Tag Archives: scripture

The Bible Is Bananas

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A wise man once said there is a time for everything. I used to interpret that as a statement about seasons—one thing in one season, another thing in another season. But maybe it’s also a statement about concurrency, about different things at the same time. In stead of either/or, I find myself more often thinking both/and. I am both connected to people and separate from them. I am both anxious and at peace. The world is breathtakingly beautiful and excruciatingly broken. Family is an asset and a pain in the ass. Love is ultimate safety and ultimate risk. God is male and female and non-gender.

But now and then I wonder if I’m being too permissive. My conservative evangelical upbringing tells me there are definite wrongs and rights, and one typically excludes the other. The church also told me the Bible makes sense. Read it “right” and you can reconcile what is confusing, and even package it all up nicely in bullet points on illustrated pamphlets. So if I don’t believe in one right answer any more, do I still believe in the Bible?

I don’t open my Bible much these days, but today I do. I read Lamentations chapter 3, and find it to be a lovely example of both/and thinking. (Or an example of irreconcilable contradiction. Take your pick.) Lamentations 3 contains 66 verses of despair, hope, and vengeance, penned by the prophet Jeremiah. As I begin to read, I feel a growing sense of contrast between these verses and the scriptures I see stenciled on wall art at Hobby Lobby, or screen-printed on church youth group t-shirts. I certainly didn’t memorize these verses in Sabbath School.

v. 2 He has led me and made me walk in darkness and not in light.

v. 3 Surely He has turned His hand against me time and time again throughout the day.

v. 7 He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out; He has made my chain heavy.

v. 11 He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces; He has made me desolate.

v. 16 He has also broken my teeth with gravel, and covered me with ashes.

I’m not even gonna try to wrap those up with a nice bow. Not only are these sentiments a dark portrayal of God, they stand in open disagreement with texts elsewhere in the Bible. For example:

v. 2 He has led me and made me walk in darkness and not in light.
AND Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. Psalm 119:105

v. 3 Surely He has turned His hand against me time and time again throughout the day.
AND I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10b

v. 7 He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out; He has made my chain heavy.
AND “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:30

v. 8 Even when I cry and shout, He shuts out my prayer.
AND The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. Psalm 34:17

v. 9 He has blocked my ways with hewn stone; He has made my paths crooked.
AND I will go before you, and make the crooked places straight. Isaiah 45:2a

v. 16 He has also broken my teeth with gravel, and covered me with ashes.
AND The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Psalm 61:1a, 3b

v. 17 You have moved my soul far from peace; I have forgotten good.
AND “My peace I give to you.” John 14:27
AND He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. Psalm 23:2b, 3a

As it turns out, I don’t need to look in other books of the Bible to find opposing sentiments. This one chapter of Lamentations contains a fullness of expression from one extreme to the other:

v. 11 He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces; He has made me desolate.
AND The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. v. 25

v. 42 We have transgressed and rebelled; You have not pardoned.
AND Oh Lord, You have pleaded the case for my soul; You have redeemed my life. v. 58

v. 43 You have covered Yourself with anger and pursued us; You have slain and not pitied.
AND Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. v. 22, 23 (Here’s the Hobby Lobby verse I was looking for!)

v. 44 You have covered Yourself with a cloud, that prayer should not pass through.
AND You drew near on the day I called on You, and said, “Do not fear!” v. 57

At this point I’m either thoroughly confused (I am), or my both/and thinking is expanding exponentially (it’s trying). The more I read, the more oddities I find. Is this a portrait of grief, not meant to make “sense”? Certainly an either/or mindset would require a diagnosis here, probably something along the lines of, “These are just feelings. Of course God doesn’t actually break our teeth, remove us from peace, or make our chains heavy. This passage is an upset person blowing off steam, exaggerating to express their angst.”

But couldn’t you say the same about the verses that extol God? What if the reality is that God turns His face away from us and punishes us, but sometimes we feel like He is listening to us and redeeming us?

Maybe it’s all of the above. We feel all kinds of feelings that aren’t about what God is actually doing or not doing. We also receive Her work in our life through our feelings. And maybe God is both punishing us and redeeming us. That’s hard for me to even write, as I have completely abandoned the idea of a God who punishes. But what if it’s both? And what if sometimes salvation happens in a sheep-and-goats sort of way, and other times in an all-shall-be-saved sort of way?

Jeremiah writes, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that woe and well-being proceed?” (v. 38) I love that it’s a question and not a statement. It’s an invitation to conversation, and invitation to keep wondering, keep talking, keep paying attention to what is there and what isn’t there.

Could it be comforting that the Bible is basically bananas? Imagine if everything matched up nicely and could be distilled to a handful of logical statements. No need for 66 books full of words that paint God (and Her creation) in every light imaginable. Let’s have one painting of God, at dusk, when the light is most complimentary and the air is calm. Let’s keep this one painting in a vault and burn all other paintings, and the people who paint them.

But no, the Bible will not allow this. Its vivid portraits of God and humans are all bound together. For my part, I’m done pretending the Holy Spirit is going to match it all up for me. Bring on the paradoxes, contradictions, violence and patriarchy, and the portrait of a God whose love is so inclusive and profligate it’s ridiculous. Both/and.

Special thanks to Marla Taviano (@marlataviano, @whitegirllearning) for the phrase “the Bible is basically bananas.” Go preorder her newest book of passionately beautiful deconstruction poetry, titled whole. (And while you’re at it, order her other books of poetry, unbelieve and jaded.)

From Pink Leather to Diversity

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I cannot imagine the “Urgent need for Bibles” depicted on my social media feed and in letters from charities. I don’t know the hunger for Scripture that thousands have felt in prison, in remote villages, in countries hostile to Christianity. I have more Bibles than I want, and only need visit a book store or sit in a church pew to access even more.

Over the years, I’ve accumulated seven or eight Bibles, including a small pink New Testament with Psalms, a Seminars Unlimited Edition KJV (free for everyone who attended a Revelation Seminar series—hallmark of the Seventh-Day-Adventist Church), and the bright, almost-holographic NIV children’s Bible I earned by memorizing the books of the Bible. I’m still proud that I can recite the minor prophets in order.

During my high school years I bought a metal-covered NLT Bible with a magnetic clasp, and a Spanish/English NIV. In Senior Bible class, each student chose a new-to-us style or version of the Bible. I picked the Serendipity Bible, designed with questions and study helps in the margins for group discussion. Lover of small groups that I am, I thought—and still think—it’s brilliant. But I’ve hardly used it.

The only Bible I truly loved came to me in its pink leather cover on my ninth birthday. As I wrote in last week’s post, I read it all the way through that year, and over the next ten years it became like a fifth appendage. When I flip through it now, I find a quarter-sheet of paper with notes for a worship talk to the student body at my high school, and another with multiple-choice options, showing a checkmark beside the statement, “I rededicate my life to Christ today.”

I still get a feeling of companionship when I turn the pages of my pink Bible, but it’s connected to life before I moved away from home. I must have taken that Bible to church during my college years, but memories are vague. Did I have morning “quiet time”? I can’t remember. By the time I graduated from college, the focus of my small groups had moved away from Bible study and toward facilitating safe spaces for personal growth. The women in my life wanted to be heard, and so did I.

Two years after I graduated from college—and fifteen years after my parents gave me the pink Bible—my college-boyfriend-turned-husband gave me a burgundy NKJV Remnant Study Bible with my married name embossed on the front, in silver. Pink Bible retired to the Bible shelf, safe in a pleather case. But I never really moved in to my new Bible. Only a handful of verses are highlighted or underlined and no papers are tucked between the thin pages.

