I had the great experience of leading a group of 7 people who expressed interest in discussing Peter Enns' book The Bible Tells Me So: How Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable To Read It. Although the book title has the effect of offending both people outside the faith and inside, the basic premise of the book is that we need to take the Bible seriously - but not literally.

As we worked through the book over the course of 2 months, we discussed Enns' point that the actual words of the Bible force careful readers to abandon certain ideas about the Bible that sound good, but don't actually work. Some of the ideas that don't survive a careful reading:

• The Bible is without error in all things it discusses.

• The Bible is without contradictions.

• The Bible is God's rulebook, cookbook, lawbook, instruction manual for Godly living.

• Good Christians must strive to harmonize all places where problems with the above 3 points show themselves, so they can continue to believe and evangelize others.

One especially memorable discussion happened over Chapter 4 of the book, where Enns takes the reader through a careful look at the laws of Israel. He points out that even in the parts of the Bible that one would THINK would work like a rulebook (the lists of laws), there are multiple points of contradiction about what is allowed/disallowed, or how exactly the Israelites were instructed to carry out sacrificial practices.

In the same chapter he confronts the reader with two back to back verses that blatantly contradict each other.

• Proverbs 26:4 Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself.

• Proverbs 26:5 Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes.

What is the right answer? What is the "Biblical" answer to how to answer a fool? The answer, it seems, depends on the situation. And perhaps there is no right answer, because you'll be damned no matter what you do in that situation. This is a simple example that shows how the Bible invites the reader into a conversation, a wrestling match, an argument, about what it means to be a wise person, a Godly person. It demonstrates how understanding living according to the Bible must involve reason, our own experience, and relying upon God to inform us as we move through our lives.

Toward the end of the chapter, Enns writes:

The editors of the Bible were obviously quite happy to include these (examples) just as they are and leave them be. They didn't smooth things over, and they didn't seem to fret over how confused this would make God sound to people like us. The Bible they were happy to produce is complicated, challenging, and messy--and if you believe God had some say in producing the Bible, you have to conclude that God was apparently quite happy to let them do it.

And this is good news. because it means I and God-followers everywhere can relax. We don't need to defend the Bible. We don't need to defend God. We can read the Bible - just the way it is, and we can see the development of ideas about humanity and about God from the earliest writings to the later ones, and celebrate the movement toward less tribalism and exclusivity to God's grand designs to make all things new and receive worship from all peoples. We can be honest about the problems we discover along the way, the places our heads and hearts hurt when we read, and we can ask God to keep pulling us forward in the same direction we see happening over the centuries the Bible was written. God is still writing a new song. God is still making all things new. God is bigger, more loving, more awesome, more powerful than any of us can imagine, and God invites us to live in and for God and God's purposes today.