Peter Enns > Quotes

“Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible something it’s not meant to be, isn’t a pious act of faith, even if it looks that way on the surface. It’s actually thinly masked fear of losing control and certainty, a mirror of an inner disquiet, a warning signal that deep down we do not really trust God at all.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“In the spiritual life, the opposite of fear is not courage, but trust. Branch out. Not only do our beliefs define us, but so does the community of like-minded people who share those beliefs. Christian traditions, denominations, and congregations provide a group identity. We are social animals, so we should not judge our spiritual groups, or those of others, as necessarily a problem. Only when our communities become the defining element of our spiritual lives, packs that protect those boundaries at all costs, do problems begin. That leads to isolation, “us versus them” thinking, and the illusion that “we” are basically right about the Bible and God and “they” aren’t—the kind of wall-building that Jesus and Paul criticized. So much can be learned from”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“When we open the Bible and read it, we are eavesdropping on an ancient spiritual journey.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“Church is too often the most risky place to be spiritually honest.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Wisdom isn’t about finding a quick answer key to life—like turning to the index, finding your problem, and turning to the right page so it all works out. Wisdom is about learning how to work through the unpredictable, uncontrollable messiness of life so you can figure things out on your own in real time. Both”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“There is no higher “law” to be obeyed than the law of love. That, at the end of the day, is what it means to follow Jesus.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“Reading the Bible responsibly and respectfully today means learning what it meant for ancient Israelites to talk about God the way they did, and not pushing alien expectations onto texts written long ago and far away.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“When we reach the point where things simply make no sense, when our thinking about God and life no longer line up, when any sense of certainty is gone, and when we can find no reason to trust God but we still do, well that is what trust looks like at its brightest – when all else is dark.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“The Bible looks the way it does because “God lets his children tell the story,” so to speak. Children see the world from their limited gaze. A second grader might give a class presentation on what mom does all day. She will talk about her mom from her point of view, rooted in love and devotion. She’ll filter—unconsciously and in an age-appropriate manner—her mother’s day through how she perceives her family and her role in the family. She’ll get some things more or less correct, but she will also misunderstand other things, and get still other things plain wrong.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“Many Christians have been taught that the Bible is Truth downloaded from heaven, God’s rulebook, a heavenly instructional manual—follow the directions and out pops a true believer; deviate from the script and God will come crashing down on you with full force. If anyone challenges this view, the faithful are taught to “defend the Bible” against these anti-God attacks. Problem solved. That is, until you actually read the Bible. Then you see that this rulebook view of the Bible is like a knockoff Chanel handbag—fine as long as it’s kept at a distance, away from curious and probing eyes.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“As Luke’s story unfolds, Jesus continues to undermine expectations involving political power and Jewish identity. In his first public appearance, in a synagogue service, he claims to be the messiah, which creates quite a buzz of support—until he tells them that he will bless Gentiles and be rejected by his own kinsmen. The crowd responds by trying to throw Jesus off a cliff. Israel’s messiah isn’t supposed to say things like this.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“Correct thinking provides a sense of certainty. Without it, we fear that faith is on life support at best, dead and buried at worst. And who wants a dead or dying faith? So this fear of losing a handle on certainty leads to a preoccupation with correct thinking, making sure familiar beliefs are defended and supported at all costs. How strongly do we hold on to the old ways of thinking? Just recall those history courses where we read about Christians killing other Christians over all sorts of disagreements about doctrines few can even articulate today. Or perhaps just think of a skirmish you’ve had at church over a sermon, Sunday-school lesson, or which candidate to vote into public office. Preoccupation with correct thinking. That’s the deeper problem. It reduces the life of faith to sentry duty, a 24/7 task of pacing the ramparts and scanning the horizon to fend off incorrect thinking, in ourselves and others, too engrossed to come inside the halls and enjoy the banquet. A faith like that is stressful and tedious to maintain. Moving toward different ways of thinking, even just trying it on for a while to see how it fits, is perceived as a compromise to faith, or as giving up on faith altogether. But nothing could be further from the truth. Aligning faith in God and certainty about what we believe and needing to be right in order to maintain a healthy faith—these do not make for a healthy faith in God. In a nutshell, that is the problem. And that is what I mean by the “sin of certainty.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Jesus was God’s climax to Israel’s story, but he was not bound to that story. He pushed at its boundaries, transformed it, and at times left parts of it behind.