Peter Enns
Sublime to ridiculous
Diary of a Mad Mother-to-Be? Hello?!
I don’t think I would ever have picked it up had I not been feeling mentally overloaded from some pretty heavy duty research on the subject of inspiration – yep, sorry, I still haven’t got to the bottom of this issue yet. But I have now finished – Yeaaahhh!!! – the pile of books I’d accrued, and I’ve got a pretty daunting set of notes. I’ve also produced a fair old stash of knitting for refugees which helped me stay focused as I read. Next step is to try to make sense of this mass of material – which may or may not be coherent. Time will tell. 
Suffice to say the subject’s not as straightforward as I was led to believe in my youth.
Anyway, I really, really needed some light relief, so Laura Wolf‘s fresh and funny diary of a young woman, Amy, who’s recently taken on a rather third rate job writing high quality drivel promoting some pretty iffy minor celebrities, fitted the bill.
Amy and husband, Stephen, have been happily married for a couple of years. He’s set up a rather unstable computer business and they’re living in a very cramped flat with Amy’s sister camping on the sofa in their living room. So life isn’t exactly plain sailing.
Then Amy has a eureka moment and decides to have a baby.
Either we’re having a baby or getting a cat. And since our lease says no pets, I guess it’s a baby!
Her world is turned upside down. Even conceiving isn’t the doddle she’s been led to believe it would be – teenagers manage to do it all the time, don’t they?! Not so Amy. She turns to the pregnancy guide Baby How, Baby Now, and starts to chart everything. She’s determined to be a model mum-to-be. As a compulsive list-maker she catalogues the 63 tasks she needs to accomplish before she gives birth. Who knew you needed quite so much equipment? What’s a layette when it’s at home? And what exactly is a Kegel exercise? She acquires information and advice from assorted sources, both welcome and unsolicited, but nothing really prepares her for the reality. Who knew that sushi and aspirin would be off-limits? Who knew that certain smells – broccoli?! – would become acutely obnoxious? Since when did Joe Public feel perfectly entitled to pat pregnant bumps without even seeking permission? She compiles another list of things no one ever warned her about. It grows steadily as the months pass. Assorted colourful friends and relations flit in and out of her pregnancy sending her moods on helter skelters.
It’s fun, it’s light-hearted, it’s feel-good, and it did the trick. Equilibrium restored. I shall return to ‘inspiration’ with renewed energy and hopefully a better grace! Thank you, Laura Wolf.
Still searching!
It wasn’t a deliberate intention to write a series of posts leading one from another; it just happened. Questions led to more questions and the search for enlightenment is still on. But I confess, I’ve got rather bogged down.
After reading Rachel Held Evans‘ book, Inspired, I was taken to another one on my shelf, The Bible Tells Me So, by Peter Enns, which in turn took me to Inspiration and Incarnation also by Enns. The first two were easy reading and I skimmed along quite happily, making some progress in sorting this vexed issue out in my head. But the third one is proving much harder work – I even took a sneaky peak at the summary review of the book to give me a leg up! I’m persevering thus far but … will this be one of those rare occasions where I quit before the end, I wonder?
As Captain Lawrence Oates the Antarctic explorer said before walking out into a blizzard and certain death, I might be gone some time.
Whatever, this will be the last post on this topic so rest easy. Lighter times ahead.
The Sin of Certainty
I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood lately in my reflections on my sister’s life. One important element in that upbringing was faith. We were brought up to espouse a fairly narrow set of doctrines, and to live within pretty rigid boundaries. This gave us a very firm set of moral values but, I now think, shrank God to a size our finite minds could comprehend.
In my adult life I’ve unravelled all this and now have a very different understanding of what’s important, and what holds up in the face of the challenges and tragedies that come our way in our day to day existence. And perhaps it’s this journey that inclined me towards a book by Peter Enns called The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires our Trust more than our ‘Correct’ Beliefs.
Peter Enns is an American Biblical scholar and theologian, and he has a delightfully readable, self-deprecating style of writing. He, too, grew up within a narrow set of beliefs, and indeed, was so wedded to his particular brand of Christianity that he studied theology and taught it with absolute confidence for decades. But gradually life knocked holes in his certainty about what was right, and this book explains why his outlook is now much changed.
You need to read the book to appreciate the evolution of this thinking, but suffice to say he asks how we can reconcile belief with the absurd reality of life? He doesn’t shy away from the big fundamental issues like:
– the collision of the Bible and science
– the portrayal of God as violent, vengeful, blood-thirsty, immoral, mean, and petty in the Bible
– the problem of injustice and suffering
– the issue of many faiths and denominations
– the problem of Christians treating each other badly
… and so on.
Questions that will resonate with many of us, I think.
And Enns concludes that there is no way our human minds can come up with all the answers. Far from being encapsulated in a creed, God is shrouded in mystery. Rather than relying on our own intellectual capacity to explain and believe, he concludes, we need to learn to trust. Trust in a God who is infinitely bigger and more awesome and more loving than anything our finite minds can conceive of. And trust regardless of what challenges come our way. Trust anyway. What’s more, he discovers, letting go of certainty can lead to us being much nicer people! And hey, I’m all for moving towards a world populated by nicer people.
Maybe my purpose on earth isn’t to be the thought police first and love others after all their ideas line up as they should. Maybe my first order of business is to risk my own sense of certainty about God and love others where and how they are no matter how they do on my theology exam.
I’ve hopefully learned (feel free to keep me honest here, people) that being right and winning isn’t the endgame here. Loving as God loves is.
He has replaced the old arrogant way of buttoning everything up, with a different way of re-imagining thinking about God and faith. A seven point plan:
1. Embrace modern understanding.
2. Accept we can’t get our minds around God.
3. Let go of certainty.
4. Adjust our expectations about what the Bible can deliver.
5. Be aware of God-moments.
6. Realise God is not a crutch.
7. Accept that struggling with faith is normal.
Right book, right place, right time.
Curiously, it’s one of the few books I’ve read twice!