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

by Rachel Held Evans

to Damascus one day, when a blinding light threw him to the ground and a voice from heaven asked, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts

This message of good news for all people of all nations became Paul’s obsession.

Paul “used his global, multicultural, and breadth of thought for the sake of the universal gospel he proclaimed. Paul was a man who could talk with rabbis on the streets of Jerusalem and with philosophers on the streets of Athens . . . He knew the ancient wisdom of the Hebrew Scriptures, and he knew the wisdom of Greek literature, such as that of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato.”10

Paul was once imprisoned with a woman named Junia, whom he described as “outstanding among

the apostles” (Romans 16:7), and some of his dearest friends were Priscilla and Aquila, a pair I like to think of as the church’s first power couple,

Priscilla was a renowned teacher whose mentorship of Apollos helped correct some of the famous preacher’s early views. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he thanked multiple women for their leadership and support, referring to them as his “co-workers.” Romans 16 includes thanks to Junia and Priscilla, as well as a deacon named Phoebe, a “dear friend” named Persis, and Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa, and a host of other women “who worked very hard in the Lord” (v. 12).

In places where women in leadership assisted in the spreading of the gospel, Paul encouraged it;

Paul would likely have been perceived as radically inclusive and egalitarian. For him, nothing mattered more than unleashing the gospel and moving out of the way any unnecessary cultural or religious obstructions that might impede its proliferation.

If Gentiles wanted in on the blessings of the covenant, they must be faithful to the Torah. That only seemed “biblical.” But Paul and his friend Barnabas vehemently disagreed, so much so that they traveled back to Jerusalem to try and settle the dispute with the apostles and elders there.

in one of the most significant religious decisions in history, it was determined that Gentiles did not need to be circumcised but should only abstain from those foods and activities

that might impede their ability to share a table

of fellowship and live in harmony with their Jewish bro...

“It is my judgment,” the apostle James concluded, “. . . that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who ...

He was simply making the same case he had been making from the beginning, that Jews and Gentiles are now one in the family of God because the faithfulness of Jesus on behalf of Israel and for the rest of the world “made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14).

the question is not, Should women be allowed to preach? but Do women preachers help or hurt the advancement of the gospel and the preservation of unity? Paul was smart enough to know the answers to these questions would vary from church to church and person to person, so surely he was

smart enough to also know they would vary from culture to culture and century to century.

Was Paul a man of his time? Of course. But that’s exactly the point. God meets us where we are, as we are. The Sp...

“And then.”

Christians believe we live in the “and then” after Jesus’ resurrection and before his return. We live inside an unfinished story, a story that began with the Spirit of God hovering over the primordial waters at the beginning of time and which took a dramatic, climactic turn two thousand years ago when that same God became human, lived among us, and beat death once and for all. We share this story with Mary Magdalene and the apostle Paul. We share it with Saint Augustine and Julian of Norwich, Desmond Tutu and Leymah Gbowee. We share it with the pastor who runs the soup kitchen out of the church basement and with the first guy in line to eat there each week. The stories we tell with our lives, then, aren’t meaningless absurdities, tragic in their brevity, but rather subplots of a grander narrative, every moment charged with significance, as we contribute our own riffs, soliloquies, and plot twists to the

larger epic, the Holy Spirit coaxing us along with an ever-ebullient, And then? And then? And then?

What you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that’s shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to be dug up for a building site. You are—strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself—accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up

the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world—all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.2

“The task of theology,” wrote Mobley, “is the linking of our individual story to the biggest story we can imagine.”3

I want my son to be exposed to a wide variety of stories, including, when he’s ready, strange and scary ones, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated.

Researchers tell us one of the greatest gifts we can give our children is the ability to tell stories. Helping them apply narrative to their everyday experiences, and to see a purpose and direction in the forces that shape their lives, improves both cognitive function and well-being.

“The drive to understand why things happen to us is so strong that the brain will continue to try making sense of an experience until it succeeds,” wrote Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson in The Whole-Brain Child. “As parents, we can help this process along through storytelling.”

Psychologists say the best way to handle children at this stage of development is not to answer their questions directly but instead to tell them a story. As pediatrician Alan Greene explained, “After conversing with thousands of children, I’ve decided that what they really mean is, ‘That’s interesting to me. Let’s talk about that together. Tell me more, please?’”5

We may wish for answers, but God rarely give us answers. Instead, God gathers us up into soft, familiar arms and says, “Let me tell you a story.”