Still, shifting my thinking on the Bible did not mean I was losing my faith in God. In fact, I had the growing sense that God was inviting me down this path, encouraging it even.

It is wholly incomprehensible to think that thousands of years ago God would have felt constrained to speak in a way that would be meaningful only to Westerners several thousand years later. To do so borders on modern, Western arrogance.

Who we are and when and where we exist affect how we imagine God.

a faith that remains open to the ever-moving Spirit and new possibilities, rather than chaining the Spirit to our past •?a faith that welcomes opportunities to think critically and reflectively on how we think about God, the world, and our place in it, rather than resting at all costs on maintaining familiar certainties

Reimagining the God of the Bible is what Christians do. More than that, they have to, if they wish to speak of the biblical God at all.

My commitment to follow through on my choice came with a cost. I tried very hard, for years, with complete transparency, to blend together old and new—the particular Christian tradition that birthed me and for which I had deep respect, and the bigger Bible I had come to know, was excited about, and could not deny without deceiving myself and others.

The broader we cast our net, the deeper we wind up owning our own thoughts.

When we grab hold of "correct" thinking for dear life, when we refuse to let go because we think that doing so means letting go of God, when we dig in our heels and stay firmly planted even when we sense that we need to let go and move on, at that point we are trusting our thoughts rather than God. We have turned away from God's invitation to trust in order to cling to an idol.

Zehr, Paul M. Biblical Criticism in the Life of the Church. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 1986.

Two great critiques of modernity by biblical scholars are Walter Brueggemann's Texts Under Negotiation and Walter Wink's The Bible in Human Transformation.

reality isn't what it used to be.

reimagining