What Is the Bible?

Be the first to celebrate

whatever is good and true and beautiful

in your midst, regardless of where it comes from

or who says it or how it arrived there.

 - Rob Bell -

Rob Bell seems to be one of the most controversial voices in the evangelical world today. A documentary was recently released about him titled – you guessed it – The Heretic. Just his name can incite feelings of intense angst and indignation in the Christian community (I experienced this myself when I posted this year’s book list and got plenty of feedback about why he shouldn’t be included in my repertoire). Anyone who knows me well can attest to the fact that I will do just about anything to avoid a conflict – especially in the internet world. I do not write this review to start a debate – though I would love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read any of Bell’s books! – but to share my own experience with this book. So, without further ado, I give you my summary of What Is the Bible?

One important lesson I’ve learned through my journey of love, loss, and a reconstructed faith is not to put any voice(s) in a box as “unsafe” to read. Of course, we should cling to what is good, true, and lovely, and not fill our minds with darkness or lies. But throughout the Christian life we continue to grow and evolve, and if what we believe is true, we should not shy away from views that differ from ours, but continue to learn and be challenged through exposure to other viewpoints and apologetic defense of our own. Do we avoid certain authors and viewpoints because we believe they are lies? Have we honestly grappled with their views and prayerfully reached our own conclusions about them? Or are we afraid that our opinions won’t stand up to honest criticism? Is God big enough to be more multi-faceted than any one human can determine? Is it possible that He has many dimensions that are revealed to all kinds of believers from every background and human experience? Why would we intentionally choose to only read and study those authors who agree with our exact worldview? Isn’t there a whole universe of diversity and enrichment that awaits us – if we are brave enough to explore it?

These are some of the questions that compelled me to add What Is the Bible? to my 2018 reading list, as well as the realization that I have drifted somewhat from consistent Bible reading over the last few years. A dear friend told me about this book , saying that it got her to start reading the Bible again. I realized that, whatever “heretical” claims Bell may make, if he could get me to start reading the Bible again it would be well worth it. So I bought the book and plunged in.

I’ve learned all kinds of things from What Is the Bible?. Yes, I’ve learned why people have such a violent reaction to Rob Bell – some of his claims directly contradict basic tenants that Christians have held for centuries, and often seem to clash with the words of Jesus Himself. But I’m glad that I explored these claims for myself instead of taking others’ word for it, because if I had shied away from this book I would have missed out on all the valuable points that Bell does make. Bell’s approach to Bible reading is a bit like peeling an onion: he takes a story that may seem grossly out of context and nonsensical in our day – like the one about Abraham cutting a bunch of animals in half and walking between the pieces to make a covenant with God – and peels away layer after layer of historical context and religious significance. You come away from the story with a brand-new understanding of all that God was up to in an event, and how meaningful it would have been to the people experiencing it. Awe-inspiring, revelatory, educational, and ground-breaking are all appropriate words for Bell’s handling of Biblical history.

Another helpful approach Bell takes is to calm everyone down from the debates that have raged for thousands of years – often an end in themselves, rather than challenging the hearers to go and live differently. For example, the apocalypse. Bell concludes his discussion of all the prophesies and pictures and unknowns with a challenge: “it’s better if people agree that we aren’t going to worry about what we can’t control and we are going to become far more intentional about what we can control—loving our neighbor, becoming people of character and integrity, taking better care of the earth. What if all that anxiety and fear and concern about apocalypse…was channeled into actual change?” (Bell 201) I would add: What if all that anxiety and fear and concern was channeled into an urgent care for our neighbor’s well-being, that incited us to tell as many people about Jesus as possible? Likewise, Bell points out that the word election (which has tripped up Christians for centuries) ought to be associated with ”mission, purpose, calling, action on behalf of others, for their well-being.” (Bell 248) How differently we would live if we could get past the endless arguments of who is chosen and how, and instead fully embraced the mission and calling of the Christian life.

