2012 Books

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Usually at the end of the year I post a list of the books I read that year. I’m a tad late this year, but this is mostly for my own benefit anyway. But it’s always fun to post the list and see if others have read the same books or have suggestions that this list might spark.

As for favorites, I very much enjoyed diving into books on Theopoetics and Social Trinitarianism. Both were topics I needed to research for writing projects and the ideas have captured my imagination. Those approaches to theology (which overlap quite a bit) make sense to me and will be frameworks I will be returning to. As for the fiction I read my favorite this year was Deborah Harkness’ A Discovery of Witches. It is one of those books that so thoroughly draws you into its narrative that it takes a moment to reorient yourself to reality once you look up from its pages. Maybe it’s because her career started as an academic or because it is her first novel (and firsts are always the most well written, but obvious reasons), but it was one of the most well-written works of popular fiction I have read in a long time. I am currently devouring its sequel and eagerly await the announcement of the third book’s publication date. For similar (but opposite) reasons, I wouldn’t recommend the Hendees’ Noble Dead series. The first two books were okay for that genre (fantasy/vampire hunter), but obviously once they got the contract for the multiple book series the writing quality plummeted. I know that writers once they are expected to pump out that book a year don’t have the time to construct as engaging of a novel as they did to first catch an agents’s/publisher’s eye, but sometimes it is just far too obviously bad.

But enough complaining, here’s the list. I would love to hear your thoughts and recommendations!

Non-fiction

Fiction

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Advent 4 – Invited from the Darkness

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“O Come All Ye Faithful
Joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him,
Born the King of Angels;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.”

I heard this carol play on the radio recently and found myself cringing at the lyrics. Triumphalist religion has ravaged the world and the image of God in the world. For the faithful to claim to be triumphant is heard as the chains of oppression by many. Christ the Lord has very little to do with the triumphal attitude of the church throughout history. This is not a hymn I could sing honestly anymore.

Then I wondered, what if instead of assuming that “joyful and triumphant” are modifiers of faithful, I saw them as three distinct references. The faithful, the joyful, and the triumphant are all invited to come behold and adore the one born in Bethlehem. While at times the faithful might be joyful or triumphant, it does not necessarily follow that they will always be such things. Often to be faithful one must embrace the darkness and dwell in that dark night of the soul. While there might be a form of contentment there, it is rarely what one would describe as joyful. And those that faithfully follow the way of Christ where the last are put first and the first last and the humble uplifted and the mighty brought down from their thrones, are not the ones reveling in triumph. There are the faithful, the joyful, and the triumphant – but they are not always one in the same.

Even so, they are all invited to come adore Christ the Lord. All are welcome – those already full of joy, those who believe they triumph over others, and those who remain faithful despite (or because of) the darkness that surrounds them.

This is a helpful reminder as I wrap up my Advent reflections on embracing the darkness. So often in our churches, especially this time of year, it is only the joyful and the triumphant who seem to be invited. The image that is projected is that one must be joyful (it’s the most wonderful time of the year) and participate in triumphalist religion (Jesus is the reason for the season or else) in order to belong as part of the communal body that claims to be adoring the Christ.

But the darkness abounds. Sometimes it can be a peaceful and needful return to listening to God, at other times it is the weight of all the horrors of the world. Many of the faithful find themselves in this darkness without joy or (thankfully) delusions of triumphalism. They too are invited to come and adore, but all too often they are expected to discard the darkness before they are allowed into the institutions that lay claim to the right to direct that adoration.

But there are days when many of us cannot be joyful, and many of us fear any hint of triumphalism. But we are still faithful and come and adore in the midst of the darkness. It can just be difficult to hear that invitation from within the church anymore.

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Advent 3 – Waiting in the Darkness

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“If it wasn’t for the night
So cold this time of year
The stars would never shine so bright
So beautiful and clear”
– David Wilcox “If it Wasn’t for the Night”

The night isn’t just the in between time. It isn’t just the period of space where one is simply waiting for the day to return. We need the night, that time of darkness where it seems like all hope is lost to learn how to see the beauty that is already there. The stars can only be seen at night and we can miss that if we fear the darkness.

