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Sensual Orthodoxy
Debbie Blue approaches scripture like a farm wife handles a chicken, carefully but not delicately, thoroughly but not exactly cautiously. Debbie sees tangled questions about a God who gets a body. Though religion often abstracts, the story of Christ is the opposite. God becomes physical. God is made human in the womb of Mary and born through the birth canal.
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 15, 2003
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115 people want to read
About the author
Debbie Blue
10 books12 followersDebbie Blue is a founding pastor of House of Mercy (HOM) in St. Paul, Minnesota. HOM is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches in the USA and is committed to the diverse and rich theology and worship of the Christian church, worldwide and historical. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, Blue is the author of Sensual Orthodoxy (Cathedral Hill Press)and From Stone to Living Word (Brazos). She lives on a farm outside of the twin cities with her family.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 18, 2009
WONDERFUL.
I loved every word. This will probably affect my preaching, my writing, my faith, and my generally-being-human as much as anything I've read.
I loved every word. This will probably affect my preaching, my writing, my faith, and my generally-being-human as much as anything I've read.
April 6, 2022
“For us bringing someone to justice means they suffer the consequences of their crime or they are rewarded for their achievements. For God bringing someone to justice means they are brought back into the circle of God’s embrace.”
Wow. Debbie Blue really brings the Bible TO LIFE!! I love this. I need to read this again and again and again. She makes scripture feel human, tangible, real, and grounded, not unreachable and inaccessibly metaphysical. Not distant and stiff. She encourages us to ask questions and offers a fresh, unorthodox perspective that challenges traditional interpretations. She calls the Word of God “the word of release, of freedom” and “the word of a lover.” I felt this wholeheartedly reading her sermons.
“And the way it got communicated it seemed about as interesting as you might expect an instructor of discipline to be, not wild and passionate and engaged with life, all full of sex and blood and fighting, but neat and prudish and mean and dull. It was a text in the service of some anti-sensual agenda. How anyone managed to pull that presentation off is fairly amazing… Somehow, sometimes it seems that believing the Bible is the Word of God can end up making it less instead of more, stiff and dead and thin instead of crazy and full and alive… It may be something unfortunate that happens with reverence. Reverence and love seem different to me. Reverence is more like distance, Love is engagement.”
If I had to pick favorites, they would be: Laboring God, Half an Inch of Fiber Glass (on water baptism), Leave Her Alone (on Mary washing Jesus’ feet and anointing them in perfume), and Glory Doesn’t Shine, It Bleeds.
❤️From Laboring God:
“Born of God. It seems to me the profundity of the whole born again metaphor lies exactly here. We are being birthed by God. The wind is blowing, and not only blowing, but howling and huffing and puffing like a woman doing Lamaze… It seems like the popular imagination persists in thinking of God as, I don’t know what, some sort of noble stoic man in the sky. Some sort of cosmic measurer of righteousness. The impassive patriarch who demands specific sorts of actions before he’ll allow people any sort of intimacy, before he'll allow people to be close to him. But scripture really paints such an entirely different picture. Like God birthing us. That’s sort of intimate from the get go. This story about being born again has often been reduced to a requirement we must fulfill lest we be eternally damned. That's distorted. I think in this story, Jesus is trying to say- it's part of God's labor for us, with us, that God became human and lived and died on the cross, and through this process which involves God's suffering, humiliation and pain, humanity is born again. And he invites us to believe in this. In the labor process. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God brings life to the world. God births children. Maybe our image of God would be richer if we quit thinking: impassive stoic, old man on a throne, and imagined a pregnant woman, waddling and crying, yelling from time to time, with the pains of labor, sometimes angry, sometimes tortured- giving birth to her children. What's it like for the one being born? What's it like for us? What’s salvation like? Maybe like being born. Maybe not so much like being in the womb. In the womb, it’s warm and dark and soft and cushy. You are very well insulated. Very well protected from the outside world. Not that vulnerable. Your every need is immediately fulfilled. You don't even have to move your mouth to get food. Every desire is immediately gratified. There is no pain. Then, you're born. Things change… I think sometimes I imagine salvation is being removed from the possibility of pain and suffering. But that's so much not what it's like to be born.”