Now a few words about what I didn’t agree with. Bell is quite the master of getting a rise out of what he calls “deeply religious” people (myself included) who grew up in a church culture steeped in Biblical apologetics and worldview. He sets out to debunk all kinds of claims about the divine inspiration of the Bible (he can’t overemphasize the fact that the Bible was written by people), and the exceedingly biblical truth that Jesus’s death is the only way we can be reconciled with a righteous God – calling us to leave behind the antiquated idea that “the divine needs blood” (Bell 245), while subtly poking fun at traditional believers who haven’t quite evolved enough to see things from his point of view. Ironically, by asking us to leave behind everything we thought we knew about God, Bell makes the most massive claim about God of all: calling us to leave God out of controversial events in history, insisting all the time that the Bible was written by people and we ought not drag God into it. Bell can’t stop reminding us that we’re reading “someone’s perspective that reflects the time and the place they lived in. it’s not God’s perspective—it’s theirs.” (Bell 295) I came away from the book with the sense that Bell is condemning Christians who have taken the Bible literally, by claiming to know which parts of Scripture are allegorical, which contradict the true heart of God, which are poem instead of prose, and on and on – blithely writing off Christians over the centuries who have gotten it all wrong. The Bible then becomes a guidebook for how to be a better person, instead of a divinely inspired letter from God to His children that revolves around the all-consuming person and work of His Son, Jesus.

But I found even this approach helpful. At the same time that I was disagreeing with certain statements, I was heavily underlining and taking notes in the margins as I looked up Scriptures and mentally argued opposing viewpoints with Bell. He did, indeed, get me back into the Bible. I didn’t take his word for it – I recalled the nuggets of truth that I myself have gleaned over the years and pitted my interpretations against his. I found this refreshing, freeing, empowering. My challenge to my audience is to read a broad variety of authors and opinions for yourself. It is only in contact with vastly opposing worldviews that your own beliefs and convictions can be sharpened and honed into a system that you can stand behind, that you would die for. It is now yours – not your church’s, not your parent’s, but the living word of God to you.

I want to end with a few of Bell’s words on identity. If you never get a chance to read What Is the Bible?, I hope this exceedingly edifying passage will stay with you as it has with me:

In the Bible, sin is the middle word about you. The first word is that you’re created in the image of God, crowned with glory and honor, a child of the divine. That’s who you are. The second word is the honest, unvarnished truth about how we all fall short. We all sin; we all disrupt the shalom that God intends for all things. The third word is the continual insistence that the last word hasn’t been spoken about you and your sin, that all sins have been forgiven in Christ, that we are loved and restored, redeemed, reconciled, and renewed. (Bell 261)

The Lifegiving Home

The ache for home lives in all of us,

the safe place where we can go as we are

and not be questioned.

 - Maya Angelou -

Inspired by the beautiful, almost ethereal word pictures painted by mother-daughter duo Sally and Sarah Clarkson in their book The Lifegiving Home, I set out to create the ideal dining experience for me and my three-year-old daughter. Warm candlelight flickered and soft strains of classical music filled the house as I embarked on what seemed a simple enough task: simmering a big pot of soup accompanied by a loaf of homemade peasant bread for an all-too-rare homecooked meal.

Fast-forward three hours later. The long-anticipated bread is gummy in the middle, the fragrant soup too thick. Unexpected guests show up for dinner, lured by visions of homemade feasting, and I have no choice but to serve them the subpar fare. Worse, three-year-old Elissa – who helped choose the soup recipe! – now refuses to eat a bite of it. I sink into my chair, exhausted and disappointed. This, I now recall, is why I’ve all but given up cooking – because it doesn’t turn out right, and rarely tempts my child to venture beyond mac and cheese or peanut butter and jelly.

But I am far from throwing in the towel on the quest to create my own lifegiving home. The Clarkson ladies paint a tempting, palatable, and yet realistic picture of home life in all of its unique rhythms and seasons. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of their story is that each of the four grown Clarkson children – after traveling far and wide around the globe – cannot wait to come back home again, to the place where they are fully known, accepted, and loved. The place where they each belong. At one point Sally remarks that she and her husband could never have imagined that their children would each grow into their kindred spirits. As adults, the bond of friendship between parent and child is stronger than ever.

As a single mom tasked with raising my daughter alone, this is the hope held closest to my heart: that my daughter will grow into a strong, unique, and independent woman and friend. Sally and Sarah hold out the hope that by God’s grace this is an achievable goal; that home can be just the place of nourishment, encouragement, and affection that a child needs to find themselves and their own purpose in life, and yet always return to be wholly affirmed and cherished.

Long before I finished this book I had begun putting new habits into action. Flickering candles have appeared in all sorts of nooks and crannies, filling our big, drafty house with fragrant warmth and light. Music – worship, classical, or the soothing melodies of Kenny G – often fills the silence that we two girls can tend to rattle around in. You see, I haven’t always had a vision for our home. Becoming a widow at age 26 and realizing that our perfect nuclear family would now be a family of two was the death of all my dreams of being a wife and homemaker. For a long time I couldn’t stand the thought of being home, confronted by the emptiness, the hush at the dinner hour when Nathan should have been coming home from work. The word “home,” once associated with love and light and warmth, became synonymous with dread. Foreboding. Grief. All I could think to do was escape.

