I plopped down in my easy chair in the living room. Ten minutes earlier I had rolled out of bed and made a cup of coffee. I stretched. Yawned. Put my bare feet up on the footstool.
I picked up the book I had been reading by Pete Enns. His books are not exactly on the approved reading list of my denomination. I didn’t care. I wanted a fresh perspective on what I had been taught about the Bible for more than six decades.
I sipped my coffee and turned to where I had stopped reading the day before.
And then something shifted.
Five years later, I realize that what happened that morning didn’t tear my faith apart. It opened it up.
In his book, Bible scholar Pete Enns discusses the story of the Israelites slaughtering the Canaanites. The story says God told them to kill every Canaanite—including the children and babies.
That’s a real problem if you want to believe God is love.
What do you do with a God who orders the murder of toddlers and babies?
It was a question I had tried to resolve during nearly 40 years of ministry. The story of God sending the flood and killing millions troubled me. The story of God sending the Death Angel to kill the oldest male child in every Egyptian house sent shivers down my back. And there are more stories in the Bible that made me wonder if God really was a God of love.
My eyes returned to the book in my hand.
Then I read this:
“These ancient writers had an adequate understanding of God for them in their time, but not for all time.”
I stopped.
Enns had just offered me another possibility concerning the Canaanites.
Maybe God didn’t command the Israelites to slaughter the Canaanites.
Perhaps the Israelites believed God had commanded it.
I stared at the page.
Maybe the Bible isn’t always true.
I held my breath. Closed my eyes. Waited.
No lightning bolt from heaven.
The possibility was unsettling: What if some biblical writers were describing their understanding of God from within their own time and culture? What if their understanding wasn’t necessarily the final word about God?
That question opened a door.
It gave me the freedom to think openly about some of the bloody stories of the Bible. Eventually, I began thinking differently about other passages too—including the verses used to condemn members of the gay community.
And that thinking put me on a collision course with the denomination I had given my life to.
What happened next—and what I eventually discovered about the God behind the Bible—is at the heart of “A God Awful God: The God I Feared Wasn’t the God I Found.”
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