Wow. Debbie Blue really brings the Bible TO LIFE!! I love this. I need to read this again and again and again. She makes scripture feel human, tangible, real, and grounded, not unreachable and inaccessibly metaphysical. Not distant and stiff. She encourages us to ask questions and offers a fresh, unorthodox perspective that challenges traditional interpretations. She calls the Word of God “the word of release, of freedom” and “the word of a lover.” I felt this wholeheartedly reading her sermons.
“And the way it got communicated it seemed about as interesting as you might expect an instructor of discipline to be, not wild and passionate and engaged with life, all full of sex and blood and fighting, but neat and prudish and mean and dull. It was a text in the service of some anti-sensual agenda. How anyone managed to pull that presentation off is fairly amazing… Somehow, sometimes it seems that believing the Bible is the Word of God can end up making it less instead of more, stiff and dead and thin instead of crazy and full and alive… It may be something unfortunate that happens with reverence. Reverence and love seem different to me. Reverence is more like distance, Love is engagement.”
If I had to pick favorites, they would be: Laboring God, Half an Inch of Fiber Glass (on water baptism), Leave Her Alone (on Mary washing Jesus’ feet and anointing them in perfume), and Glory Doesn’t Shine, It Bleeds.
❤️From Laboring God:
“Born of God. It seems to me the profundity of the whole born again metaphor lies exactly here. We are being birthed by God. The wind is blowing, and not only blowing, but howling and huffing and puffing like a woman doing Lamaze… It seems like the popular imagination persists in thinking of God as, I don’t know what, some sort of noble stoic man in the sky. Some sort of cosmic measurer of righteousness. The impassive patriarch who demands specific sorts of actions before he’ll allow people any sort of intimacy, before he'll allow people to be close to him. But scripture really paints such an entirely different picture. Like God birthing us. That’s sort of intimate from the get go. This story about being born again has often been reduced to a requirement we must fulfill lest we be eternally damned. That's distorted. I think in this story, Jesus is trying to say- it's part of God's labor for us, with us, that God became human and lived and died on the cross, and through this process which involves God's suffering, humiliation and pain, humanity is born again. And he invites us to believe in this. In the labor process. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God brings life to the world. God births children. Maybe our image of God would be richer if we quit thinking: impassive stoic, old man on a throne, and imagined a pregnant woman, waddling and crying, yelling from time to time, with the pains of labor, sometimes angry, sometimes tortured- giving birth to her children. What's it like for the one being born? What's it like for us? What’s salvation like? Maybe like being born. Maybe not so much like being in the womb. In the womb, it’s warm and dark and soft and cushy. You are very well insulated. Very well protected from the outside world. Not that vulnerable. Your every need is immediately fulfilled. You don't even have to move your mouth to get food. Every desire is immediately gratified. There is no pain. Then, you're born. Things change… I think sometimes I imagine salvation is being removed from the possibility of pain and suffering. But that's so much not what it's like to be born.”
May 11, 2020
What wonderfully written illustrations of different perspectives of the same Biblical stories we have read for years. It brings light to the possibility of questioning our foundations of Christianity and the stories we have been told. It is refreshing to see that we can reframe our thinking when it comes to religion. We can ask questions and in turn question the meaning.
November 13, 2015
Debbie Blue is a beautiful writer, preacher, and person. She believes in a sensual orthodoxy and in a Jesus who becomes flesh - real, bloody, sweating, human flesh. God's glory doesn't shine in heaven, removed, distant, pristine, untouchable; God's glory bleeds and is exemplified in the sufferings and lowliness of the cross. The love of God as revealed in the cross of Jesus, for Debbie, radically changes everything. God's love and mercy, the incalculable grace revealed in the incarnation and cross of Jesus, is scandalous to us - for it challenges our self-security, our radical independence, our own self-confidence and pride. We sinfully calcify this beautiful gospel - a gospel that proclaims a God who gets dirty, naked, and weak - into a stable, dry, rationalistic, predictable, pious, safe story that confirms, rather than subverts, our fear, hatred of others, and self-righteousness. But God's unconditional love, the love of Jesus, undoes all of this. Debbie interprets many select passages in the Gospels in disorienting ways - ways that are intended to confront us with the living God who's love is far from abstract and far from dry.