I am so thankful that I read the Clarksons’ book at the start of a new year. For me, it signifies the start of a new season. A Lifegiving Home has called me to dream again, to put my dormant creativity and love of beauty to work in making a space where my daughter and I can live in comfort and at peace, inviting others in to join us who need a respite from the chill and bitterness that life can bring. I am taking baby steps, to be sure. My once robust passion for cooking has stagnated, and I find myself a novice in the kitchen. Many of the possessions Nathan and I collected during our marriage have been lost or broken in the numerous changes and variances of our life. I alone am at the helm of my life, with no husband to follow – no mission to sign onto save that which God lays out for me. There is much that is terrifying about the unknown – and yet, for the first time, I am tasting a sense of adventure that I thought had died along with the hope and dreams for my marriage.

Where this life will take us, and what we Farlow girls will accomplish on this unexpected journey remains a mystery. But one thing I know for certain: wherever the road leads, and whatever places we inhabit, I am committed to crafting warmth and love and beauty into the very fabric of our dwellings. Be it a big old farmhouse or a cozy apartment, the home I create for my family will be one where the weary can rest, the hungry be nourished, the senses delighted by beauty in all its forms, and souls commune with one another and with God. Thank you, Sally and Sarah, for breathing fresh vision into my concept of home. In the words of Andrew Greeley, I will seek to “treasure wisely this jeweled, gilded time/ And cherish each day as an extra grace.”

Three Years Without You

My dearest love...

Three years ago today you departed this world for one infinitely better. Three years. It sounds and feels like an eternity. So much life has happened in these years without you, and with every fiber of my being I resent the relentless passage of time that tugs our life together further and further into the past. You gave me a lifetime of love in eight short years, and that's exactly what our story feels like - another lifetime. I look at my life now, at our sweet daughter who had only just entered the world when you left it, and wonder if you would even recognize me now. The transition from wife to single mother was almost seamless. With everything in me I long to make you proud, to honor your extraordinary life and carry on the work that you were only just beginning. Everything I do is for you, and always the nagging question...is it enough? Are you proud of me? Would you be happy with the life I am forced to choose for your girls?

You always encouraged me to write. You told me to stop spending so much time cooking and cleaning, and to write a blog instead. You were always the first one to read and "like" every single one of my posts. In the schizophrenia of shock and grief after losing you, I couldn't imagine ever publishing a single world into the cybersphere again - posting a thought that I might vehemently deny within days, or hours. But I had to write, because it was all I could think to do to honor you. I want the whole world to know you, Nate - to catch a glimpse of the best man I've ever known, and if the only way to do that is through my writing than I will never, ever stop trying to capture you on a keyboard. 

I blogged regularly at first, letting my raw feelings spill over into virtual journal entries. The empathy and comments from strangers were cathartic somehow, reminding me that we were not alone - not forgotten. I witnessed your story capture those who never got to meet you in life. But somewhere along the way, I ran out of words. I let my blog go untouched for over 14 months. I knew that with every click on a new post, my readers would be hoping for some kind of assurance that the girls you had left behind were finding peace, moving forward, entering some kind of resolution. Public grieving after Year Two, well into Year Three, started to feel belabored, exhausted - and yet, I couldn't think of anything to say that didn't revolve around you, my love, and the hole you left in our lives. My grief became more and more private. No one except me could possibly understand the void carved into my very soul at the absence of my husband, my soulmate, my best friend, my provider, my listening ear and strong shoulder and steady giver of the advice I needed so desperately. 

And so, I simply fell silent. I became absorbed in the all-consuming task of parenting a newly minted two-year-old without going insane, started new friendships and deepened lifelong ones, resumed daily life with my family, made new traditions with your family, rented a big old farmhouse in the country - how you would adore this house! - and read hard books that forced me to grapple with issues of faith and my relationship with God. In the hubbub of the last year, it has been hard to silence the constant clamor - to find the solitude necessary in the present to relive the ever-receding past. The highlight of these past 14 months has been two pilgrimages to my personal Mecca: Prince Edward Island. 

