The Bible means many things to many people, and its passages have been interpreted seven ways to Sunday; in turn those interpretations have spawned countless church denominations that all vary in their beliefs. For some, the Bible is the ultimate answer book for anything that life may present. But for others, there are questions that the Bible doesn’t seem to address, or if it does, it’s difficult to always understand the context of those thoughts and how they apply to our present day world. Pete Enns is a Bible scholar, a popular blogger and podcast host of The Bible for Normal People, and he’s here to tell us that the Bible is a “guide to a journey of wisdom in this life, as opposed to being an answer book for every question we might happen to have to ask of it.” His excellent new book called “How the Bible Actually Works” will give us comfort in that there is no “wrong way” to read the Bible and that the questions that stem from that reading aren’t obstacles, but catalysts to lead us into a deeper understanding of God. While the Bible is often “weaponized” and its text used to foster guilt and shame, Pete eschews the notion that we approach the Bible as a “rule book,” and wants us to recognize it as a beautiful, liberating book of wisdom that has guided the church forward generation after generation.