I can’t help but wonder if I loved the Bible as a book in its own right, or if I only loved that Bible. The pink Bible meant purpose, connection, expertise. Perhaps it filled the role of a cup of coffee or alcohol—to buffer social spaces. During my 20’s, as the years filled with grown-up responsibilities, the Bible settled down along with the rest of my life. The excitement of spiritual leadership, learning to drive, falling in love, and working a dozen different student jobs during my late teens and early 20’s turned into the predictability of a dual-income home. I rose at 5:40am for quiet time, and prayed through Stormie Omartian’s The Power of a Praying Wife at least twice. I read the Bible and journaled and expected life to continue in much the same way. The Bible was habit—was that all?

By the time I turned thirty, we’d added two babies to the family. Prayer journaling ceased during the years of babies and young children, and at the same time my confidence in God and Scripture took a beating. As I fought for sleep and struggled to maintain a shred of self-worth, my youthful confidence gave in to confusion, anger—and curiosity. I wrestled with God and mostly left the Bible out of it. An aching emptiness took hold of me, and the Bible’s companionship didn’t comfort. I read other books and prayed and went to counseling. Half a dozen agonizing years later I emerged with a different confidence and a different companion. My confidence resembled the flowing water of a mountain stream more than the steadfast rocks at its bottom. My new companion emerged as a sense of spiritual belonging and safety with myself and with the divine.

My “faith,” or whatever you want to name the relationship I have with myself and with the divine, is safe, flexible, curious, gentle. I have little interest in church doctrine, and equally slight interest in church pews. The occasional sermon I’m obliged to hear tends to raise my hackles. But I may be closer than I’ve ever been to possessing something I want to share. And it’s not a Bible study.

These days I’m timid with the Bible. When I want to find a verse, it’s faster to google a key phrase than open my Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, or—if I know the reference—I type it in BibleGateway and select the version I like best. My burgundy Bible sits on my writing desk more as a prop than a friend, and my pink Bible remains in the bookshelf.

Rachel Held Evans, in her book Faith Unraveled, takes readers along with her on the journey promised in the subtitle: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions. Her Bible, like mine, absorbed a nontrivial portion of her time and energy as a teen. Unlike me, she started to ask questions, and learned that all questions do not have clean, three-point answers. Over time she found a different way to approach the Bible:

“As much as I struggle with the things I don’t like about the Bible—the apparent contradictions, the competing interpretations, the troubling passages—I’m beginning to think that God allows these tensions to exist for a reason. Perhaps our love for the Bible should be measured not by how valiantly we fight to convince others of our interpretations but by how diligently we work to preserve a diversity of opinion.”

Faith Unraveled, pg. 194

Diversity of opinion sounds terribly healthy. Am I that healthy? How comfortable am I, listening to another person share—from the Bible—a theological view different from mine? Will I allow them the certainty that irks me? On the other hand, am I able to hear doubts and questions without offering a solution? Can I experience spiritual intimacy with the people I disagree with, or only with those who have the same interpretations and “aha” moments that I do?

I’ve avoided the Bible for years now because when I pick it up and begin to read, I’m often thrown back into black-and-white thinking. Scripture is not a place of curiosity for me, but a textbook with answers. It’s hard to come back to a text I poured my life into as a teen, with a different view of myself and the world. We don’t fit together like we used to. But Rachel Held Evans gives me permission to try a more nuanced, messy relationship with my Bible. I haven’t picked it up yet, but I might. When I do, I want to look for diversity and contradiction, and practice making friends with the parts that are uncomfortable. I would like the Bible to be an irritating friend—by turns funny, exasperating, wise, sometimes a gentle companion and other times giver of good advice I’d rather not hear. I want it to remind me there are more questions than answers, and that what we write about God is as oddly erratic as what we write about humans. Maybe, in a year or ten, I will again be friends with a Bible. I don’t know what color the cover will be, but the inside won’t be black and white. It will be grey and rainbow.

Bible Sidekick

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When I was eight years old, I signed a baptismal certificate, and Pastor Bryson baptized me into the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. I remember practicing how to hold his arm while he held the dry washcloth over my face, so I could go under without breathing in water.

