Aaron Schultz

“I’ve watched congregations devote years and years to heated arguments about whether a female missionary should be allowed to share about her ministry on a Sunday morning, whether students older than ten should have female Sunday school teachers, whether girls should be encouraged to attend seminary, whether women should be permitted to collect the offering or write the church newsletter or make an announcement . . . all while thirty thousand children die every day from preventable disease. If that’s not an adventure in missing the point, I don’t know what is.”
― Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood

“It’s true, however, that some people like things simple. But inquisitive others seek to traverse the wonders of the mind and soul, as well as all creation, for glimmers of the Divine.”
― Keith Giles, Before You Lose Your Mind: Deconstructing Bad Theology in the Church

“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. When we open the Bible and read it, we are eavesdropping on an ancient spiritual journey. That journey was recorded over a thousand-year span of time, by different writers, with different personalities, at different times, under different circumstances, and for different reasons. In the Bible, we read of encounters with God by ancient peoples, in their times and places, asking their questions, and expressed in language and ideas familiar to them. Those encounters with God were, I believe, genuine, authentic, and real. But they were also ancient—and that explains why the Bible behaves the way it does. This kind of Bible—the Bible we have—just doesn’t work well as a point-by-point exhaustive and timelessly binding list of instructions about God and the life of faith.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“Asking questions is part of what it means to have faith. The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty. So, the fact that you’re questioning what you’ve been told isn’t evidence of your lack of faith, it’s evidence that you take your faith seriously enough to examine it and to follow the truth wherever it leads you.”
― Keith Giles, Before You Lose Your Mind: Deconstructing Bad Theology in the Church