An Excerpt From My Book

Friends!

My book, “(Re)Thinking Everything: A Journey From Black and White Thinking to a World of Color” will be available for preorder (via Amazon) on December 25 and will release on my 40th birthday, January 25th.

I’ve talked about it a lot on the vlog and podcast, but not too much here and so to help spread the word a bit I’ll be posting some excerpts on the blog every week.

Here’s one from chapter 3, “Setting the Bible (and Ourselves) Free”. Feel free to share it far and wide.

More to come.

Much love,

❤️🙏🏻✌🏻🤙🏻

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"As I mentioned earlier, it was easy to hold on to doctrines and theologies that excluded others when I was surrounded by people who held to those same doctrines and theologies. And so while I was in Bible College and seminary and employed by churches in various kinds of internships and leadership roles, it was super easy to see my Bible as a weapon – a shotgun of sorts that I loaded with various Bible bullets to fire at people who seemed to be living or thinking in disobedience to what (I THOUGHT) the book taught and the rest of my tribe believed.


Atheism – here’s a bullet for that.


LGBTQ – here’s a bullet for that.


Sex before marriage – here’s a bullet for that.


Not going to church – here’s a bullet for that.


It was easy to load the Bible shotgun with various Bible verses that were often lifted from their context and shoot them at people who were different than me; it was easy to do that because everyone around me seemed to be doing the same thing and as a pastor or leader in the church, people often looked to me as the “protector of the truth” – the person who was assigned by God to have the answers, share the answers, and defend God’s Word against all of the lies of the world.


I was expected to know my stuff.


I was expected to be vocal.


I was expected to be authoritative.


Some might think that’s a gross exaggeration, but I even remember in seminary one professor teaching us about something regarding the Bible and how he would use a particular verse to “nail his opponents hides to the wall” (direct quote) because, really, this is how we were taught to use the Bible – yes, it was to be used to uplift and encourage, but it was mostly a sword that was to be used to defend and attack and to win battles and arguments.


That bubble burst, though, when I went to work for Apple and (as I mentioned in chapter 2) was forced into proximity with people who were different than me. Not only did I share a locker with an LGBTQ person, but I was trained and mentored by people who were Atheists and Agnostics and Muslims and Jews – people who I knew about in theory when I was in the church, but people I now worked with and became friends with at Apple.

And with that I came face to face with a very difficult realization – in the church and in seminary it was easy to aim my Bible shotgun at imaginary people while I wrote term papers and preached sermons, but it felt wrong and even evil to aim that same shotgun at a real live person who shared a locker with me or talked at the breakroom table about their lack of faith in God due to their traumatic childhood.


How could I shoot Bible verses at my friends?


How could I lob Bible grenades at these people who have stories?


How could I tell my LGBTQ friends that they’re detestable because some random book named Leviticus that was written thousands of years ago supposedly says so?


How could I tell my Atheist friend who acts more like Christ than my Christian friends that he’s going to hell because he only behaves in the right ways instead of also believing the right things?


How could I believe that the guy in the church who beats his wife and drinks himself to sleep every night is somehow more holy than my Atheist Apple friend who spends her weekend feeding the homeless, but doesn’t believe in God?


The church bubble had been burst and with that burst came the thought that maybe my hermeneutics professor was right all those years back – maybe the Bible really is something more than myself and all the other students assumed it was."

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(** NOTE - the sheep in the image below was designed for the release of the book by my friend David Hayward (aka the Naked Pastor. Check out him and his work HERE.)

Glenn Siepert