How the Bible Actually Works: In Which I Explain How An Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse Book Leads Us to Wisdom Rather Than Answers—and Why That's Great News

by Peter Enns

Our experiences, what life throws at us, drive us to think about what God is like here and now and consequently what it means to believe in this God.

But as Jesus also put it elsewhere, somewhat differently and with a little more punch, old wineskins do not have the strength and flexibility to contain the potency of new wine. As it ferments, it will burst the skins (Matt. 9:17). Translation: the gospel can’t be contained in the old ways.

We are, as always, expected to embrace the sacred responsibility of figuring out how to be Christian here and now, respecting the past yet open to the present and future.

Think of Jesus’s main teaching method: telling parables. If your aim is to get people to comprehend black-and-white information, try a lecture or a press release. If you want to move people to own the moment and take responsibility to work it out for themselves, you tell them a story to stimulate their imagination.

Jesus is not about teaching “correct thinking,” but realigning minds, hearts, and motivations to act well, to live in harmony with the kingdom of heaven.

Following Jesus’s teachings is following the path of wisdom—it is your actions, what you say and do to others, not maintaining a hard-line doctrinal stance or turning faith into an intellectual abstraction.

Each Gospel is tailored for an audience, which means the Gospel writers were not simply focused on the life of Jesus, but—as wisdom demands—reading the situation.

Gentiles would not be bound to Jewish customs as an entrance point to being full-fledged members of the Jesus movement.

A command for that time does not make it a command for all time.

He also engaged in politically subversive activity, namely, when he declared again and again that Jesus is “Lord.” That word carried political as well as religious freight in the Roman Empire; it was a title used for the “divine” Caesar. To speak of another as “Lord,” not simply over some people (Jews), but over all people, including Caesar and his subjects, was insurrection, which eventually led to some jail time for Paul; he likely spent his last years under house arrest, ironically in Rome (Acts 28:30–31).

Generally speaking, in other words, the church is known for having accepted Paul’s boundary-pushing trajectory and pushing it farther. Freedom and equality eventually won out as the norm over passages like, Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling (Eph. 6:5), a compliant go-to passage of nineteenth-century Southern slave owners.

The Bible is ambiguous enough for us to find there what we already believe. The answer to this issue would need to be found elsewhere—in the realm of wisdom, not Bible verses.

As with any other issue, we have to consider that Paul’s words might not be an eternally binding command, but a comment that assumes a culture of sexuality different from our own.

Using Bible verses to end discussions on difficult and complex issues serves no one and fundamentally misses the dimension of wisdom that is at work anytime we open the Bible anywhere and read it.

We are always processing God and faith not from a high place, but from the vantage point of our inescapable humanity—our reason, experience, tradition, and scripture.

This God is not shocked when we “don’t get it,” but understands who we are and what we are and is fine with it.

Wisdom leads us to dialogues with the past. It doesn’t lead us back to the past.

Christians today, living when and where we are, have no choice but to be intentional in following the Bible and the entire history of Christianity in accepting the sacred responsibility to ask how we can talk about God in a way that is both connected to the tradition and meaningful for today.