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A review by lydiature
Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith by Sarah Bessey
5.0
There were so many parts of this book that resonated with me, but there was one that really struck a chord.
“I used to call the Bible ‘the Word.’ I try not to do that anymore.
I would read the opening chapter of the Gospel of John and think it was talking about the Bible: ‘The Word was first, the Word present to God, God present to the Word. The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one’ (John 1:1-2 NLT). I’d characterize my time reading the Bible as ‘time in the Word.’ Capital W. When I had a problem, my first solution was ‘I need to get the Word on that’ — our cultural shorthand for saying that surely there was a Bible verse to cure whatever was ailing.
If I had kept reading that chapter of the Bible in context instead of cherry-picking, I would have seen it sooner perhaps: the Word is actually Jesus. John was writing about Jesus, not about a Bible that didn’t even exist yet. It was Jesus — the Word of God — who ‘became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood’ (John 1:14 MSG). In fact, the end of that exactly poetic and beautiful telling of the story of Jesus ends by showing us the way to understand the rest of Scripture in light of Jesus: ‘We got the basics from Moses, and then this exuberant giving and receiving, this endless knowing and understanding — all this came through Jesus, the Messiah. No one has ever seen God, not so much as a glimpse. This one-of-a-kind God-Expression, who exists at the very heart of the Father, has made Him plain as day.’
I think I used to elevate the Bible to being a fourth member of the Trinity. I yearned for systematic theology with charts and graphs and easy-to-decode secrets. I wanted answers and clarity — the cry of the modern reader. But the more I read of the Bible, the more confused I became. So much of the Bible didn’t line up with what I had been taught about the Bible. Old Testament scholar Peter Enns summed me right up when he said that the problem isn’t the Bible, ‘the problem is coming to the Bible with expectations it’s not set up to bear.’ My expectation was divinity, simplicity, infallibility, literalism, easy answers.
The Bible wasn’t meant to fulfill those expectations any more that it was meant to receive my worship.”
Powerful.
“I used to call the Bible ‘the Word.’ I try not to do that anymore.
I would read the opening chapter of the Gospel of John and think it was talking about the Bible: ‘The Word was first, the Word present to God, God present to the Word. The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one’ (John 1:1-2 NLT). I’d characterize my time reading the Bible as ‘time in the Word.’ Capital W. When I had a problem, my first solution was ‘I need to get the Word on that’ — our cultural shorthand for saying that surely there was a Bible verse to cure whatever was ailing.
If I had kept reading that chapter of the Bible in context instead of cherry-picking, I would have seen it sooner perhaps: the Word is actually Jesus. John was writing about Jesus, not about a Bible that didn’t even exist yet. It was Jesus — the Word of God — who ‘became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood’ (John 1:14 MSG). In fact, the end of that exactly poetic and beautiful telling of the story of Jesus ends by showing us the way to understand the rest of Scripture in light of Jesus: ‘We got the basics from Moses, and then this exuberant giving and receiving, this endless knowing and understanding — all this came through Jesus, the Messiah. No one has ever seen God, not so much as a glimpse. This one-of-a-kind God-Expression, who exists at the very heart of the Father, has made Him plain as day.’
I think I used to elevate the Bible to being a fourth member of the Trinity. I yearned for systematic theology with charts and graphs and easy-to-decode secrets. I wanted answers and clarity — the cry of the modern reader. But the more I read of the Bible, the more confused I became. So much of the Bible didn’t line up with what I had been taught about the Bible. Old Testament scholar Peter Enns summed me right up when he said that the problem isn’t the Bible, ‘the problem is coming to the Bible with expectations it’s not set up to bear.’ My expectation was divinity, simplicity, infallibility, literalism, easy answers.
The Bible wasn’t meant to fulfill those expectations any more that it was meant to receive my worship.”
Powerful.