God said it, I believe it, that settles it for me!
Author Scot McKnight, in “The Blue Parakeet” (Zondervan, 2008), argues that this time-honored approach to the Bible is inadequate. Its weakness is exposed when we stumble upon the “blue parakeets” of Scripture.
McKnight recalls the afternoon he watched the sparrows that frequented his backyard react when a blue parakeet (escaped from a neighbor’s cage) arrived. The sparrows were terrorized. They scattered in fear. They didn’t know what to do with such an unfamiliar bird.
Similarly, McKnight proposes six examples of items/themes in Scripture that terrorize the God-says-it,-I-believe-it,-that-settles-it-for-me!- Bible-reading method: keeping the Sabbath (Ex. 20:9-10), giving a tithe of our resources, washing feet (Jn. 13:14), the use of charismatic gifts like prophecy and speaking in tongues (1 Cor. 12-14), selling/giving up our possessions (Lk. 12:33; 14:33), and “contentious issues” such as evolution, Calvinism, war, abortion, and homosexuality. When it comes to these and similar issues, the fact that God says it doesn’t quite settle it. For example, few Christians wash feet. Few give up all their possessions.
These are our “blue parakeets.” We don’t know what to do with them. We don’t know what to make of them. They cause us to “pick and choose” which parts of Scripture to put into practice and which parts to ignore. And they call, McKnight argues, for a new way of reading the Bible.
(to be continued)
