Writer Liz Charlotte Grant describes how she has moved beyond the literal and “inerrant” way she was taught to read the Bible through her religious upbringing:
I used to read the Bible in binary terms—inerrant versus errant, fallible versus infallible. This led me and many American Christians to believe that the whole of our spirituality could be slotted into binaries. We could read a passage either rightly or wrongly. Our interpretation could be true or false. We ourselves could be classed as good or bad, damned or redeemed, friend or enemy. Reading the Bible like this also encouraged us to believe in one single interpretation, … the “plain reading,” because God would not try to keep Godself from us. We flattened the Bible for the sake of simplicity.
Grant discovered a way to reapproach the Bible with curiosity and respect for its history:
I believe this book still deserves our attention—even when it refuses to submit to our age’s demand for historicity, even if we readers leave literalism behind. Truth is not the same as fact. To refuse ourselves these stories is a death by starvation. These spiritual stories sustained our spiritual forebears; without these stories, I suggest that we cannot maintain the imagination required to nurture belief….
I am returning to the Scriptures … but I am reading it slant. I attend to the sky and the ground with free-ranging curiosity, comingling origin stories from science and art with the Bible’s account of God’s first encounters with humanity in the book of Genesis.… Rather than flat-footed rejection, I encourage wandering. Our best questions often sound like doubts, yet I believe curiosity is the most reverent stance a human can take. Wandering itself is a spiritual discipline. Far from losing faith, I have found that wandering has allowed me to find it.
I believe the Bible does have the power to tell us what God is like, even to introduce us to the Creator. But I read the Bible differently than I used to. I move more cautiously, listening closely to a variety of careful scholars—theologians, archaeologists, philologists, linguists, and manuscript critics. I am determined to be patient and humble. I myself am a learner, not a scholar….
You too have permission to question the sacred without fearing a backslide into unbelief. Knock loudly. Listen to your gut and let your tears run. Reject answers that do not admit complication. Seek the resonance at the base of the story. The seeking is the point. Because there, in your wandering, God is.
Reference:
Liz Charlotte Grant, Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible, (Eerdmans Publishing, 2025), xvii–xviii, xix–xx.
Image credit and inspiration: Image credit and inspiration: Paréj Richárd, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Our relationship with the Bible may shift—sometimes clear, sometimes mysterious—yet still holding the promise of a greening, growing thing.
Story from Our Community:
I am anticipating this year’s focus on Scripture. After leaving an evangelical community after forty years, I stopped reading Scripture on a regular basis because of lingering interpretations that I found disturbing. I am looking forward to developing another set of eyes and ears for listening to the Word of God in my heart. Thank you for your help as I move forward in my spiritual walk!
—Andrea C.
