Inspired

Been learning about Catholicism, Orthodoxy, some heretical sects, and adding this progressive author to the list now. Reminds me a lot of Bema Podcast-style interpretation. She says the church “is a group of people caught up in the same story, with Jesus at the center,” although her prose at times leans more into coddling our humanity than actually centering God. Nonetheless, I'd recommend this to anybody needing a sort of biblical refresh, a sort of interpretive jostling

If this hadn't been a library book, I would have highlighted like, half the book. Instead, I had to make do with taking pictures of the passages I wanted to remember.

I love the compassion with which Evans wrote about tough topics. Lately I've been wrestling with the idea that so many people can have such vastly different, deeply-held beliefs of what the Bible says, in exact opposition to others' deeply-held beliefs. It makes me crazy, a little bit.

This book was like Evans wrapping her arm around my shoulders, with a calming shhhh, and telling me it's okay and let's look at all the hard parts, and sure let's roll our eyes at Paul a little bit before we start reading his mail to other people, and let's talk about what good news actually is and who it's for.

There's so much goodness in here, and I think the biggest takeaway I need to remember from this is that context matters. The Bible is a library of books in a variety of genres, and the authors had different reasons for telling the stories the way they did. Divinely inspired does not have to mean literally true, or literally historical.

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On war stories: “God save me from the day when stories of violence, rape and ethnic cleansing inspire within me anything other than revulsion. I don't want to become a person who is unbothered by these texts, and if Jesus is who he says he is, then I don't think he wants me to be either. There are parts of the Bible that inspire, parts that perplex, and parts that leave you with an open wound. I'm still wrestling, and like Jacob, I will wrestle until I am blessed. God hasn't let go of me yet.” - page 79

“Job's friends make the mistake of assuming that what is true in one context must be true in every context - a common error among modern Bible readers who like to trawl the text for universal answers. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar said some ‘biblical' things in their remarks to Job, and yet in that context, those things weren't true. We should be wary then, of grand pronouncements that begin ‘The Bible says.' Where? To whom? In what context? Why?” - page 98

The gospel writers using storytelling to talk about Jesus: “Sometimes those gospel stories step on your toes. Sometimes they challenge or annoy. Sometimes they force you to confront your privilege, your pride, or your lack of imagination for just how reckless and wild and indiscriminate the Holy Spirit can be.” - page 155

When talking about Jesus' miracles and how he went out among historically “unclean” people: “The apostles remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget - that what makes the gospel offensive isn't who it keeps out, but who it lets in.” - page 186

This was really, really good. I am buying a physical version because I need to add post its, highlight, and go back to this. Might reread soon

If you have looked at the Bible closely and found the conflicting parts hard to reconcile, Rachel Held Evans is the person you need to read. Evans has grown up with the Bible and its stories; the Bible was her default setting for all of life as a child. But, as she grew older, the brutalities of the God-led battles along with the cruelties inflicted on women and slaves and other groups began to bother Evans more and more.

This is the story of Evans wrestling with God. It's clever and thoughtful and, above all, it's true. Evans encourages us all to wrestle with God along with her. It's a worthy task.

I have found it hard, over the years, to love the Bible. It seems to have become a battering ram, bashing “truth” over the heads of those who don't conform. A surgeon's knife, excising the ones who “don't belong”. Or, more recently, a paintbrush, to whitewash the horrors being perpetrated in a coat of “God said it”. It has been hard, for me, to reconcile this Bible with the faith I have come to profess.

So thank God for Rachel Held Evans. With a writer's ear for a beautiful phrase, and a theologian's intellect and curiosity, Evans delivers an ode to the believer who just can't quite make it all make sense. This book gave me permission to jump into the struggle, feet first, and the strength to believe I will come out the other side. This is a magnificent work, and one I know I will return to over and over again.

June 2018:
In short, I loved it!

August 2018:
I loved it so much that I already read it again!

May 2022:
I think this is my first time re-reading this entire book since Rachel died. A small group I'm in at my church internship has been going through this book, most of them for the first time.

It's such a great book. She was such a great writer. It still hurts to have to use the past tense to talk about her.

Short Review: I have read all of Rachel Held Evans' books. This is probably my favorite or maybe second after her first. Inspired is really a book about hermeneutics, how to read the bible, for people that do not use the word hermeneutics. One of Evan's real skills is taking academic theology and presenting it for lay people. This is a needed pastoral skill.

