Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again

by Rachel Held Evans

Without lament, Rah wrote, “Any theological reflection that emerges from the suffering ‘have-nots’ can be minimized in the onslaught of the triumphalism of the ‘haves.’”

It’s easy for modern-day readers to forget that the Bible was written by oppressed religious minorities living under the heels of powerful nation-states known for their extravagant wealth and violence.

the God of the oppressed will have the final word.

In other words, the prophets are weirdos. More than anyone else in Scripture, they remind us that those odd ducks shouting from the margins of society may see things more clearly than the political and religious leaders with the inside track. We ignore them at our own peril.

“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy”

So when the prophets Daniel and John envision the empires as vicious beasts, what they’re saying is, Beneath all the wealth, power, and excess of these dazzling empires lie grotesque monsters, trampling everyone and everything in their path. And when they depict God as tolerating, then restraining, and finally destroying these monsters, what they’re saying is, The story isn’t over; even the greatest empires are no match for goodness, righteousness, and justice.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated.

This is chesterton, right?

When you belong to the privileged class of the most powerful global military superpower in the world, it can be hard to relate to the oppressed minorities who wrote so much of the Bible.

The fact is, the shadow under which most of the world trembles today belongs to America, and its beasts could be named any number of things—White Supremacy, Colonialism, the Prison Industrial Complex, the War Machine, Civil Religion, Materialism, Greed.

America’s no ancient Babylon or Rome, I know that. But America’s no kingdom of God either.

In many states, you can still get fired from your job for simply being gay, but you can be a serial womanizer who brags about grabbing married women “by the pussy” and still get elected president.

many Christians shrug it off as part of an irrelevant past or spin out religious-sounding rhetoric about peace and reconciliation without engaging in the hard work of repentance and restitution.

“They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14).

For too long, the white American church has chosen the promise of power over prophetic voice.

We have allied ourselves with the empire and, rather than singing songs of hopeful defiance with the exiles, created more of them. We have, consciously and unconsciously, done the bidding of the Beast—not in every case, of course, but in far too many.

“God . . . has become king—in and through Jesus! A new state of affairs has been brought into existence. A door has been opened that nobody can shut. Jesus is now the world’s rightful Lord, and all other lords are to fall at his feet.”11

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

this is a God who rescues and heals and sets things right.

This story about the nature of God and God’s relationship to humanity smells like mud and manger hay and tastes like salt and wine.

is the biggest story and the smallest story all at once—the great quest for the One Ring and the quiet friendship of Frodo and Sam.

But it strikes me as fruitless to try and turn the gospel into a statement when God so clearly gave us a story—or, more precisely, a person.

in Scripture, no two people encounter Jesus in exactly the same way. Not once does anyone pray the “Sinner’s Prayer”

So when someone asks, “What is the gospel?” the best response is, “Let me tell you a story.”

The kingdom, Jesus taught, is right here—present yet hidden, immanent yet transcendent. It is at hand—among us and beyond us, now and not-yet.

The kingdom of heaven, he said, belongs to the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, the merciful, and those who hunger and thirst for God. It advances not through power and might, but through missions of mercy, kindness, and humility. In this kingdom, many who are last will be first and many who are first will be last. The rich don’t usually get it, Jesus said, but children always do. This is a kingdom whose savior arrives not on a warhorse, but a donkey, not through triumph and conquest, but through death and resurrection. This kingdom is the only kingdom that will last.

The church is not a group of people who believe all the same things; the church is a group of people caught up in the same story, with Jesus at the center.

“I am a Christian,” I concluded, “because the story of Jesus is still the story I’m willing to risk being wrong about.”

The miracles of Jesus aren’t magic tricks designed to awe prospective converts, nor are they tests from the past, meant to sort true believers from doubters. They are instructions, challenges. They show us what to do and how to hope.

“But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean” (Acts 10:28). The apostles remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget—that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out but who it lets in.

“As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”