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“For Christians, then, the question is not “Who gets the Bible right?” The question is and has always been, “Who gets Jesus right?” The Gospel writers and Paul couldn’t have made that any clearer.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“That’s Jesus for you. Making people across time upset with him.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“Doubt is God’s instrument, will arrive in God’s time, and will come from unexpected places—places out of your control. And when it does, resist the fight-or-flight impulse. Pass through it—patiently, honestly, and courageously for however long it takes. True transformation takes time.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“And for Christians, the gospel has always been the lens through which Israel’s stories are read—which means, for Christians, Jesus, not the Bible, has the final word. The story of God’s people has moved on, and so must we.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“For any one group today to think it has the best grasp on the creator of the universe is a form of insanity. Run away—far and quickly—when you see this.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“When the dust clears and in the quiet of your own heart, what kind of God do you believe in, really? And why?”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“The Bible is not a Christian owner’s manual but a story—a diverse story of God and how his people have connected with him over the centuries, in changing circumstances and situations.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“Ours is a historical faith, and to uproot the Bible from its historical contexts is self-contradictory.”
― Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament

“Trust your experiences, your God moments. They don’t work as intellectual arguments for God, but that’s exactly the point: intellectual arguments aren’t enough, and wanting them to be so sooner or later leads to disappointment. God speaks to us through our whole humanity, not just through part of it. God moments can’t be proven to anyone else, but that doesn’t make them second best. They are proof—of another kind.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“I’ve learned to accept this paradox: a holy book that more often than not doesn’t act very much like you’d expect it, but more like a book written two thousand to three thousand years ago would act. I expect the Bible to reflect fully the ancient settings in which it was written, and therefore not act as a script that can simply be dropped into our lives without a lot of thought and wisdom. The Bible must be thought through, pondered, tried out, assessed, and (if need be) argued with—all of which is an expression of faith, not evidence to the contrary.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Whatever we do, let’s not imagine that the Israelites were ancient versions of ourselves, maybe less well groomed, who were “nice,” read their Bibles daily, the kind you could invite to church and want to marry your daughter, who would vote Republican or drive a hybrid. We respect these biblical stories most when we try to understand what the writers did and why, not when we place false expectations on them, like seeing them as a timeless script or a permanent fixture for how to think about God.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“the passionate defense of the Bible as a “history book” among the more conservative wings of Christianity, despite intentions, isn’t really an act of submission to God; it is making God submit to us. In its most extreme forms, making God look like us is what the Bible calls idolatry.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“The Bible isn’t a cookbook—deviate from the recipe and the soufflé falls flat. It’s not an owner’s manual—with detailed and complicated step-by-step instructions for using your brand-new all-in-one photocopier/FAX machine/scanner/microwave/DVR/home security system. It’s not a legal contract—make sure you read the fine print and follow every word or get ready to be cast into the dungeon. It’s not a manual of assembly—leave out a few bolts and the entire jungle gym collapses on your three-year-old.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“Cramming the stories of Israel into a modern mold of history writing not only makes the Bible look like utter nonsense; it also obscures what the Bible models for us about our own spiritual journey. On that journey, what matters most is not simply where we’ve been—the triumphs or the tragedies—but where we are with God now in the moment. All great spiritual leaders will tell us that living in the moment is key to vibrant communion with God. The now is where God’s presence is found, where neither past memories nor the future with its idle speculations dominates.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“To love as God loves means loving not just others like us, but those who are not.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“What makes the Bible God’s Word isn’t its uncanny historical accuracy, as some insist, but the sacred experiences these stories point to, beyond the words themselves. Watching these ancient pilgrims work through their faith, even wrestling with how they did that, models for us our own journeys of seeking to know God better and commune with him more deeply.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“The life of Christian faith is more than agreeing with a set of beliefs about Christ, morality, or how to read the Bible. It means being so intimately connected to Christ that his crucifixion is ours, his death is our death, and his life is our life—which is hardly something we can grasp with our minds. It has to be experienced. It is an experience.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs