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neilrcoulter 's review for:
Esau McCaulley opens this book with the assertion that Black ecclesial interpretation “got somethin’ to say” about the Bible. By the end of the book, I totally agreed. McCaulley looks at a number of questions about the Black experience in the US, present and past—policing, politics, justice, identity, anger, and slavery—and asks what the Bible says to these situations. Some quick points that I will be contemplating for quite a while:
**The twelve tribes of Israel were never a racially or ethnically “pure” group. Jacob accepts Joseph’s two sons and so incorporates African blood into the family right from the start. God’s promise to reach all the world through Jacob’s family thus starts happening at the very beginning.I loved McCaulley’s perspective on many parts of the Bible that I thought I knew pretty well. I still have a lot to learn, and the learning is a thrill. My only criticism of Reading While Black is that I wanted it to go more in-depth (only 184 pages??). But for now, I’ll be content with this book and eagerly await what McCaulley writes next.
**The Bible sometimes speaks from the standpoint of God’s creational intent—the way the world is meant to be—and other times speaks to what God allows because of human sinfulness. McCaulley points out how Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ questioning about divorce (Matthew 19) not by expounding upon Deuteronomy, as the Pharisees had intended, but by returning to Genesis, to God’s original intention for the world. In the same way, the Bible speaks to proper relations between masters and slaves, but that doesn’t mean God’s intention was that there be slavery; rather, those passages are making allowances for the way Roman society functioned, with the intention that slavery be eradicated.
**Through and through, the Bible takes seriously the rage of the oppressed against the oppressor. The Psalms give voice to that just anger, and the Hebrews are reminded that they (we) were all once slaves, having been rescued by God from Egypt. Slavery is our heritage as God’s people, and the anger and bitterness are real. But God’s purpose all along has been the redemption of all people through the family he chose—and in the New Testament we see the astounding quality of that promise when it means loving the oppressor and the enemy, even when they clearly don’t deserve it. But the Bible also balances this with the assertion that there will be a final reckoning. God’s justice doesn’t mean ignoring all the injustice of human society.
**Where the Bible seems to stop short of encouraging all-out rebellion against the evils of politics, government, and systemic injustice, it’s not overlooking those evils nor telling us to just put up with it. Rather, the lesson we learn is that God knows the right time and way to overthrow injustice, and he will do it; we will always want to revolt and try to rid the world of evil, and sometimes that’s the right thing and other times it’s not the time or method just yet. The Bible teaches us to want the right things and to wait for God’s timing.