dimensional encounter with God" (41). I think this phrase is a major key in understanding the Bible, because it is the desire we should have when reading the Bible. McKnight suggests that we have unintentionally forced the Bible into two dimensions. By trying to get something for our daily lives every time we read the Bible, we truncate its message. In other words, by reading the Bible for information, we bring our own agenda. We idolize our understanding of what it means to read the Bible, and lose part of the message. The problem with this process is that we short-change ourselves when we try to take shortcuts.

Here are five shortcuts McKnight sees us taking:
-reading the bible as a collection of laws
-reading the bible as a collection of blessings and promises
-reading the bible like a Rorsarch inckblot: see what you already believe in it
-reading the bible like a puzzle, once put together never to be encountered again
-reading the bible through the lense of an expert

While each of these shortcuts are helpful at times, they are very dangerous as well. The problem is not the shortcut (in my opinion), but what taking shortcuts reveals about us. It is another application of our fast-food, immediate, instant gratification culture.

-I hurt for those who only see laws in the Bible, who have pure motives, but like the Pharisees miss the point.

-I hurt for those who only look for the good in the Bible, so much pain is expressed in God's story, as is His anger, wrath, judgment, etc. God is so much bigger than our greed for blessings (material or not).

-I hurt for those who read the Bible to confirm what they already believe. God doesn't belong in a box.

-I hurt for those who have God figured out. I don't think I ever will, and that is truly beautiful. Just the other day I was reading Daniel and thinking "I'm not sure i'm comfortable with this view of God" and I thank God for that.

-I hurt for those who read the Bible exclusively through Paul or Jesus (the main two experts' eyes through which we read). There is so much more to God's story than one chapter.

-I hurt for myself, because I do all of these things far too often.

We need to remember to read God's story as God's story. He could have given us just law books (Leviticus), blessings, inkblots, puzzle pieces, or one expert. But he didn't. "What God chose to do was to give you and me a story of Israel and the church, and we have a series of authors who tell that story and who contribute in one way or another to that story as the plot unfolds . . . God did not give the Bible so we could master him or it; God gave the Bible so we could live it, so we could be mastered by it." (52)

Next, McKinght suggests that we need to learn to read the Bible on its own terms. He explains how we have failed, "Instead of creation and fall, exodus and exile, as well as community and redemption, the Story was flattened out." (62) and how to move forward. The big idea in this chapter is that God chose to speak in Moses' days in Moses' ways; in David's days in David's ways, in Jesus' days in Jesus ways, in Paul's days in Paul's ways, in Augustine's days in Augustine's ways, in Luther's days in Luther's ways, and is speaking in our day in our ways.

Here it gets a little postmodern, with a discussion on the importance of language (postmoderns believing that language itself is a constructive or destructive force, and that any act of communication is inherently biased). Very basically, McKnight argues, "since language is always shaped by context, and since God chose to speak to us over time through many writers, God also chose to speak to us in a variety of ways and expressions. Furthermore, I believe that because the gospel story is so deep and wide, God needed a variety of expressions to give us a fuller picture of the story" (63). So far, this has been the crux quotation for the entire book. It reflects where Mcknight has been, and where he leads us.

He compares the Bible to a wikipedia of sorts, a collection of essays that describe God's story in the context in which a given essay is written. God allowed multiple authors to give distinct, unique accounts of how God was working in their time. All of these essays are held together by God's big story. They all contribute to one whole, but also need to be read individually. "None of the wiki-stories is final; none of them is comprehensive; none of them is absolute; none of them is exhaustive. Each of them tells a true story of that Story. (65)"

An example of this is the fact that there are four Gospels. God chose to reveal himself through four very different accounts of the same person (Jesus). Why? Because no single perspective of Jesus is enough. He is a great teacher, fulfillment of prophecies, and king (matthew). He is the redeemer of all people (Luke). He is a miracle worker, discipler, and suffering servant (Mark). He is something totally different, light, mystic, etc. (John). We read them all together, but that is not enough. Each author had a reason for writing the way he did, to get their message, to understand their communication, we have to enter their world on their terms individually and corporately. We have to put aside our assumptions, and allow God to work in us.

Discussion questions (seriously, leave a comment):
Which of the shortcuts are you most prone to taking? I know I read the Bible as a puzzle most often. What are the dangers in our shortcuts? Is the Bible an anthology of wiki-stories? Does mcKnight take some of the divine inspiration out of the Bible by suggesting that individual authors had individual understandings of God's story?

Something blue

Okey dokey folks, I have some news. In a chance encounter between luck and nerdhood, I was given the opportunity to read a pre-release version of Scot McKnight's new book, The Blue Parakeet, which comes out Nov 2008 and is published by Zondervan. One fateful morning, as I was perusing my daily list of blogs, I noticed on the Jesus Creed blog that there were some advanced copies of the book available to be read and blogged about. I promptly signed up, and a couple weeks later got my copy in the mail. Thank you Scot, Zondervan, and those who read this blog for giving me this opportunity.

I have been wondering what would be the best way to interact with the book in an online community, and have decided to review it as I read it. In other words, I will be reviewing the book on a chapter-by-chapter basis as I work my way through it. I want my response to be authentic, and to allow any surprises within the book to be reflected in my response. Without further adieu, here is my response/review of the first section. Blue sections indicate my own voice independent of the book. The book can still be changed, so these quotations (which will be minimal) are subject to changes pending the final print. For those few who read this blog, please comment on the ideas presented here. It will not be an easy trip, but it is a necessary one.