Six months later, for my ninth birthday, my parents purchased a Bible from the Christian book store, where they had my name embossed on the cover. They let me choose the embossing color—rainbow shimmer—but they kept the Bible out of sight. I used to wish I had chosen plain silver embossing, to please the adults and to match my tastes as I grew older. But at eight-going-on-nine, I wanted rainbow shimmer.

I was allowed to invite one family to our home for my birthday celebration each year, and for my ninth birthday I invited Laura and Eric. They were the only people I knew in their early 20’s, and I admired them as only a nine-year-old can. Laura had dark brown hair with one curly spot in the back where her previously-straight hair grew back in a curl after a diving accident. She had a petite frame, and a lovely accent from spending a year in Latvia. Eric was tall, with long everything—legs, arms, torso—and a wide, impish-yet-innocent smile.

I don’t remember much about my ninth birthday. Pictures remind me that I dressed up in elegant old skirts from our dress-up stash. Laura and Eric gave me a miniature rose plant, and my parents gave me the Bible—a red letter edition NKJV with a pink, bonded-leather cover.

I read the Bible cover to cover that year. I read about creation and Abraham and Moses, the cut-up concubine, prostitution and murder, lying and rape, greed and gratuitous violence. I read about Ruth and Esther, the Song of Songs, and somehow made it through Lamentations and the major and minor prophets. I read the shocking story of Jesus’ beginnings and the shocking story of His death, and through the exhortations of the apostles, all the way to the “Amen” at the end of Revelation chapter 22, verse 21.

I don’t recall having any questions, registering any shock at the violence, or finding any difference between the God portrayed in the Old Testament and the God portrayed in the New Testament. It was the Bible. I assumed it was all okay to read, and unnecessary to question.

By the time I completed 8th grade, I could find any Scripture reference in 30 seconds or less. My pink Bible accompanied me for the livestream of Dwight Nelson’s Net ‘98 evangelistic series, and Mark Finley’s Net ‘99 evangelistic series, both projected on the big screen in my home church. I began a lifelong habit of morning prayer-journaling after Net ‘98, the year I turned 13. In the front of my Bible I glued a handwritten copy of Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” and a variety of Bible “study helps” I never used. With The Marked Word study guide as my starting point, and armed with half a dozen pastel-colored gel pens, I underlined more than 30 chain studies.

After homeschooling basically forever, I attended Milo Adventist Academy (MAA) for 11th and 12th grades. Our family lived in the small southern-Oregon community where MAA occupies a slope beside the South Umpqua River, so as a high school student I attended the same church I’d been attending since I was born. As a student at MAA I served in almost every spiritual leadership position available. I was a group facilitator at a youth Bible conference, Spiritual Disciplines small-group leader, Junior Class Spiritual Vice President, and Student Association Spiritual Vice President. For a school talent show, I memorized and recited Psalm 139 and won a cash prize.

The summers I was 16 and 17 years old, I spent away from home, selling religious books and vegetarian cookbooks door to door with a Seventh-Day Adventist group called Oregon Youth Challenge. We led church services on weekends and Bible studies some weeknights, and my pink Bible and I took a tour of the SDA churches around Gresham, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington, while book sales helped fund my private school tuition.

Wherever I went, throughout my teen years that well-marked Bible was like a fifth appendage. When the youth leader said, “Hold up your swords!” my “sword” was always handy. I was well-prepared to fight with that sword, but I never did.

I don’t recall interacting with anyone who was interested in the Bible from a curious, unknowing space. Everyone I knew was either a “nominal Christian,” bumping along in apathy, or they were doing the same things I was, memorizing and marking Bible studies and verses that reinforced Adventist doctrine. Books I read and pastors I met told stories about meeting someone who was “hungry for the truth,” but I didn’t see or experience this firsthand.

Despite swallowing the Bible hook-line-and-sinker, even in high school I couldn’t imagine sharing the “plan of salvation,” telling someone they’re a sinner in need of saving. Although I soaked in Scripture and prayer, I didn’t feel any urgency to share my experience as a Christian. I sat squarely in the middle of an us-vs-them mindset, but the act of inviting a “them” to join “us” was far from my desire and far from my experience.