I want to affirm those treasures in times of darkness. That there are truths to be revealed, hopes to be discovered, and peace to be found even when we are not surrounded by the comforting presence of the light.

And then Connecticut happens.

Even as I struggle to find peace in the darkness, I can’t even pretend to find hope in that. I know some can conjure up platitudes of “God has a plan” or “All things work for the good” but even the most shallow and saccharine of Christians know such to be lies we tell ourselves so that we don’t actually have to face the horrors of the darkness.

What are we waiting for, eagerly expecting in light of this?

I had a teacher once who had a countdown calendar to the end of the school year. Each day she would cross off a box on the calendar until she reached much anticipated the end of the school year. On that last day, the day the school year ended, her teenage daughter was killed in a car crash. All the teacher could think was that she had been counting down, eagerly anticipating the day of her daughter’s death.

Are we prepared to wait in the darkness? For the darkness?

If it wasn’t for the night – what? Yes, the stars shine bright, but they are still cold, distant, and unfathomable. Are we prepared to wait in a place we don’t understand, for something we will not comprehend, and let the pain of that place shape us without us trying to shape it into a manageable fragment of itself?

Darkness is real. We need it, but we most certainly can’t deny it. It is there inviting us to wrestle with what it holds in its depths. It is there waiting to break our hip as we demand it answer our questions. We are fools to think we can understand it but even greater fools to ignore it. It is in this darkness that we find God – sometimes offering possibility and beauty, but more often than not simply residing there in solidarity with those suffering in its midst.

I find no hope in events like this school shooting. I find no hope in thinking that it is part of God’s plan or that God can acquire glory from it. Those lies are ultimately hopeless. All I can do is know that God is in that darkness suffering there too. I cannot anticipate a coming Advent, but I can wait in the darkness – sit in communion in the place God already dwells. It is more a waiting with God in the darkness that a waiting for God to skip over the darkness that is the reality of so many of our lives.

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Advent 2 – Embracing the Darkness

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Advent used to be a period of repentance and fasting like Lent. With the Church’s decision to celebrate the Mass of the birth of Christ at the same time as the established observance of the solstice, Advent therefore came to correspond with the days of increasing darkness (since Christianity was still a Northern hemisphere religion at the time). In pre-modern times, people found more meaning in the turning of the seasons. While we might be aware that the days are growing shorter in our contemporary world, it is not something that concerns us too greatly given that we have wired houses and glowing screens to chase away the darkness that encroaches.

But when the lengthening of the nights brought the darkness ever closer, it had to be faced for what it was. Without the distractions of the light which provide the space to keep hands and minds busy with work and play, one has to be alone with the parts of life many of us would often rather avoid. Without light to distract us, there is nothing to silence the reminders of grief or the inevitability of death. The questions that haunt us, the memories we fear, and the reminders of the pain surrounding us come creeping in with the darkness.

And for much of human history, this period of opportunity to face the darkness was embraced.

Rituals were devised to help one face the darkness and to even grapple with the darkness within oneself. The period of Advent, mirroring the cultural habits of the season, similarly became a period of repentance and fasting as Christians found the time in the longer periods of darkness to look inward and face the questions that often get brushed aside in the everyday busyness of life. It was a time of vulnerability, a time when it was okay to mourn, to admit to doubts, and to do the hard work of recognizing the parts of oneself that needed to be healed or changed.

To protect themselves in their period of vulnerability and introspection, people in European cultures would hang evergreen branches around the openings of their homes. These symbols of hope that life survives the darkness were thought to keep evil spirits from entering and taking advantage of the vulnerable rituals of the darkness. But the protections were not against the darkness as people knew that the darkness was a natural part of the rhythm of life. The protections were only against that which would take advantage of people as they tried to open themselves up to wrestling with the scary parts of life that must be faced in order for one to grow.

Embracing the approaching darkness was not merely about awaiting the return of the light. The light was celebrated once it returned, but the period of darkness was not just survived but embraced as a necessary part of what shaped the development of the holistic person.

Too often in Advent we rush towards the light. We make it all about preparing for the event of the Christ child without taking the time to be in the darkness. We look forward to a light to distract us without wrestling with the meaning of the darkness. Perhaps we should return to the habit of embracing the darkness instead.

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Advent 1 – Sitting in the Darkness

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I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing façade are all being rolled away—
– T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”

We’ve grown comfortable with the façade. The pretty backdrop of our lives, the rote stories that prop up our faith, the habits that keep us so distracted that we forget that there is anything more than the construct of life we skim across.

We rush toward Christmas, letting the familiarity of the stories lull us into a contentment with our knowledge of the event. We speak of the return of the light or of the light breaking into the darkness, but often those words are just platitudes we use to pretend that there is some meaning to our experience – that the busyness and the trappings of the season are for a purpose, even if we can’t fully articulate what it is. Even if all we can do is insist on restating the story as we know it to be.

Even the period of anticipation and expectation has become a front for casting judgment on those who display a different façade. Advent often is not about experiencing God in the waiting, but ensuring that the waiting is done properly. If anyone dares mention a Christmas carol, put up a Christmas tree, or (God forbid) use the wrong color candle in an Advent wreath they are resoundingly condemned for not observing the rituals properly.

We are so comfortable with our façades that we miss that there is a deeper story to tell, a drama yet to unfold, a mystery to encounter beyond the constructs we have grown accustomed to. If we will only settle down, let the lights go out, and wait for the imposing façade to be rolled away then perhaps there will be space for the drama to commence.

But turning off the lights is scary. The light distracts us, allows us to only see the façades that we find safe and comforting. Even if they are hollow, they are known. Darkness is unsettling; we don’t know what it might hold, what might by moving within its unseen corners. We would rather embrace the known even if that means that we never encounter where God might be moving than risk having the worlds we have built for ourselves challenged.

Yet, when the darkness surrounds us so does possibility. The potential for God to move and entice us toward encountering mystery enters in with that expectant darkness. The Spirit can hover and in its rumble of wings stir up new ways of being in this world – new stories to tell and depths to explore.

But that is only when we allow the lights to be extinguished and the darkness blanket our imaginations. When we stop simply reiterating the expectations of the season, the words we know by rote, the images we let glaze over our eyes and sit in that darkness, then we might find some meaning in the waiting.

We must sit in that darkness so that we can anticipate not just a preconceived or tired idea of Advent, but the actual advent of God appearing mysteriously and wonderfully in our midst.

To wait implies that no matter how much it might frighten us, we actually expect God to show up.

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Life, Advent, Writing

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It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here. Life got complicated. More complicated than usual. And blogging seemed to be the easiest thing to step away from for a season. It was hard to write, but I’m discovering that it’s even harder to not be in the practice of writing. I need writing to think, to work through ideas, to be alive. But I’ve slipped out of the habit. I’ve stopped working at getting the words out of the murkiness of my head onto (figurative) paper.

I need that. I need to write again.

And I want to use the season of Advent to do that. For the past six years, my Advent meditations have been my form of spiritual reflection during this time of year. Working through ideas, dwelling on particular themes and creating a reflection out of that is my language of worship. I need to do that again. I’m saying that here, so it is out there, so I have to do it.

But it will be different this year. In the past I have been drawn to the idea that Advent is a period of waiting for the light. And that still is an idea that resonates strongly with me. But leading up to this season this year, I’ve been repeatedly encountering the idea of finding the beauty in the darkness – of living faithfully in that darkness. It’s a theme that has come at me from so many different arenas recently that I feel like I have no choice but to reflect on that this Advent. What does it mean to wait in the darkness?

So from that I plan on writing reflections this year on the Sundays of Advent exploring the darkness. It scares me, but of course that means I need to face it and wrestle with it.

As part of that, I have also collated and revised the past five years of my Advent reflections in a Kindle eBook. As I focused on anticipating the light during those years, the book is aptly called Celebrating the Light: Reflections for the Sundays of Advent. It is intended to be used for personal or family worship, or to be read in corporate worship gatherings. Permission is given for the reflections to be used in any way that benefits others as long as attribution is given. So if you, your friends or family, or your church is looking for a resource this Advent season, please check out Celebrating the Light.

But as we enter into Advent this year, I will be thinking about darkness and invite you to join me there.

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Terrified of Mercy

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I’ve always been fond of those illusion pictures (like the old woman or young lady image). There is always an image that one sees first and it takes time and training to see the other perspective – but once one does it is impossible to not see both. That shift in part describes my experience with Christian art after having encountered Rita Brock’s work.

I’ve heard Rita speak and have read some of Saving Paradise. In her work, she explores the ways early Christian art focused less on the crucifixion of Christ and instead on the ways Christ redeems and baptizes the world. While later Christian art is full of crucifixion images and accompanied a theology that saw this world as an evil from which we must escape, earlier art presented Christ in his glory using baptism as an entry point into the paradise of this world. This baptized world is not perfect of course, but it is a place to struggle together in the process of becoming more like God. As Brock suggests, this early art — which included images of water flowing from Christ over the earth — conveys the theology that everlasting life begins at baptism (not when we die and escape) and invites us to live as Christ lived even in the present.

Brock points out that most commentaries on Christian art ignore these images of baptism and the theology they imply. But after seeing her point out in images the presence of water flowing from Christ, it is hard now not to see it. And it is exactly what I encountered when I was in Los Angeles recently and had the opportunity to visit the Heaven, Hell, and Dying Well: Images of Death in the Middle Ages exhibit at the Getty Museum.

My experience of the exhibit began as I was walking in and overheard a child asking her father what the title of the exhibit meant. His response was that the church used to use the idea of hell to frighten people into doing what they wanted and that these were some of the images they used to do so. I cringed at his explanation, but then encountered basically the same idea in the commentaries posted by each image. Each one seemed to be explained as “Christ sending sinners into everlasting punishment in hell. Used to convince people to obey the church so that they could avoid such when they died.”

The problem is that is not what I was seeing in those images. I was seeing the baptismal waters of Christ. Even as people were being pulled into the torment of hell by death, the baptismal waters were still covering them and in some it was obvious Christ was rescuing them (see my rather blurry examples). I found it fascinating that these aspects were not mentioned in the commentaries, but that the narrative of Christ punishing bad people by sending them to hell has so infiltrated our cultural imaginations that it is near impossible to admit to alternative narratives. We in our retributive and manipulative culture seem to relish the idea of the wicked getting what they deserve and those who follow the “right” set of rules being rewarded. But, I wonder, how much more poignant (in the full heart-wrenching sense of that term) is the idea of Christ redeeming the world and inviting all into abundant life beginning now?

Forgiveness and mercy aren’t cheap or easy. The wicked are never let off the hook when they are redeemed. If we ignore life in this world and focus on just the punishment or reward of some afterlife, we miss the struggle that walking in the way of Christ involves. If baptism invites us to enter into the earthly paradise where although evil is yet present, we still can struggle along together toward our mutual spiritual flourishing, we are not in for an easy journey. Living in the way of Christ instead of the greedy consuming ways of the world is the hardest path we can ever follow. Punishment is easy because we can remain our selfish selves as we are cast out; mercy is hard because it forces us to change. Not getting what we deserve is truly the most devastating yet beautiful thing that could ever happen to us.

There is a fantastic scene near the end of the Doctor Who episode Last of the Time Lords that illustrates this devastating baptism of mercy perfectly. After the character The Master attempts to take over the universe and nearly destroys the earth in the process, the Doctor yet again saves the day. At one point the Doctor is filled with the glory of all space and time and appears transfigured in all his power before the Master to confront him with his deeds. The Master first tries to attack the Doctor and yet his attacks are futile. He then cowers in a corner as the Doctor hovers above him with a look of infinite sorrow on his face and they have this exchange –

The Doctor: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…
The Master: You can’t do this! YOU CAN’T DO THIS! IT’S NOT FAIR!
The Doctor: Then you know what happens now.
The Master: [scared] No! NO! NO! NO!
The Doctor: [serious] You wouldn’t listen…
The Master: [cowering] NO!
The Doctor: [serious] ‘Cause you know what I’m gonna say.
The Master: [terrified] No!
[the Doctor touches down, the glow of light vanishes, the Doctor kneels next to the Master and puts his arms around him]
The Doctor: I forgive you.

The Master is heartbroken to unfairly receive mercy and an invitation to live differently with the Doctor – healing instead of dominating worlds. As I watched that episode recently, that scene reminded me of that exhibit at the Getty where the obvious in art is ignored because we simply do not want to accept that perhaps it is mercy and invitation instead of death and punishment that Christ is actually offering. We are terrified to think that perhaps this life does matter, that we must choose a much harder path than merely assuming we chose the right religion. Accepting the baptism of this life is devastating, so we ignore it in our art, label it heresy in our churches, and go on living exactly as we wish. Yet, Christ is there baptizing us anyway, saying “I’m sorry, I am so sorry. I forgive you.”

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Women and the Olympic Gaze

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As posted at the Sojourner’s God’s Politics blog –

I have a love/hate relationship with the Olympics. I love the pageantry and global drama of it all. And even as one who hardly ever watches sports (I make exceptions for Roller Derby and Quidditch), I nevertheless find myself glued to the screen whenever the Olympics roll around. At the same time I am uneasy with the neo-colonial aspects of the Games and the fact that one’s ability to win a medal increasingly depends upon how much money one’s country has (making the Games a vivid illustration of global economic injustice). Yet even as I have watched (and enjoyed) the London Games with conflicted emotions, I find myself more and more uncomfortable with the ways the presentation of the Olympics serves to reinforce harmful assumptions about women in our culture.

It started before the Games. As the world geared up for the Olympics, it was hard to avoid hearing some guy or another (from TV hosts to bloggers) saying that what they were most looking forward to watching was women’s beach volleyball. It was this strange inside joke insinuating that the real purpose of the Games was to give them an opportunity to see women diving around in bikinis. I even heard complaints about the new Olympic rule allowing women to compete fully covered (a concession offered to allow Muslim women to compete in the Games). It was uncomfortable to hear how nonchalantly women continue to be reduced to mere sexual objects, but I brushed it aside as typical of our culture.

Then the health and fashion magazines put out their summer issues. On their pages I saw a sprinkling of female Olympians looking more like made-over models at a cover shoot than hard-working dedicated athletes. And I noticed another trend as well. I wasn’t seeing any shot-put champions or rowers on those pages. Instead they were gymnasts, swimmers, soccer players, and (of course) beach volleyball players. Instead of reading stories of amazing athletes committed to their sports, I was left with the impression of how one could look pretty (alright, sexy) while playing an acceptably feminine sport. I know that’s just what these sorts of magazines do, but I found myself asking, why can’t these women just be admired for being good athletes?

At first I thought my discomfort was peculiar to me, but then I read more about the ways these stereotypes typify the televised presentation of the Olympics. It’s not just my impression that women athletes are objectified for their looks, two recently published studies prove it to be the case. One study found that in the Vancouver Olympics, men received some 23 hours of prime-time footage while women received under 13 – most of that from figure skating. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, while women made up 48 percent of the U.S. team and earned 48 percent of the nation’s medals, male athletes received more television coverage, especially in individual events. Significantly, “nearly three-quarters of the women’s coverage was devoted to gymnastics, swimming, diving and beach volleyball” – all sports in which women wear bathing suits (or the equivalent). Another 13 percent of the coverage was devoted to track and field where women are also scantily clad. Only 2 percent of the coverage depicted women competing in hard-body contact or power events (judo, weight-lifting) that are not typically deemed “socially acceptable” sports for women.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not belittling the efforts or achievements of women gymnasts, divers, or even beach volleyball players. They are amazing at what they do and I wish I had the dedication they have to train at their sport. But I am uneasy in how they are presented to the viewing public. I wonder whether it is just the assumption of the network that people are not interested in watching female athletes unless those athletes are sexually appealing in some way, or if that is in fact the reality of the U.S. audience?

There was much derision from western countries when, after the IOC forced a few traditionally Muslim countries to allow female athlete to compete (or else not be permitted to compete at all), an Arabic hashtag which translated to “prostitutes of the Olympics” trended on Twitter in reference to the female athletes from Saudi Arabia. The opinion that a woman’s virtue is compromised if she participates in competitive sports led to this backlash against these women and had many in the U.S. declaring how sexist those countries are. Yet, the facts show that it is in the U.S. where women are not fully accepted as athletes unless they can be “sold” as sex objects in order to boost ratings.

