A Critical Review of “Inspired” (Rachel Held Evans)
“Inspiration, on both the giving and receiving end, take practice and patience. It means showing up even when you don’t feel like it, even when it seems like no one else is there. It means waiting for the wind to stir. God is still breathing.” (p.xxiii)
Inspiration: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans is the best resource I’ve read to date on the inspiration and authority of Scripture. It’s truly a remarkable hermeneutical resource, and it’s written to the layperson in simple, beautiful words. Held Evans was a master of writing to the average person; she made dense theology accessible to the regular Sunday morning worshipper and the curious soul who had never attended church.
She walks us through the genres of the Bible, naming them in fresh ways that cause even the regular reader of the Bible to take a second look:
Origin Stories (Genesis)
Deliverance Stories (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy)
War Stories (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings)
Wisdom Stories (Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Song of Songs)
Resistance Stories (the Prophets)
Gospel Stories (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John)
Fish Stories (the miracles of Jesus)
Church Stories (Acts, the Epistles)
Glancing at the table of contents, you quickly realize that Held Evans is a storyteller. And what a storyteller! She begins each new section with an imaginative story, for example, a young boy hearing the creation story from his parents while living as exiles in Babylon, or a young female slave hearing the letter to the Ephesians read in her small house church for the first time.
Held Evans brings the Scriptures to life in a way that few authors can. I love the Scriptures already, and she helped me love them just a little bit more.
She frankly admits that “faith is not a passive intellectual assent to a set of propositions. It’s a rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred, all-night-long struggle, and sometimes you have to demand your blessing rather than wait around for it. The same is true for Scripture. With Scripture, we’ve not been invited to an academic fraternity; we’ve been invited to a wrestling match… to a dynamic, centuries-long conversation with God and God’s people that has been unfolding since creation, one story at a time.” (p. 28)
She confesses that she still doesn’t know all the answers; her humility is refreshing. There are issues, like the conquest of Canaan, that she continues to wrestle with, but she writes about her struggle boldly, concluding, “I’m in no rush to patch up these questions. God save me from the day when stories of violence, rape, and ethnic cleansing inspire within me anything other than revulsion… For those of us who prefer to keep the realities of war at a safe, sanitized distance, and who enjoy the luxury of that choice, the Bible’s war stories force a confrontation with the darkness. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.” (p. 79)
In the current volatile political climate of the US presidential election, I can’t help but feel that her words are prophetic. The Bible is prophetic; this is the purpose of its stories, which is Held Evans’ entire point.
We see ourselves in the story, for good or bad; we identify with wrestling Jacob, idolatrous Israel, the bleeding woman who desperately clung to Jesus, and the church who is struggling to make sense of Jesus’ commands in a politically and economically turbulent time.
She holds back no punches when she says, “There’s no denying that the very things for which Israel was condemned by the prophets—gross income inequality, mistreatment of immigrants and refugees, carelessness toward life, the oppression of the poor and vulnerable, and the worship of money, sex, and violence—remain potent, prevalent sins in our culture.” (p. 127)
Ouch.
The Scriptures are a kaleidoscope illuminating bits and pieces of God’s character as he revealed himself to us through his people, Israel. They also reveal the places where the people of God have failed to be the good news of God to the world, both historically and today.
Therefore, reading the Bible well doesn’t mean reading it literally, but reading it literarily. That is, we read it with its genres in mind and consider what poetry, prose, narrative, prophecy, and law have to say about God’s revealed character to Israel, and thus, the church. We don’t read the Psalms the same way that we read the Gospels, or the Letters the same way that we read the Prophecies. Different genres have different purposes, as Held Evans outlines so nicely for us.
We learn about who God is through the stories of the Bible. How he created the world, delivered an entire nation from slavery, gently pursued them even as they rejected him, healed the blind and lepers, touched the outcasts, and spoke against the Jewish religious authorities. She quotes Peter Enns, “The Bible looks the way it does because, like Jesus, when God shows up, it’s in the thick of things” (p. 207).
But that’s not the end of the story, and I’m glad she doesn’t end there. Held Evans is careful to link this Great Story to our own story: “The task of theology,” she says, quoting author and scholar Gregory Mobley, “is the linking of our individual story to the biggest story we can imagine” (p. 218).
We study this story and retell it. We identify places where we can see ourselves, our family members, and maybe our nation in it. As we read it over and over, we learn to trust the God of this Story more, even as we may wrestle more deeply with the issues within it. Because it’s messy. Humans are messy. This is where God decided to show up—with us in our mess.
It’s a beautiful story!
If I have one criticism about the book, it’s only that its lyrical storytelling prose may not resonate with some readers. Some people prefer it said analytically or in a more black-and-white way. Some may take offense to the license that Held Evans takes to retell biblical stories.
She admits to resonating with midrashic interpretation, an ancient Jewish form of reading Scripture, which can sometimes be known for taking liberties with the text. However, she points out that midrashic interpretations “introduced me to a whole new posture toward Scripture, a sort of delighted reverence for the text unencumbered by the expectations that it must behave itself to be true. For Jewish readers, the tensions and questions produced by Scripture were obstacles to be avoided, but rather opportunities for engagement, invitations to join in the Great Conversation between God and God’s people that has been going on for centuries and to which everyone is invited” (p. 23).
For those of us who are accustomed to black-and-white modernist thinking, Held Evans’ style might feel a little ‘out there’ and possibly mildly heretical. It’s not, though. It’s deeply rooted in Scripture and in the ancient traditions of the Jews to whom Scripture was written for and about in the first place.
She writes from a fundamentalist-turned-Episcopal perspective, one that I resonate with, therefore, I understand her interpretive lens. Scripture is so much more than a rulebook or manual for life; it is the narrative that informs the very fabric of our world, down to the choices that we make at work and home every day. As NT Wright says, Scripture is a five-act play, the fifth act which we are currently living out as we await the consummation of creation when Christ returns.
I highly recommend Inspired to anyone searching for resources on the inspiration and authority of Scripture. For all pastors, laypeople, and theologians alike.
