We don't understand how powerful a paradigm is that controls the way that we then see the universe,

which includes our understanding of God.

The early church chose four gospels that did not agree in every detail because they thought we can handle it.

I was taught to read the Bible like a Constitution.

All you have to do really is read the Bible.

The Bible is not a Constitution. It's a conversation.

To be blessed for asking questions and not suspected for asking questions.

I was solidly in adult before I gave myself permission to become a critical thinker.

That was my background, but at the same time I'm struggling deeply with questions about who God is

and, you know, our view of the Bible.

About faith, about the Bible, about cultural understandings of all of those things.

To be acquainted with a kind of, you know, a way of practicing Christianity that includes sacred dialogue and faithful argument.

And yes, but and yes, but.

If we take the Bible as a conversation over many, many centuries, suddenly the Bible becomes not a Constitution that gives certainty,

but an incredible library that gives us challenge to think and gives us examples of how thinking changes over time.

Including thinking about God.

It's kind of the appeal of permission to wonder.

Permission to be curious, permission to doubt, permission to be skeptical.

The people most guilty of making the Bible say whatever they wanted to say are fundamentalists.

So there were a hundred breadcrumbs dropped into my soul before I was ready to pick one up and take a bite.

The fertility of the people and of the land was of utmost importance.

And if you're trying to just survive, then that's what you're going to pray for.

...