The Bible, I think, was something for me to be good at. I “knew” my Bible. I could find any verse in a few blinks of the eye, ask thoughtful questions (within accepted norms), and share my observations and opinions. I can’t imagine not having the Bible at that time in my life. I read it, marked it, loved it.

When I packed my room and drove eight hours to move into a college dormitory, I had no idea what was ahead for me and my Bible.

Read the next part of the story on February 7.

Cohabiting With God

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I have spent much time at the frazzled edges of my life, floundering in feelings, confused, overwhelmed. Only recently have I become aware that I have a center: a place to come back to, where I always belong, and where my value is not hanging in the balance.

One day last November I settled in my prayer chair with a handful of stressful dreams still on my mind. I felt overwhelmed and tired, but I didn’t want to dwell on that and get bogged down. I sang quietly. Somehow I expressed a desire for companionship: I didn’t need to be happy, but to know I was not alone. And a very clear impression came to me of a simple bedroom in my heart, with Jesus in it. It was a small room, and Jesus sat on a single bed with a white bedspread. This verse came to mind: “Then Christ will make His home in your hearts as you trust in Him” (Ephesians 3:17a, NLT). And I just sat there and enjoyed His companionship for a while—I don’t know how long, maybe half an hour. We didn’t say much. Having typically felt the need to be talking —either in my head or out loud—when I sit with Jesus, this long stretch of quiet companionship was a new experience. It was lovely and life-giving, like sitting with your head on the shoulder of a loved one and just breathing in the quiet acceptance of that space.

This awareness of Jesus in me has captivated me with peaceful excitement. After that first impression I returned to the image of Jesus seated on His bed in my heart over and over. I realized there was a second bed on the wall facing Jesus’ bed, and that it was for me to rest in, or a place to sit and talk with Jesus. “Christ in me, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

Somehow in this brief moment—this mental image—Jesus went from being “out there” to being “in here.” This reminds me of an experience I had last fall when I was getting quiet in the mornings: I would take a moment to pay attention to what was in my very center, and find great peace there—as if God was in me and I simply needed to pay attention. This knowing that I am centered in the love and presence of Jesus is exhilarating. It has power (He has power) over the frantic and fearful state that has often been my identity.

It’s kind of like the eye of a storm, except that the calm center trumps the destruction around it. It is the Truth, and it has the final say. This is Jesus’ bedroom in my heart: a Presence that embodies tenderness; an open door; an extra bed for me to flop down on. Chaos and lies stop at the door, because Jesus emptied Himself (Philippians 2:7, ESV) to purchase this holy space for me. And even Chaos and Evil know that this Love is the greatest power in the universe. They respect Love’s jurisdiction. (James 2:19)

I am holy (Colossians 3:12, NIRV). This holy center, like the smooth innards of a chocolate truffle, is as pleasurable as it is satisfying. Every moment, I am gifted this opportunity to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8a); to know God as provider (Philippians 4:19), identity (1 Corinthians 2:16), and refuge (Psalm 46:1).

God who is Ever-Present, Emmanuel: this is miracle of miracles. From heaven, to earth, to the hearts of humans, this Love moves always toward us, desiring intimacy, inviting little us into the holy enormity of oneness (John 17:21). And so I come to know that I am not on the fringes, not on the outside waiting to be let in, but already inside. Holy. Whole. Free from the clutches of confusion and shame. Alive.

God’s life has literally taken up residence inside me (1 John 4:15, 16). Big God living in little me (Romans 8:11). I am His home address. And He is my riches (Ephesians 3:8), my fullness (Ephesians 3:19), my friend (John 15:15), sibling (Romans 8:29, NIV), and parent (2 Corinthians 6:18)—relating to me in every way possible because I am His prize (James 1:18, NLT), His pride and joy (Hebrews 12:2).

God’s life has literally taken up residence inside you. Big God living in little you. You are His home address. And He is your riches, your fullness, your friend, sibling, and parent—relating to you in every way possible because you are His prize, His pride and joy.

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