Controversial evangelical Bible scholar, well-known blogger and podcast host from the Bible for Regular People, and author of The Bible INFORMS ME So and The Sin of Certainty explains the fact that Bible is not an instructions or rule book but a powerful learning tool that nurtures our religious growth by refusing to provide all of us with easy answers but instead forces all of us to obtain wisdom.

For many Christians, the Bible is a how-to manual filled up with literal truths about belief that must definitely be strictly about How the Bible REALLY WORKS: In Which I Explain How An Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse Book Qualified prospects Us to Wisdom INSTEAD OF Answers-and Why That’s Great News followed. But the Bible is not static, Peter Enns argues. It does not keep easy answers towards the perplexing questions and conditions that confront us inside our daily lives. Rather, the Bible is certainly a dynamic device for study that not merely offers an great quantity of insights but provokes us to discover our very own answers to spiritual questions, cultivating God’s intelligence within us.

“The Bible becomes a confusing clutter when we expect it to operate being a rulebook for faith. But when we permit the Bible to determine our goals, we find that Wisdom, not answers, may be the Bible’s true subject matter,” writes Enns. This variation, he points out, is important since when we arrive towards the Bible expecting it to be always a textbook designed by God to provide us unwavering certainty about our beliefs, we are in fact creating complications for ourselves. The Bible, quite simply, actually isn’t the issue; having the incorrect expectation is exactly what interferes with our reading.

Rather than taking into consideration the Bible simply because an ancient publication weighed straight down with problems, flaws, and contradictions that must definitely be defended by modern readers, Enns presents a vision of the holy scriptures mainly because an motivated and empowering resource to help us better learn how to live like a person of trust today.

How the Bible Actually Works makes clear that there surely is no one ideal way to learn the Bible. Moving us beyond the damaging idea that “getting right” may be the most important measure of trust, Enns’s freeing method of Bible study helps us to rather focus on pursuing enlightenment and building our romantic relationship with God-which is exactly what the Bible was made to do.