I find many religious people using doctrines like God's holiness, wrath, and justice to justify their own hatred and retribution toward others. We all have an uncanny ability to participate in "us/them" "in/out" paradigms in which anyone that isn't like us is "damned," "hated by God," "evil," etc. NO! Debbie would say. God loves us all, and God's heart toward each and every one of us - whether we're a "Christian" or a "non-Christian," it doesn't matter. God's love scandalizes us because we don't want to believe God loves our enemies. We, in our sinfulness and hatred, hate. But God loves. And as Paul said, absolutely nothing can separate us from God's love. God is indeed glorious. But God's glory doesn't shine; God's glory bleeds.
I find many religious people using doctrines like God's holiness, wrath, and justice to justify their own hatred and retribution toward others. We all have an uncanny ability to participate in "us/them" "in/out" paradigms in which anyone that isn't like us is "damned," "hated by God," "evil," etc. NO! Debbie would say. God loves us all, and God's heart toward each and every one of us - whether we're a "Christian" or a "non-Christian," it doesn't matter. God's love scandalizes us because we don't want to believe God loves our enemies. We, in our sinfulness and hatred, hate. But God loves. And as Paul said, absolutely nothing can separate us from God's love. God is indeed glorious. But God's glory doesn't shine; God's glory bleeds.
November 9, 2014
"Maybe Jesus sleeping in the storm gives us a glimpse of what faith looks like. Maybe sometimes it looks more like sleeping than vigilance: an incredibly peaceful certainty that God will provide your every need, a way of being so completely unthreatened, totally secure, complete faith in God as creator and sustainer of all, utter confidence that God will make things right. Maybe faith could mean a relaxation so profound that one could sleep through the storm." --Sleeping God
I also really like the "Food for Worms" chapter, but this whole book is dense with insight and fresh takes on the gospels. She refines your perspective on a lot of Jesus' life and teachings for the better. She makes the Good News even better news by emphasizing the grit and depth of God's grace, love and unmerited favor to every person. And all with a good dose of humor.
This book pairs well with topless sunbathing on a private beach and skinny dipping at night in a deep, dark lake.
I also really like the "Food for Worms" chapter, but this whole book is dense with insight and fresh takes on the gospels. She refines your perspective on a lot of Jesus' life and teachings for the better. She makes the Good News even better news by emphasizing the grit and depth of God's grace, love and unmerited favor to every person. And all with a good dose of humor.
This book pairs well with topless sunbathing on a private beach and skinny dipping at night in a deep, dark lake.
September 9, 2008
This collection of sermons was recommended to me by a professor. Debbie Blue has a great outlook on life and spirituality, not to mention a decent sense of humor. A great devotional read, great also just for fun.
June 15, 2009
By far one of my most favorite authors!!! I love these sermons and the way she interacts with the stories of scripture into her own life today. Talk about a great balance of orthodoxy and orthopraxy (big creative words for the balance of the word and living it out)
September 29, 2015
Debbie Blue does a great job of communicating mysterious truths of Scripture with practicality, in beautiful word pictures, in a memorable way. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of sermons. And I learned a few new words along the way.
October 1, 2015
As near and as far as sermons go, Debbie Blues' Sensual Orthodoxy is a thought-bubble-piercing book collection, which you must read aloud, put down, and pick up again at your own peril. Literature that represents the strangeness and the grittiness of an incarnate spirituality and uncanny theology.
March 9, 2009
I'm not overly fond of reading sermon collections, but I enjoyed this quite a bit.
July 1, 2012
Vivid imagery
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews