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that it provides enough of a cultural library for us to begin to encounter the living God. If we only had the middle of Job, we wouldn’t encounter God the way we do when we also have the beginning and end. If we only had the end, we wouldn’t encounter the meaning inherent in the beginning and middle. We wouldn’t have enough. But when we have them together, in all their sizzling, strained, sparking, squirming tension—Job’s agonizing cries, his friends’ pious and sorry attempts at comfort and correction, and God’s final assault with questions—we have enough.

Again, if we want the Bible to be a constitution, it isn’t enough. It isn’t at all. Nor is it enough as a road map for successful living, as a set of blueprints for building a life, institution, or nation, or as an “owner’s manual” with handy-dandy information guaranteed to make your life run smoothly, all at your fingertips, as easy as one-two-three, yes-sir-ee. But as the portable library of an ongoing conversation about and with the living God, and as an entrée into that conversation so that we actually encounter and experience the living God—for that the Bible is more than enough.

This approach, if you haven’t realized it yet, defies both conservative and liberal categories. On the one hand, the conservative constitutional view claims to put us “under” Scripture’s authority, yet I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed that some of the most pompous and defensive people anywhere are found among those who stand and shout, “The Bible says!” Nor am I the only one to notice that before the Bible can serve as a constitution, it must be interpreted as one, which renders amazing authority to those interpreters. The Bible they want to put us “under” tends to be the Bible as they have interpreted it, which unsurprisingly means we are actually under their authority as they stand over us with Bible in hand. On the other hand, the liberal view reacts strongly against all this conservative sleight of hand and largely resists using the language of authority at all when it speaks of the Bible. The liberal view ends up bequeathing a great deal of authority to liberal scholars who deconstruct the Bible, just as the conservative view does to the scholars of its tribe who constitutionalize it.

Perhaps the approach I’m recommending is no better in this regard. But here’s what I hope: that this approach will not try to put us under the text, as conservatives tend to do, or lift us over it, as liberals often seem to do. Instead, I hope it will try to put us in the text—in the conversation, in the story, in the current and flow, in the predicament, in the Spirit, in the community of people who keep bumping into the living God in the midst of their experiences of loving God, betraying God, losing God, and being found again by God. In this way, by placing us in the text, I hope this approach can help us enter and abide in the presence, love, and reverence of the living God all the days of our lives and in God’s mission as humble, wholehearted servants day by day and moment by moment. Even now.

PART III:

THE GOD QUESTION

10

Is God Violent?

It would be nice if I could blame all our problems on the Greco-Roman captivity of the biblical narrative or on a constitutional reading of the Bible, but it’s never that simple. True, when I began breaking faith with Theos and returning to the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus, a boatload of problems drifted away. And more problems disappeared for me when I allowed the Bible to be a portable library rather than a timeless constitution. But I have to admit that there are problems in the Bible as library too. Real problems. Big problems. In previous chapters, we saw God as the good creator in Genesis, as the compassionate liberator in Exodus, and as the reconciling king, lover, and father of all people in the prophets. But as a serious reader of the Bible, I’m still a little uneasy, because I know about some of the other images of God that are also found in the Bible—violent images, cruel images, un-Christlike images.

Now, before