This blog post is taken, more or less as is, from my book <\/em>How The Bible Actually Works<\/a>. You can learn more by reading the book or by purchasing the new 6 week course<\/a> on the material. <\/em><\/p>\n Should we be the least bit My answer to that rather convoluted question American Christians have imagined God as feminist, environmentalist, capitalist, refugee, soldier, Republican, Democrat, socialist, and on and on. Some portraits of God I agree with more than others (and let the debates begin), but <\/p>\n the act of reimagining God in ways that reflect our time and place is self-evident, unavoidable, and necessary.<\/strong><\/p>\n When the situation was dire, the What is our<\/em> hope?<\/p>\n How do we<\/em> yearn for God What urgent thing is happening right now to us<\/em>, our families, and our world?<\/p>\n What new thing will the God of old do now?<\/p>\n These are the questions driven by wisdom<\/em><\/a> that we ask ourselves as the biblical writers did ages ago.<\/p>\n When I see God presented today as As hard as it might be to hear, Sure, we might see hints in the biblical story where something like \u201cGod sides with refugees\u201d can find a hook, and for some issues that hook is bigger than others (the justice and fairness hooks are huge, for example). But the biblical hook is brought in after the fact. The actual feeling of compassion for refugees doesn\u2019t begin by reading the Bible. <\/p>\n Rather, the Bible comes into the picture afterward as a way of grounding that compassion in our faith tradition.<\/p>\n We find in the Bible ways of anchoring our experience of God\u2014even if that means reading the Bible in fresh and creative ways<\/strong>, which is exactly how we see the New Testament writers engaging their Bible when they talk about Jesus.<\/p>\n We\u2019re getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, and we\u2019ll come back to this later in the book. For now, let me just repeat that this process of reimagining God is not a problem to be overcome, but an invitation to meet the always active, always present God here and now, where we are, and to trust that God is with us in that process.<\/strong><\/p>\n By saying, \u201cThis is my God,\u201d I This is why I disagree with Christians who say, for example, that women are not permitted to have leadership roles in churches or Christian organizations. I understand that there are Bible verses that precluded women from preaching or teaching men (which we\u2019ll come back to).<\/p>\n But simply lifting those verses out of the Bible without further ado is in my opinion to relinquish the sacred responsibility of reimagining God for our here and now.<\/p>\n I can certainly understand why some might say that Christian faith and practice should not depend on the demands of our current pagan, secular, very unchristian culture.<\/a> But if you throw down that card too quickly, it will backfire. (Mixed metaphor. Just seeing if you\u2019re paying attention.) The ancient world, after all, gave us warring gods and heavenly board meetings. If that doesn\u2019t fit the definition of \u201cpagan influence,\u201d I don\u2019t know what does. <\/em>And yet ancient Israelites imagined God within that world\u2014and those images became part of our sacred scripture.<\/em><\/p>\n I think that is worth sitting with No one culture, and certainly not the (largely white male affluent) Western culture I inhabit, can claim superior status for reimagining God once and for all. The Creator does not need any of us to sit atop the mountain and speak down to everyone else.<\/p>\n Perhaps this is at least one reason We are not the first, prompted by the time and place of our existence, to ask \u201cWhat is God like?\u201d But the question remains whether we will accept the responsibility to answer that question. And we are not turning away from scripture (or God) when we do so, but turning toward scripture as it models that very process.<\/p>\n This is the God I choose to believe in, the one I imagine, a God who is quite aware of the fact that we cannot help when and where we were born, but remains with us just the same and encourages us to accept the challenge of owning our faith here and now rather than relinquishing that sacred responsibility by expecting others to have done it for us.<\/p>\n And when we do that, we are joining an ancient conversation, and once we hear it, we\u2019ll wonder how we hadn\u2019t noticed it before.<\/p>\n Looking for more? Grab a group of friends for videos and discussion questions\u2013you\u2019ll get 6 work-at-your-own-pace sessions in our new course, How the Bible Actually Works.<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/peteenns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/zachary-keimig-KQI5lvTofRc-unsplash-1024x683.jpg\")
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\nsurprised when we, along with some biblical writers, find ourselves wandering
\nbeyond the words in the Bible as we think about what God is like, sensing that
\nthe God we see there made sense for that time but not necessarily for ours, and
\nthat the God we were introduced to in the Bible is not in every way the God we
\nbelieve in here and now?<\/p>\n
\nis, \u201cNo, we should not be surprised.\u201d God is relentlessly reimagined all
\naround us. <\/p>\n
\nancient Israelites expressed their hope in God in ways that needed to be heard
\nat the time\u2014in pleas for economic justice, integrity of their leaders, success
\nagainst their enemies. The questions for us, as they have been for all
\ngenerations, are:<\/p>\n
\nto show up here and now?<\/p>\n
\na champion of the full equality of women, people of color, refugees, or the
\nenvironment, I say, \u201cYes, this is my God too. This is the God I believe in.\u201d<\/p>\nBut this is a reimagined God.<\/h2>\n
\nthe God of the Bible, strictly speaking, doesn\u2019t actually champion these causes, however important they
\nmight be to us. If biblical writers could listen in to our God-talk, they might
\nnot recognize their God in what
\nwe say, at least not without some prompting.<\/p>\n
\nam accepting the responsibility of our inevitable task of finding those sacred
\nplaces where God and our world meet. <\/p>\n
\nthat last point and pondering it for a while.<\/p>\nThe Creator is being reimagined all the time and can be reimagined through the lens of any culture, of any time and place. <\/h2>\n
\nwhy the Christian faith has had such staying power and spread broad and wide\u2014different
\npeople living in different times and places can connect with this God in ways
\nthat engage their world and make sense to them.<\/p>\nAll of which is to say, God is, as
\nalways, out ahead of us leading us on. We only need to follow.<\/h2>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thebiblefornormalpeople.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/ENNS_HowBibleActuallyWorks2_3D.png\")