Chip Shots

I didn't grow up in a liturgical church. In fact, I grew up thinking or assuming anyway that liturgical churches didn't really believe the Bible, and that they put more trust in their traditions than God. We, on the other hand, believed the Bible and were not bound by religious tradition. That's a lie, of course, but I didn't know any better. In fact, I'm still trying to figure it out. In my church tradition we never observed the church calendar or the lectionary. I never heard of Whitsunday until I was in college. And the idea of some nameless source choosing your readings and sermon texts for you -- why that was unthinkable! Let the Spirit lead! And throw away traditions! Only we didn't. I've since learned that our lack of using the lectionary meant that we ignored whole sections of scripture. And in later years, our sermons became little more than pop psychology with a scriptural proof text. "How to affair proof your marriage." Remember that one...

Warning: Thinking out Loud. I've begun to read novel called The Red Tent. It's a story about Dinah, Jacob's only recorded daughter in the Old Testament. One of the new believers in our church told me she'd read it, so I decided to give it a whirl. So far, it’s a pretty good novel, but critiquing it is not my purpose here. Instead I’ve got some thoughts rattling around my brain which I’ll now inflict on you, my unsuspecting reader. I was raised on the Old Testament and I’ve grown really tired of how it is always viewed as a book of "principles" and "promises." Evangelicals loathe reading story simply as story. We somehow feel the need to tie up all loose ends, explain every detail in light of the new covenant and keep everything nice and tidy. We’re uncomfortable with the ambiguities of real life and prefer instead to make the Bible merely a textbook for theology, not a story of God's love affair with the human race. The problem is, in so doing w...