52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
38. The blue parakeet: rethinking how you read the Bible.
“Blue parakeets” are passages in the Bible that challenge our traditional reading of the Bible — analogous to a pet bird showing up in your backyard among the sparrows. McKnight advocates for the current vogue in Biblical hermeneutics (rightly so, don’t get me wrong) of ‘Bible as Story,’ (or, more precise, a series of individual retellings of the overarching Story) and for reading the Bible with (rather than through) tradition, so that God is allowed to speak to today’s culture in our language. His point is that we already adapt large portions of the Bible, even if we espouse ‘biblical inerrancy’ — very few of us follow all of the pre- and proscriptions in the Bible. Coming to terms with proper discernment of scripture requires acknowledging our adaptations and striving to understand how God wants to speak to us today. This was one of The Englewood Review of Books‘ Best Books of 2008 For The Life of The Church, and it’s worth reading.