McKnight begins by describing his own personal experience with the Bible, which is a common one. Basically, after asking the Holy Spirit into his life, he had a sudden unending thirst to read the Bible. As he grew and learned from reading the Bible, he realized that we all adopt and adapt the Bible to our culture (adopt/adapt is a common motto throughout the book). Pulling from a postmodern/deconstructionist worldview (which emphasizes the idea that the reader/listener always imparts some understanding onto a communication act), McKnight's primary premise of the book seems to be: "Since we all affect our own interpretations of the text, how can we pick and choose which parts of the Bible we emphasize in a way that honors God?"

Another way to say it might be: nobody can read the Bible entirely literally. It is impossible. How, then, do we choose which parts of the Bible to live by? He goes on to give some examples of picking and choosing. I.e. sabbath as a day of rest from labor that is now interpretted as going to church; Old Testament tithing vs. evangelical tithing (tithing to priests in the temple and the poor vs tithing to an institution); foot washing (I did it once I think, but don't know many other people who have); Charismatic gifts (Jesus told us to heal the sick . . . but that was then, this is now); surrendering possessions (*cough ya right *cough); apparent contradictions; etc.

nobody, not even one, reads the Bible and literally follows it to the letter. In fact, my pants yesterday were part cotton and part linen- a direct violation of levitic law.

There are a few keys to answering this question: Who are we? Who is God? What is the Bible? We must approach the Bible in humility and allow it to transform us

C2.

The title of the book reflects an experience Scot had while watching birds. He was sitting on his porch, observing sparrows, when a blue parakeet flew into the area. The sparrows were afraid of the bird at first, eventually became accustomed to it, and even became familiar with it. They did not tame it.

Certain sections of the Bible are blue parakeets. They shock us to our core. For me, any of the accounts in the OT when the loving father God I know destroyed entire communities are blue parakeets. I cannot tame God any more than a sparrow could tame a blue parakeet. There are other Blue Parakeets in the Bible as well. How many there are largely depend on how open we are to allowing the text to speak to us.

McKnight suggests that there are three primary ways of approaching the Bible, two of which have been around forever, and the third is his attempt at allowing the Bible to be the Bible. The first is Reading to Retrieve. Here, the Bible essentially becomes a textbook of information. The reader gleans what he/she can from the text and attempts to follow it literally. A more technical term for this type of reading might be a "literalist approach". The problem with this view is that it is easy to not be faithful to the text considering we live in a radically different culture. There can also be too little adoption (27). These readers do not consider the idea that God created the Bible to transcend culture. It is applicable to every time, season, culture, generation, empire, etc. Scot puts it succinctly: "What we most need is not a return to the first or fourth or sixteenth or eighteenth century but a fresh blowing of God's Spirit on our culture" (28). This is predicated on the idea that even throughout Scripture God progressively reveals himself. That is, Abraham had a different view of God than did the disciples because God showed more of himself as his people grew. "the biblical way is the ongoing adoption of the past and adaptation to new conditions and to do this in a way that is consistent with and faithful to the Bible" (29).

Secondly, Mcknight explains another approach to the Bible as reading through tradition. In the Evangelical world, we have made the Bible more approachable than it ever has been. This has made it possible for anyone to interpret the Bible in any way they see fit. This is a problem. In reading through tradition, the individual appeals to the great authors/thinkers/speakers of the past . Understanding how the Bible came about reveals more about the content of the Bible. Seeing the genius of Augustine, Luther, the Nicene Fathers, etc. will help us see a broader perspective of the Bible than a 21st century adaptation to understanding it. The church is a community, and the Bible should be read through community, past and present. The danger with this approach is that it can lead to traditionalism, where the ways we have always done it become the framework in which me must always read and interpret the Bible. Faith becomes stagnant. Tradition becomes and idol.

Is there a better way then? Perhaps incorporating both reading through tradition and reading to retrieve? McKnight suggests a thrid way, reading with tradition.

"God was on the move; God is on the move; and God will always be on the move. . . Reading the Bible so we can live it out today means being on the move-- always." (33). In other words, we cannot neglect what the church has said throughout the ages, but we must remember that those were cultural expressions for their times. The Reformation was great . . . for that time. It was reactionary (probably too much so), but needed. It was a new breath of air that the Holy Spirit breathed into the church. The same with evangelicalism (19th-20th cent), the emerging church (21st cent assuming we allow God to continue moving in this context), catholocism (first 1000 years of the church), eastern orthodox, etc. We need to worship the God of the Bible. Not the Bible. Not the church. Not our interpretations. The Bible is a living book, that will transform our lives if we allow God to speak to us through it. Tradition is an excellent tool with which to hear God. Pulling lifestyle choices out of the Bible is wise. But above all, we must remember whom we are worshipping, and allow him to transform rather than simply inform us.

Looks like this is going to be another great book. Even the first couple chapters have reminded me how important it is to read the Bible for leisure, for spiritual formation, for communication, for relationship with God. In the midst of my busy seminary schedule, it is easy to neglect God's primary communication act for me. I need to recapture the wonder I know dwells deep within this calloused heart, which allows God to speak to me. But if I continue in this vein of thought . . . I might just end up going on a diatribe about some of the dangers of seminary :), which is not what this post is about.

Comment questions for your consideration:
Which ways are you most prone to reading the Bible? Are they good or bad? Do they bring you closer to God or further? Which way is the right way? Can we even know a right way?