As I watch these Games with my seven year old daughter, I find myself wising for a better world. She keeps asking me when she can see the women weight-lifters, archers, and shot-putters and I have to explain to her that it is unlikely that those events will make it on TV. I want her to feel confident in her body and take joy in its strength, but cringe when even the Olympics, the supposed pinnacle of pure sport, instead send her the message that her body’s primary purpose is to be admired for its alluring qualities. She deserves more than that. These athletes deserve more than that.

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Creation as Liberating Act

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I recently read Mercy Oduyoye’s classic work Hearing and Knowing. It is one of the best introductions to theology that I have ever read and I was especially drawn to her exploration of creation as liberating act. Oduyoye explores the way God responds to broken situations in the world by creating (or birthing) something new in their midst. For example, God so loved the world even in its brokenness that God sent Jesus into that very brokenness. By being in the midst of that suffering, Jesus suffered with the community and through that brought healing to the brokenness as he worked to make all things new. The call to be new creations, defined by shalom instead of brokenness, came out of the being withness of community.

Oduyoye then illustrates how the community can live into the power that creating something in order to find liberation offers. She writes –

Among the Igbo of Nigeria, to be creative is to turn the power of evil, sin, and suffering into the power of love. When things are not going well in a community, in order to restore harmony and mutuality of existence, an African community requires artists to camp together, to work together to heal the society by their sacrifice. The creativity of the artists is the sacrifice required for righting wrongs in the community. The artists fashion a model of a whole community and all that they have in a house, and the house and its artifacts are left as a sacrifice, which will renew the community. … The artist symbolically recreates the clan in its pristine state through artifacts and the result is salutary for the real clan. It becomes once again a wholesome people in a wholesome community. (p.92-93)

Jesus willingly entered into a community of suffering in order to create with them a way to be liberated from that suffering. Yet that vision of shalom was not imposed from the outside upon people against their will. It involved solidarity, creativity, and sacrifice. Jesus was with the community, suffering with them. Creativity was required in order for the community to envision the liberation into a better world that becoming new creations would bring. And it required not only the selfless sacrifice of Jesus, but the sacrifice of the old patterns of brokenness in favor of the new vision on the part of the community. Like the Igbo in Nigeria, those open to creative re-envisioning had to live in community together and make sacrifices in order to bring about the healing that is needed.

I love this idea that it is sacrificial creativity within community that brings healing and shalom. All too often healing is reduced to simply an economic transaction or state of intellectual assent. If a person just believes or thinks a certain way, or follows the right set of rules, or refrains from certain actions then they will magically find liberation. Even if others continue to suffer in brokenness, they can still be assured of personally possessing the key to freedom. While these systems are easy to impose upon others and also make it easy to blame individuals for the continued brokenness in the world, they miss the point of something truly new being created. If as the Bible claims, God is working to make all things new, unless one is seeing new healed and liberated communities emerging from where there was once suffering and brokenness, then God’s work there is not yet done (and sometimes has barely even begun).

As Oduyoye comments “God actually searches for us and suffers until the community is complete… Salvation for an elite who have no responsibility to the community at large is contrary to the meaning of the Christ-event” (p.96). The liberation is not simply something for the few to opt into intellectually. Full healing and liberation occur amidst community and involve both sacrifice and creatively imagining a better world. Jesus created an entire alternative way of being in the world he termed the Kingdom of God – a way to live differently than the systems of suffering and oppression the world offered. Rejecting the ways of the world in favor of this new way of being requires one to sacrifice the privileges and entitlements the world offers in exchange for the liberation and shalom of the whole community. It is easy to be told what to do in order to secure one’s personal safety and comfort. It is a lot harder to stand in solidarity with the suffering of the community and do the creative and sacrificial work of together envisioning something new. Yet, as Oduyoye reminds us, God’s plan for liberation was to send Jesus to do just that.

