As I tried to figure out what my next job would be in the summer of 2015, a very beautiful process was happening inside me. Spurred on by the ideas from The Human Faces of God, and inspired by the weekly podcasts of Rob Bell, I discovered the writings of Pete Enns. Enns is a professor of biblical studies at Eastern University in Pennsylvania. I devoured his books, The Bible Tells Me So and The Sin of Certainty. A couple years later I read the further development of his ideas in How The Bible Actually Works.

With a sarcastic sense of humor and a deep understanding of the original languages and cultures of the Old and New Testament writers, Enns led me forward in my evolving views about the Bible. In just a couple bullet points here’s what I learned from his writing and his podcast “The Bible For Normal People”.  

• The Bible does not have a unified message. Rather, its authors argue over such foundational questions as “Why does evil happen?”, “Is God loving or vengeful?”, and “Does God love all people or just the Israelites?” This demonstrates an evolving understanding of God through the centuries that has happened.

• The Old Testament contains many stories where God is said to act in ways or command actions that are morally repugnant to us in the modern world. When this happens, we can see the authors as representatives of their time and tribal culture, with incomplete knowledge of the true nature of God.

• The Bible is not an answer book for all our modern issues, since situations faced by people thousands of years ago in tribal cultures cannot be made to fit our modern world. Rather the Bible is a collection of writings which encourages people to keep seeking God’s wisdom in our lives today. 

All of these ideas resonated with me. My devotional reading and scholarly study of the Bible over the years kept illuminating problems with a “the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it” approach to this collection of literature. The Bible, I was coming to see, represented the best understandings of God by people throughout the ancient near east. These faithful people were limited to the scientific, cultural, judicial, religious frameworks of their time and place. And so their writings about God and God’s actions represented their own time and place rather than being “once for all time” writings about religious and moral questions. 

Because of this changing understanding I began to breathe more freely when I saw God described as saying and doing things in the pages of the Bible that were not consistent with the Bible’s own description of God as loving and merciful and good. I could see the authors were simply writing from their limited perspective of their time and culture. 

No longer constrained by the limits of a doctrinal statement of a church that was paying my salary, I was able to let God out of the box of certainty where I had tried to keep God for so long.

The words of the song “Cannot Keep You” by Gungor express the sense of personal expansion in my understanding of God. 

They tried to keep you in a tent
They could not keep you in a temple
Or any of their idols, to see and understand
We cannot keep you in a church
We cannot keep you in a Bible
Or it's just another idol to box you in
They could not keep you in their walls
We cannot keep you in ours either
For you are so much greater

Who is like the Lord?
The maker of the heavens
Who dwells with the poor
He lifts them from the ashes
And He seats them among princess
Who is like the Lord?

We've tried to keep you in our tents
We've tried to keep you in our temples
We've worshiped all our idols
We want all that to end
So we will find you in the streets
And we will find you in the prisons
And even in our Bibles and churches

Who is like the Lord?
The maker of the heavens
Who dwells with the poor
He lifts them from the ashes
And He seats them among princess
Who is like the Lord?

I was beginning to see God as so much bigger, more loving, more good, more gracious, more inclusive than I had ever been able to understand. I found myself growing in my own sense of love for people, especially people who were different than me in their lifestyle and beliefs. I found myself growing in wonder at the complexity and beauty of all creation, and my very small place in it. In short, as I let God out of the box I had created for God, I felt free to love others more, and it was a very good thing.