The Blue Parakeet
I have to admit I was hesitant to read The Blue Parakeet. I have decidedly placed myself (I think) in the non-Emergent (or even emerging) camp. I don’t believe that the Emergent discussion is as biblically accurate as most Emergents claim it to be. For more information, see my review of Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be). Better yet, see the book itself. Order it from Amazon here.However, the Emergent discussion is in the forefront of Christianity today. And I need to know what it is, and what it claims, so that I can compare and contrast that with what I find in God’s Word, and in time-tested authors. And so I picked up this book.
And frankly, it really ticked me off.
Usually when I read, I read with a highlighter in hand, or a pen nearby. Lines become yellow, and notes are jotted into the margins based on the things I find there that challenge me to think, or that I find especially appealing, or that seem to be God speaking to me right off the page of the book.
That was not the case with The Blue Parakeet.
Oh, I filled the margins. And I highlighted the snot out of several chapters. But this time, my highlights and notes were on things I found that I disagreed with, that I think are wrong, or that tempted me to take the book outside and throw it into the middle of the road to be driven over by the logging trucks that frequent highway 17 in front of our church.
You might say, “But Jeff, you started this book with preconceived notions about the Emergent philosophy.”
Yes I did. And I knew going into this book that Scot McKnight is one of the loudest voices in the emerging camp. (And I also know that I’m using emerging and Emergent interchangeably. The two are not dissimilar.) But I decided that I would read his new book, with one ear listening for nuggets of truth that God may be speaking through McKnight, the other listening for the opposite, in a devil’s advocate fashion, knowing that I would find a lot that I disagreed with. And I did.
The subtitle for The Blue Parakeet is what caught my eye initially: Rethinking How You Read The Bible. My first thoughts were excited; we need to continually examine how we approach God’s Word, keeping it fresh and relevant to our lives. But I disagree with McKnight that the entire Bible is story. That idea is decidedly Emergent, and blatantly false.
While a novel idea (pun intended), I do not think that we need to read the Bible as story. It’s simply too easily dismissible from our lives that way. Story does not convey the authority that God’s Word has over our lives, an authority that McKnight dismisses outright as unacceptable in his view of story.
But, even if we read the Bible as story, there still needs to be a level of authority and submission, concepts that McKnight dismisses as reading the Bible through the lens of tradition.
But without God’s authority, I can choose to ignore the story, allowing it no relevance in my life.
God’s Word is full of commands. This denotes authority and submission, or else I become a lawbreaker, and go against God’s established authority.
These are ideas that McKnight ignores completely when reading the Bible as story.
Here’s a synopsis of McKnight’s ideas about reading the Bible as story. In his first section, McKnight identifies five approaches that Christian use in reading (read “mis-reading”) the Bible. He views the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation as one story, with each of the 66 books of the Bible as wiki-stories – an individual, yet unique retelling of the main story.
And as we read this story, we have to identify how we are to live out the story in our lives. What parts of the story do we need to live out “in our day, in our way”? And what parts apply to the past, such as “in Moses’ day, in Moses’ way”?
In his second section, McKnight discusses what it means to “listen” to the Bible. He sees the ultimate goal (correctly, I believe) of reading the Bible in order to know God. We need to have a relationship with the God of the Bible, not the Bible itself. Simply put, McKnight identifies the goal of listening as right living. This is an idea that I can agree with.
McKnight’s third section, on “discerning”, is where he instructs us on how to determine if, or how, a certain passage of Scripture can be put into practice today. How do we practice this “in our day, in our way”? And he addresses several biblical issues which require discernment, and attempts to reconcile them through reading the Bible as story. Each of these seven passages could have volumes written about it, discussing various ways of interpretation. Yet McKnight covers them all in just a few pages.
The fourth section is, by far, the longest part of his book. In this section, he departs from “Rethinking How You Read The Bible” and begins a tirade on the church’s traditional views of women. While much good is said here, and his research is thorough (at least on this topic, other sections have been disappointedly thin on the research), McKnight allows his liberal theology to shine through.
This entire section is a platform for McKnight to display his views on the role of women in the church. And while his research on some of the passages in question is enlightening, his conclusions are predictably disappointing.
All together, The Blue Parakeet was a very frustrating and disappointing read for me. Oh, sure. There were a few spots here and there that challenged my thinking, if only to reinforce why I disagreed with what I read. But most of this book was simply a platform to air his views on the role of women in the church. Very disappointing.
However, I believe God still can use this book to teach. But I believe that the reader must have a high level of maturity before attempting so, in order to separate the truth from McKnight’s opinions. One such kernel of truth is found on the very last page of the book, in the summary chapter. It reads:
We must read the Bible with all the tools of history and language that we can muster, but a proper reading of the Bible is attended by the Spirit, who will transform us, guide us, and give us discernment to know how to live in our world.
May it be so.
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