When I was 7 months pregnant with Elissa and you asked where I would go if I could go anywhere in the world, I interrupted you as the words "Prince Edward Island!" bubbled over in a gut reaction of ecstasy. Images of sun-kissed red cliffs rising above sapphire seas, rimmed by fields of rippling grass dotted with lighthouses and lupins had inspired my dreams since I was five years old and my mom first showed me the film Anne of Green Gables. And of course you, still courting me after four years of marriage and determined to make all my dreams come true, immediately planned a surprise trip and presented me with our "Adventure for Kindred Spirits" itinerary the day before we left! You whisked my heavily pregnant self through the Northeast and around the entire Island in just four days, leaving us both dizzy and in love with this secluded corner of paradise. 

It was everything I'd ever dreamed of, and so much more. Last summer, when I thought I would crack under the strain of solo parenting and attempting to turn life right-side up again, I could think of only one reprieve - going back to the blue and white inn nestled at the back of Memory Lane, next to the famed Green Gables. I wrote to the inn owners and was immediately welcomed by a veritable flock of kindred spirits. It was the perfect balm for my shattered heart, and I spent June, July and August on an island of grief, surrounded by a sea of tears that enveloped me the moment I ventured into the solitude that unlocked all the suppressed pain of the last two years. I felt you here with me, Nate, in a way that I never had before. You were with me along the stretches of lonely beach, biking on red dirt roads, washing dishes in our tiny cottage, wading through the fields of waving grass. I buried myself in journals of our relationship, losing myself in a love story that was so riveting I couldn't put it down - though of course I knew the beautiful-turned-horrific end. Then, at the cries of our waking daughter, I surfaced to the brutal slap in the face of reality. Every day the shock, the disbelief, the gut-wrenching pain of your absence that literally left me writhing. I didn't know how to live, Nate. The numbness of that first year was a mercy compared to the agony of coming face-to-face with you gone, because how could I survive it? And yet, I was grateful for every tear, every sob wrenched from deep inside me - because, my love, you deserve all the tears in the world. I would cry an ocean of them for you; I would drown in their salt just to find you again. 

If I could sum up last summer in a sentence it's this: longing for life to be over so our family could be together again. Your absence colored everything; the beauty surrounding me was tinged with the awful reality that I must explore our paradise alone. I could scarcely breathe through the suffocating loneliness. 

This year, I've been back in Prince Edward Island for the past month. I purposefully got off social media so I could clear my head and immerse myself in the beauty of this present moment. And Nate - to tell you this feels much like a confession - I have realized just how far I've come in a year. I had to plumb the depths of my grief and despair, wring every ounce of anguish out of my severed soul before I could begin the slow crawl to the surface. To breathe, and live again. The revelations are slow in coming, and they take my breath away with all the force of a gut punch. One day, watching Elissa in her bath, I realize: I feel happy more days than I feel sad. Squealing down a steep hill on our bike, the wind whipping our faces, I realize: I'm excited about my future with my girl. It's going to be beautiful, albeit broken. It's going to be good. I'm trying to shake the guilt of finding joy and hope in a world without you, because Nate, I know that's what you want for us more than anything. A lifetime of grieving you feels appropriate, but frankly, you would hate me for it. 

If you could tell me one thing on this day, the third anniversary of your death, it would be to LIVE. To make my mark in the world. To give Elissa the love and adventures and zest for life that she would have had with two parents. And Nate, more than anyone else I've ever encountered it was you who taught me how to live full, live well, live extraordinary. It was you who raced through life at breakneck speed, seeing and doing everything, and yet skidded to a halt at the perfect moment to just be. To inhale a beautiful sunset, letting the last rays of yet another unforgettable day wash over you. To stare at a rumbling ocean for hours, thinking deep thoughts that no one but God was privy to. To gather me up in your arms - baby belly and all - with no other intent than to drink in my nearness. And here, on this island, I feel it again. We are one. You have taught me and shown me about life, and for the rest of mine I will strive to apply your lessons and teach them to our daughter. 

At the end of our whirlwind babymoon three years ago you stood on the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia, breathless with excitement as we watched the sun set and I froze beside you. Tonight Elissa and I will climb back to the top of Cadillac. We will watch the sun go down and imagine what it would be like to stand on that mountain with you, nestled on either side of the man who is the center of our world, warmed by the fever of your intoxication with life and its beauty. We adore you, Nate. Passionately, relentlessly, forever. You will always be our knight, our muse, the one who has gone before us to exemplify a life well-lived. 

Cadillac Mountain, July 2014