Inspired is a constructive book. She has had some complaints about the questions and deconstruction of her other books (I don't think it is bad to be deconstructive at times), but this is clearly a book that is attempting to build.

As with any author, I don't agree with her take on everything here, but this is a solid book. My favorite part is the discussion of Jesus' parable and his incarnation. Her passion and faith really show there and I think that those that are not fans of hers particularly need to read that section.

My longer review (nearly 1000 words) is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/inspired/

Inspired?

When I read Rachel Held Evans' Searching for Sunday a couple of years ago (technically listened to Evans herself read it to me via Audible as I ran many miles along the Lake Murray Dam outside Columbia, SC), I was blown away. Here was someone who was roughly my age, who had grown up in roughly my part of the country (within a couple hundred miles as the bird flies), and who was speaking to one of the things I have been doing for seemingly twenty years already – searching for a way back into the church that she cherished as a child, but that she had grown disillusioned with as an adult. I didn't agree with her ultimate conclusions then (read the book to find them for yourself), but at least the fact that she did find answers gave me hope that one day I too might find what I've sought for so long.

As a storybook from Evans' perspective, INSPIRED is an interesting work, told in the familiar cadences of Searching for Sunday. If you like the writing style of that book, you will like the read of this book from that perspective at a bare minimum. And INSPIRED raises some good points, at least a few of them likely not intended by Evans in the way I took them. For example, she speaks of prophets saying “”In other words, the prophets are weirdos. More than anyone else in Scripture, they remind us that those odd ducks shouting from the margins of society may see things more clearly than the political and religious leaders with the inside track. We ignore them at our own peril.”.

Unfortunately INSPIRED also has some severe problems beyond political disagreements between myself and the author. (Indeed, if those were the only issues with this book, it would merit a five star rating, as I refuse to mark a book down simply because I disagree with its author politically.)

Evans claims that Hagar, concubine of Abram and mother of Ishmael, is the only person in the Bible to name God, which even a cursory Google of the topic (much less having much of the same type of church upbringing as Evans herself) will show is patently false. Hagar's El Roi, cited by Evans, is one of about a half dozen versions of the El name of God, and there are at least that many versions of the Jehovah version of the name of God. Indeed, I've listened to thousands of sermons from some of the most respected preachers and theologians of the modern American age, from Billy Graham to Adrian Rogers to James Merritt to more obscure people like my former pastor and former President of the Georgia Baptist Convention Wayne Hamrick. I've read at least some of the works of respected theologians of any era of Christendom, from Saint Augustine to Saint Francis of Assisi to Charles Spurgeon to CS Lewis and many, many others. And as best I can tell at this time – I've got an outstanding question to even more learned friends on Facebook that I posted over night – this “Hagar is the only person to name God” myth began with a book by feminist “scholar” and storyteller Charlotte Gordon that was published nearly a decade ago and has apparently risen to prominence in progressive/ feminist Christian circles in the time since.

Evans also claims Biblical authority for the Jewish tradition of midrash, which is effectively ancient Jewish fan fiction regarding the people and events of the Torah (effectively the first few books of the Christian Old Testament). She makes the collectivist claim that it is impossible to be a Christian on your own, despite literally millions of Christians who refuse to attend church for any number of reasons proving her wrong on a daily basis. And she apparently has never heard of Marvin Snurdley, and thus insists that letters written to particular groups and individuals 2000 years ago are authoritative for us now, despite having lost any sense of true context millenia ago.

Finally, throughout the book Evans insists that storytelling is paramount, rather than accuracy or getting to a point. Indeed, at one point she point blank says that when someone asks you what the gospel is, you should respond with a story. In her case, involving maybe her grandmother or her parents' expensive kitchen chairs. NO! When someone asks you what the gospel is, you respond with: The gospel is Jesus Christ, and the fact that he was God made flesh who lived the life we cannot then died the death that we no longer have to. THEN we can launch into any number of stories about Jesus, all revolving around that central theme.

It is for these reasons that INSPIRED ultimately became disappointing for me. It is still a great example of storytelling, and for that reason alone it is a worthy addition to any bookshelf. It doesn't really try to make any particular point, and its citations are few and far between, so there really isn't anything to argue from that perspective. It achieves at least one goal Evans seems to have – to start a conversation – admirably and is to be commended for that at minimum. So yes, absolutely buy this book. Despite the critiques above, it really is a great read. Just be prepared to take it with a fair amount of salt.