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Teaching My Children the Bible

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As a mother who is also a follower of Christ, I want my children to learn the stories of the faith I follow. Having grown up in the church and having been a children’s pastor, I also know that there are some pretty messed up ways that churches and families often go about teaching the Bible to kids. From the Aesop fablization of the Bible where gory stories like Noah’s Ark become just about cute animals and instructing kids to obey their parents and teachers to sword drills and programs that encourage binge memorization of verses in order to earn plastic jewels in a crown, children are rarely encouraged to enter into scripture and understand its larger story.

But it’s a story I want my children to know – with all its complexities and overarching narratives intact. While the superbly done The Action Bible has helped my comic-book obsessed daughter become more familiar with the stories, I knew that I needed to find other ways to help expose her to more than just the same dozen “safe for kids” Bible stories Sunday schools seem to favor. So when I saw all over Pinterest a pin about a Child Training Bible, I clicked on it out of curiosity. Something in me hoped it was an accessible way for young readers to piece together the complex history that is the Bible so they could better understand the story of God’s relationship with creation. It couldn’t have been further from that.

No, the Child Training Bible is a color-coded system (patent pending) that makes it easy for a child or parent to look up a verse when a child needs discipline. Asserting that the Bible is the answer book for everything in life, the system is described as – “All the things you work on to train your children tabbed and highlighted with a key in the front. Training topics include: anger, complaining, defiance, lying, laziness, and wrong friendships! So when you need the verses you can grab the actual Word and be able to quickly flip to whatever you need!!” I read that and had one of those fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul moments. The whole system was nauseating enough for how it disrespected the entire purpose of the Bible (and ignored the fact that only Jesus is called the Word of God), but then I started reading the reviews on mommy blogs online. Dozens of mothers were lauding the product as the perfect way to discipline and get their children into the word. I only found one single response that questioned using the Bible in such a negative way and then immediately read all the responses accusing that woman of hating the Bible and not truly being a Christian. It was heartbreaking.

Like I said, I think it is important to know the Bible and I desire for my kids to know it as well. I honestly find it disturbing that more and more these days committed Christians (even many of the classmates my husband and I encountered at our seminaries) have no sense of what is actually in the Bible. But systems like this that cherry-pick verses out of context for the purpose of using guilt to manipulate children into a certain set of middle-class American behaviors don’t help the problem. Neither do many of the other popular suggestions for “immersing oneself in the word” that I am seeing these days. Like the suggestions for the “25 (or 50 or 70) essential verses” one should put on post-it notes around the house if one desires ones family (or husband) to be transformed. Bible verses are not magical incantations that through exposure and repetition will change a person. Even daily reminders that one must delight oneself in the Lord or that God grants rest to the weary while possibly useful in helping one feel better about oneself don’t actually enter one into the story of the Bible or the more difficult way of living it calls people to live. And, unsurprisingly, I’ve yet to read one of those essential verse lists that acknowledge the communal (rather than individualistic) nature of being part of the body of Christ or that include anything about seeking justice for the poor and the oppressed.

I have nothing against memorizing scripture or finding encouragement from a saying or two from the Bible. I teach my children passages like the Beatitudes and expose them to music full of scripture. But I harbor no illusion that reading a daily devotion of two or three verses that deliver personal spiritual warm-fuzzies is in any form or fashion “being in the word.” Nor is seeing a verse on a post-it on your mirror, finding a warning verse attached to a TV or computer, or even doing a fill-in-the-blank “Bible” study. Using the Bible in such ways cheapens it and turns it into the Christian equivalent of a Magic Eight ball. The Bible is not an answer book, or a guide to raising children, or even primarily instructions for how to have a personal relationship with God. Yes, the Bible gives testimony to the way of life God desires, but a handful of out-of-context verses can never encapsulate the message of a story that the faithful have been trying to figure out for thousands of years. I want my kids to wrestle with that story, to understand the competing voices and ideologies within the Bible, and learn to work out their faith with fear and trembling as they respect the narrative enough to not reduce it to sound bites.

I know this post is a bit of a rant. And I am sure there are readers who will call me a heretic and hater of the Bible for writing this. But as a frustrated mom, it is hard to find resources that help me encourage my kids to engage the Bible but that also don’t turn it into a shallow shadow of what it is meant to be.

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