Esther is one of only two books in the Bible to be named after a woman (the other is Ruth). It is also one of only two books in the Bible not to explicitly mention God (the other is the erotic poetry in the Song of Songs). Spending a bit of time with Esther helps us to confront unjust leaders, even today.
By now almost everyone has heard the news that Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Education Ryan Walters is requiring that the Bible be taught in every public school from grades 5-12.
There is not much in this world that I would call a miracle, but the world itself definitely is. It’s existence and ability to support and sustain the life that it has is simply improbable. How dare humanity so go about to indifferently as we are destroying a miracle.
I have spent my life working on the inside of organized religion, even though my love/hate relationship with most God-talkers makes me an outsider.
The Bible is a mirror. In it, we see the structure of our psyches. We see the scaffolding of our spirituality. What makes the Bible holy is not that it is the “word of God”, but rather that so many of its passages offer such breathtakingly vivid reflections of the journeys of our souls.
Now, more than ever, is the time to express our faith forthrightly, publicly, and invitationally.
As if we don’t already have enough problems in this country, the last few years have seen us slipping closer and closer to becoming a “post-truth society.” Facts just don’t seem to matter anymore.
One of the many ways to read the Bible is to view it as God’s autobiography.
Using the word “god” to conjure an all-powerful deity with biblically-proportioned prejudices and condemnations is dramatically different from using the word “god” to call us to a “no matter what” sort of love. I talk about this a lot. About ditching archaic language. About reading more than just the Bible or not reading the Bible at all.
The Bible has a political agenda. Even with all the different writers who contributed to different books, there is a clear biblical bias against the powerful using their places of authority to step on those who are already suffering. That’s political.