How (Not) to Read the Bible with Dan Kimball

The Alli Worthington Show

I started this podcast to create a safe space for exploring our faith, our beliefs and new ideas. Well, friends, this conversation with Dan Kimball delivers and I can’t wait for you to hear it!

Dan is an author who focuses on encouraging us to think creatively about breaking the negative stereotypes both the church and Christians face. And our conversation today is inspired by his new book, How (Not) to Read the Bible: Making Sense of the Anti-women, Anti-science, Pro-violence, Pro-slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture.

During our time together, we talk about the dangers of using Scripture out of context and what we can do when someone uses the Bible against us to discredit our beliefs. Dan also gives us a helpful lens to use when reconciling challenging parts of the Bible, especially violence and slavery, with our faith.

And don’t worry, we wrap up the episode with some fun talking about why Scripture is anti-shrimp, how to get a donkey into a bathtub, and if there are really unicorns hiding out in the Bible.

In this episode, Dan and I talk about:

1. The truth of God’s character and how we can learn from everything in the Bible, including themes of violence
2. How information is our strongest defense when it comes to safeguarding our faith, especially for younger generations
3. Seeing the Bible as a library instead of a science manual and how we can use it to inform our modern-day questions, but not necessarily answer them.

Favorite quotes:

1. Most Christians are not prepared to address the not-so-nice sounding bible verses. We just have to be prepared.

2. We have to know how to read our bible, the good verses and the crazy sounding verses. 3. Never read a bible verse by itself.

4. The bible was written to other people. But it was written for us so we can understand who God is.

5. We have turned the bible into a science manual trying to get our modern day questions and that wasn’t its intent.

Links to great things we discussed:

1. Dan Kimball 2. How (Not) to Read the Bible: Making Sense of the Anti-women, Anti-science, Pro-violence, Pro-slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture3. The Fat Man4. The Chosen 5. Greenland

6. Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy With God7. Skull Socks

8. Max Richter Sleep Album

9. Standing Strong

Hope you loved this episode! Be sure to subscribe in iTunes and slap some stars on a review! :)

xo,

Alli