Alice

“The writer of the Bible were doing something far more significant than trying to write lessons and books and tell stories without errors. To describe the Bible as inerrant, then, is to use a word that actually minimises the importance of what these writers were up to”
― Rob Bell, What Is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything

“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

“It's always a bad move to invent a Jesus who agrees with us rather than challenge us”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“This is why so many people are so confused when it comes to the Bible. They were taught by their pastor or parents or authority figures to submit to the authority of the bible, but that's impossible to do without submitting first to whoever is deciding what the Bible is even saying. And that requires trust. Because authority is a relational reality. Someone told you, This is how it is. The problem, of course, is that the folks who talk the most about the authority of the Bible also seem to talk the most about things like objective and absolute truth, truth that exists independent of relational realities.”
― Rob Bell, What Is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything