Better Ways to Read the Bible

Overview

"Better Ways to Read the Bible" by Zach W. Lambert was such a breath of fresh air to read. In this book, Zach strikes a really nice balance between thoughtfulness and thoroughness but not at the detriment of easiness to read. There are many quotes incorporated from other authors, and citations from outside sources that were included in reference to his own arguments. All in all, this book feels thought provoking yet easy to read and digest.

Details

Rating

I give this book 5/5 stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Organization

Something that stood out to me while reading is the structure of the book and how it's organized. I ended up really enjoying how the book was arranged into its various parts and chapters. I also really liked the pace of the book. No chapter was too long and each chapter had a clearly defined purpose. The book is overall separated into 3 parts:

1) We All Have Lenses

2) Lenses That Inflict Harm

3) Lenses That Promote Healing

Part 1 – We All Have Lenses

The first part explores the fact that we all have lenses through which we operate in the world, and this is especially true when we interact with religious texts like the Bible. Due to there being different interpretations or approaches to reading the religious text, Zach sets the stage for the arguments to be made in the parts that follow.

Part 2 – Lenses That Inflict Harm

In Part 2, Zach carefully and honestly explores the various lenses and interpretations of the Bible that end up causing injury. Those lenses are: Literalism, Apocalypse, Moralism, and Hierarchy.

If you grew up similarly to me, or in a tradition that teaches one or many of these lenses, you might struggle throughout reading this part of the book. If this is you, I urge you to take your time and at the very least consider the arguments Zach presents in this section as equally justified.

Part 3 – Lenses That Promote Healing

Finally, Part 3 counters the lenses that cause injury presented in the previous part, and explores the lenses that promote flourishing and healing. Those lenses are: Jesus, Context, Flourishing, and Fruitfulness.

This part aims to give readers a new set of lenses to help guide them towards a new understanding and into flourishing and healing.

Quotes

I don't want to spoil all of the good content, but I did want to offer a few quotes that stuck out to me towards the beginning of the book:

• "The churches they joined and the leaders they followed weaponized the Bible in ways that hurt them and the people they loved. Millions of these defectors are not rejecting Jesus; they are rejecting the use of Jesus' name for the purpose of domination and oppression. They aren't rejecting the Bible; they are rejecting harmful ways of reading it."
• "Could I have been reading it wrong? Could the pastors and teachers I had been trained under have been reading it wrong too? What if the problem wasn't the Bible but the way I'd been taught to read it? As I began to consider these questions, something started to shift. Like ice thawing in the spring, it happened slowly at first, but I began to realize that even though I believed the Bible was inspired by God, the interpretations I'd been given were not."
• "...thirty-nine of my forty seminary classes were taught by White men. Regardless of our racial or cultural heritage, we all have biases– lenses through which we interpret the Bible. That's not the problem. The problem is pretending that one group of people doesn't bring any biases to their Scripture reading while everyone else does...The perspective of a straight, White, able-bodied man is assumed to be normative; everything else needs a disclaimer."
• "We are all interpreting. We make interpretive decisions without even realizing it, based on a combination of who we are, what we've been taught, where we grew up, and how we see the world."

Recommendation

I recommend this book to anyone who takes the Bible seriously and wants a different set of lenses to read the Bible from the ones they were given.

Disclaimers

• I am grateful to have received an advance copy of Better Ways to Read the Bible through NetGalley, and I participated in the book's launch team group.
• I was not compensated for my participation in the launch team as it was fully voluntary.