Better Ways to Read the Bible Quotes

“Let me be clear: If the way we read the Bible produces poisonous fruit rather than the fruit of the Spirit, we are reading it wrong.”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“Justice is divisive only to those benefitting from injustice.”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm Into a Tool of Healing

“The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor. . . . Jesus never commanded me to love my religion. —Barbara Brown Taylor, Holy Envy”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“When it comes to those who have left the church as adults, only 9 percent say they are open to returning. But do you know what the percentage of LGBTQ+ folks who say they are open to coming back to church is? Seventy-six percent!26”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“If someone receives money, power, or political gain from injustice, then demonizing justice is the most effective way to ensure the perpetuation of those benefits. That’s why it’s such a red flag when people say it’s “divisive” to talk about racism, sexism, nationalism, homophobia, ableism, or any other form of oppression. Justice is divisive only to those benefiting from injustice. Or to put it more bluntly, the only people standing against liberation are the ones who benefit from oppression.”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“Jesus chastised folks who weaponized Scripture and elevated it above love of neighbor. He repeatedly denounced those who used sacred texts to divide rather than unite, incite violence rather than make peace, and exclude rather than include.”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“Christians spend so much time arguing about what is “biblical” and “unbiblical” when we really should be distinguishing between what is Christlike and what is un-Christlike.”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“We cannot read the Bible for our own liberation while caging others. Reading the Bible in ways that justify oppression and marginalization is the gospel of slaveholders.”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“They called themselves Christians, but they didn’t follow Christ. They knew about Jesus, but they didn’t pursue the way of Jesus. They read from the very same Bible we do, but they interpreted it through a lens of hierarchy.”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“For this is what the Lord says: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant—to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever’” (Isa. 56:4–5).”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“Jemar Tisby says, “Many white ​Christians have become de facto defenders of an unjust status quo by maintaining that Christians should not get involved in matters of public justice.”8”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“Beth Allison Barr says so succinctly: “Biblical women contradict modern ideas of biblical womanhood.”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“Rhett McLaughlin puts it even more bluntly: “Your kids are not leaving the church because you didn’t train them enough. Your kids are leaving the church because you trained them well enough to develop a sense for truth and justice. You let them read the words of Jesus, and they got it, and they’ve recognized that the church doesn’t seem to be interested in those words. They’re ​not leaving because they don’t know the truth; they’re leaving because they do.”9”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“Richard Rohr, and it applies beautifully here: “Every time God forgives, God is saying that relationship is more important than God’s own rules.”16”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing

“Old Testament scholar Daniel Lowery puts it like this: “These stories were true to their original audience and have truths that carry forward to today, but they may not be ‘true’ in the twenty-first-century Western way we often define that term—which is usually ‘provable scientifically.”
― Zach W. Lambert, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing