What Now?

What do we do with the Bible now?

This is week 1 of a new series called What Now. Our faith community is exploring what we do with all these things as we reconstruct a healthier christian spirituality. This is my sermon from yesterday.

What Now? — Week 1

What Do We Do with the Bible Now?

Overarching Series Takeaway: Wherever you are, your story with God is still unfolding.
Week 1 Takeaway: The Bible is a place you learn how to wrestle, not a place you go to stop thinking.

Good morning, friends. If we haven’t met yet, my name is Joe, and I’m one of the pastors here.

Before we get into where we’re going this morning, I want to name something right away because I think it sets the table for everything else. There are a lot of different reasons people walk into a room like this.Some of you come in with confidence. Some of you come in carrying questions you don’t know where to put. Some of you are tired. Some of you are hopeful. Some of you are trying to hold onto faith. Some of you are steady in your faith. Some of you are trying to figure out whether the version of faith you were handed was ever worth holding onto in the first place. Some of you are here because something in you still wants God, even if a lot of the old answers no longer work.

So, as we start this new series, we’ve been asking how do we speak to all of you in a way that helps without overfocusing on one group.

Today we’re starting a new series called What Now? The whole point of this series is right there in the title. What do we do with all of this now? What do we do with faith now? What do we do with Scripture now? What do we do when the certainty we were given no longer feels honest, but cynicism doesn’t feel honest either? What do we do with all these things that are being weaponized right now?

I want to give you the one sentence that will carry this whole series, not just this sermon. Wherever you are, your story with God is still unfolding.

If you are deconstructing, your story with God is still unfolding. If you are reconstructing, your story with God is still unfolding. If you were never fully constructed in the first place, if you were raised around church but have only recently started asking better questions, your story with God is still unfolding. If you’ve been following Jesus for a long time and have learned that growth never really ends, your story with God is still unfolding. This series is here because questions are not the opposite of faith, they are part of how faith becomes honest, part of how it matures, part of how it grows up.

This morning we’re starting with the Bible.

For a lot of people, the Bible is not only sacred. It is also tangled up with fear, confusion, control, and harm. It is the place where many of us first encountered God, and for others, it is the place where they first learned to be afraid of God. For some, it became a source of comfort. For others, it became a tool used against them. For many of us, it has been both at different times.

The question this morning is not abstract. It is personal. What do we do with the Bible now, when the old framework doesn’t hold? Or how about this question for those that hold the Bible in its proper place... what do we do with it now, when we’ve seen the damage done in its name? Or, what do we do with it now, when we still want Scripture to matter but no longer want to hold it the way we were taught?

Here’s the bottom line for this sermon as we explore those questions. I want you to hold onto this as we do the hard work: The Bible is a place you learn how to wrestle, not a place you go to stop thinking.

That is where we’re headed. That is the invitation. Because a lot of us were never taught to wrestle. We were taught to repeat. We were taught to defend. We were taught to smooth out tension, harmonize every difference, and treat questions like threats. We were taught that certainty was the same thing as faithfulness and that the Bible existed to settle everything once and for all.

This series begins here because what we do with the Bible shapes so much else. It shapes how we understand God, how we understand ourselves, how we understand other people, and how we decide what faithfulness looks like in the world. If the framework is off here, it will eventually show up everywhere else. So this morning is not just about correcting an idea. It is about making room for a different posture, a more grounded, more mature, more faithful one.

The question underneath this sermon is simple enough to say, but it carries a lot. If the Bible is not inerrant in the way many of us were taught, is it still meaningful? If it doesn’t function like a perfect answer book, can it still be sacred? If it contains tension, different voices, different agendas, different ways of telling truth, then what are we supposed to do with that?

For a lot of people, those questions feel destabilizing at first. That makes sense. Many of us were taught to believe that the Bible had to be one thing in order to matter at all. It had to be flawless, airtight, unchallenged, internally seamless, historically precise in the modern sense, and immediately usable as an answer for whatever issue was in front of us. If it wasn’t that, then the fear was that everything would collapse.

But sometimes what collapses is not faith. Sometimes it is just the frame.

The Problem: Biblical Inerrancy

So let’s name what we’re actually dealing with here. Biblical inerrancy.

Some of you know that word. Some of you don’t. But even if you’ve never used it, there’s a good chance you’ve lived inside it. It’s the idea that the Bible is without error in everything it says. Not just spiritually meaningful, but factually, historically, theologically airtight in every single detail.

This framework starts shaping the way you read, usually without you realizing it.

You don’t just read the Bible anymore… you manage it. You feel responsible for it. You try to make sure nothing falls apart. So, when you come across something that doesn’t quite line up, you don’t stay with it... you fix it, explain it away, or move past it quickly. And instead of letting the Bible open something up, you learn to shut it down.

A lot of us were handed that way of reading so early that we didn’t even know it was a framework. We thought this was just Christianity. This is what the church has always believed. But it hasn’t.

This version of inerrancy is actually a modern response to modern questions. When the Enlightenment pushed people to ask harder questions about history, authorship, science, and how texts were formed, new tools started to emerge. People began studying the Bible the way they studied other ancient texts. That’s where textual criticism comes in... basically comparing manuscripts, looking at differences, asking how the text developed over time, trying to understand what’s really there instead of what we assume is there.

And instead of doing the harder work of wrestling through them, a lot of fundamentalist movements doubled down. They said there are no errors, no contradictions, no tension. Everything fits. Everything has an answer. And in 1978, that posture was formalized in what’s called the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which drew a clear line and said this is the only correct way to understand Scripture.

So now you’ve got this modern framework sitting on top of an ancient text, and the tension is inevitable. Because the Bible doesn’t behave like a book that’s trying to keep itself perfectly aligned. It reads like a collection of people trying to make sense of God in real time. And that’s where things can get complicated.

You start reading the flood story, and you’re told God regretted making humanity and decided to start over. So now you’re left asking—did God make a mistake? Is God changing his mind? What do we do withthat? Then you get to the Tower of Babel, and God comes down and says, essentially, “If they keep going, nothing will be impossible for them.” There’s almost this sense of concern… even fear. And now you’rewondering—wait, what does that say about God? Then you run into 2 Kings 3:27, where a king sacrifices his son on the city wall, and the text says that after that, Israel withdraws. No explanation. Just… that happens. So, what do you do with a moment like that if everything is supposed to fit neatly?

Or take Paul and James. Paul spends a lot of time saying you are justified by faith apart from works. Then you get to James, and he says pretty directly, faith without works is dead… a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And now you’re sitting there thinking, okay… which one is it? And if your framework says there can’t be tension, then you’re forced into some pretty creative explanations to make those two voices say the exact same thing.

Now you might be thinking... what’s the big deal? What does it matter if people operate within this framework? Great question. I’m so glad you asked me.

This way of reading Scripture forms our moral imagination. It shapes what kind of God people believe in, what kind of power feels right, and what kinds of actions can be justified in God’s name. Once that kind of belief system takes hold, it does not stay on the pages.

If you’ve been taught that God commanded violence then, it becomes a lot easier to see violence now as something that can be righteous. When domination carried out in God’s name was framed as faithful then, it becomes something that can be justified now. And when the nation of Israel gets flattened into a simple model instead of a people inside a long, complicated story, those same ideas start getting mapped onto modern nations, modern conflicts, and modern power.

You can hear this kind of understanding in the way Secretary of War Pete Hegseth talks. After a military operation against Iran, he said, “God deserves all the glory,” and described those strikes as happening under “the protection of divine providence.” He’s talked about God watching over us, about God being behind what we’re doing. That is not hyperbole. It is his framework. He literally sees these actions as God ordained.

And it doesn’t stop with war. You see it in the kind of voices being elevated around him. He shared content from pastors saying women shouldn’t have the right to vote. You see the violence around who should and shouldn’t belong in this country, about centering one version of Christianity in a way that forces everyone else out. Look at Project 2025, the push for Christian nationalism, the way policy and faith are being fused together... it starts to form a really clear picture.

These beliefs don’t stay on the page. They move into policy. They show up in pulpits, in press conferences, in decisions that affect real people. And it’s always the same groups who feel it first and hardest; immigrants, women, queer people, people of other faiths, anyone who falls outside the version of the world power is trying to protect.

At some point, you have to ask what kind of God that leaves you with. Because if God calls me to do the most monstrous things in the name of God then there can only be one conclusion... God is a monster.

But what if this isn’t the way to read and understand the bible? What if we’re not just misreading the bible but misrepresenting god? If the only options we’ve been given are blind acceptance or total rejection… those aren’t real options. There has to be another way to understand what we’re holding in our hands.

All Scripture Is God-Breathed

It’s at this point that some of you might be thinking...but what about 2 Timothy 3? What about when it says that all scripture is “God breathed”? That’s a great observation... well done. A lot of people go to that passage immediately if anything or anyone challenges inerrancy.

So let’s read through it and really sit with it for just a moment.

2 TIMOTHY 3:16 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...”

The phrase “God-breathed” is actually just one Greek word: theopneustos. And here’s what’s interesting... it only shows up here in the New Testament. You don’t see it used anywhere else to help fill in the meaning. There’s no long list of examples where you can go, “Oh, this is exactly what it means in every situation.” Which should probably slow us down a little. It’s not a common word. It’s more open than that.

It doesn’t mean dictated word for word. It doesn’t mean dropped from heaven untouched by history, personality, culture, or limitation. It doesn’t mean inerrant in the way modern fundamentalism defines it. The image is much more alive than that. Something breathed out by God. Something carrying breath. Something filled with life.

And in Scripture, breath is never just breath.

Breath is what God gives to dust in the beginning, and suddenly it’s not dust anymore. It’s alive. Breath is tied to Spirit, to presence, to movement, to something that can’t be controlled but can be experienced. It’s not static. It’s not mechanical. It’s not something you can pin down and contain.

So, when this passage says Scripture is God-breathed, it’s not describing a text that is frozen in perfection. It’s pointing to something that carries life within it. Something that can still move, still speak, still form people. Which means the question shifts a little.

Instead of asking, “Is every detail technically flawless?” the question becomes, “What is this doing in us?”

What the Bible Actually Is

In the Old Testament book called Genesis chapter 32, we see a story that illustrates this perfectly.

Jacob is one of the central figures in the Hebrew Scriptures. His story is complicated from the beginning. He’s a manipulator, a survivor, someone who spends most of his life figuring things out as he goes. By the time we get to this moment, he’s on the edge of a major turning point. He’s about to face his brother again after years of separation and conflict, and the text says he ends up alone in the middle of the night.

And then something happens.

It says a man comes and wrestles with him until daybreak (Genesis 32:24). This struggle takes place all night. At one point it says, “When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip… and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint” (Genesis 32:25). And even then, Jacob refuses to let go. He says, “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:26).

And what he gets at the end is not an answer. He gets a new name. The text says, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:28).

That name, Israel, literally means “one who wrestles with God.” The name that defines him… the name that defines the entire people who come after him… is rooted in struggle. And he walks away with a limp. Which means that the wrestling changed him, marking him forever. This moment is showing us something about the kind of relationship with God these scriptures are inviting us into. A relationship where struggle isn’t a problem to solve; it’s part of the encounter.

Because the Bible is not a single flat book. It’s a library.

It’s a collection of stories, songs, poems, laws, laments, genealogies, letters, parables, wisdom sayings, prophetic visions, and shared memory. It was written over long stretches of time by different people in different places, shaped by real conditions... empire, exile, worship, grief, failure, hope, liberation, loss.

I need you to hear me when I say this; that doesn’t make Scripture smaller. It makes it more honest.

Nothing about real life is flat. Faith isn’t flat. Community isn’t flat. Wouldn’t it be strange if the sacred writings of a people wrestling with God came to us neat and uniform and perfectly aligned at every point? That’s not what we have.

What we have is a text that holds multiple voices because life does. It preserves disagreement because communities do. It reflects growth because people grow; cultures shift, and understanding deepens over time. You can watch generation after generation trying to make sense of God, covenant, justice, survival. Sometimes what they say is incredibly clear. Sometimes you can feel the limits of their time all over it.

And instead of that being something we need to fix, it might be something we need to learn how to read with more maturity.

Once you start seeing the Bible this way, you stop asking it to do things it was never trying to do. You stop flattening poetry into bullet points. You stop reading wisdom literature like it’s a law code. You stop assuming every passage is trying to say the same thing in the same way. You stop confusing what the Bible describes with what it endorses. You stop pulling verses out of their world and then wondering why they don’t hold up well in ours.

Scripture begins to feel less like a conclusion you’re supposed to memorize and more like a conversation you’re invited into. Not a free-for-all where anything goes, but an ongoing, honest engagement with God and the world. You start to notice that the Bible itself is already doing this. Job pushes back. The book of Ecclesiastes refuses easy answers. The prophets confront power. The gospel writers tell the story of Jesus in different ways because meaning matters more than uniformity. Paul writes to real communities, trying to help them discern how to live this out in real time.

Just look at how Jesus handles these texts. He doesn’t shut that wrestling down. He steps right into it.

For example, in Matthew 5:38–39, he says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer… if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

Jesus isn’t ignoring Scripture. He’s engaging it. He’s reimagining it. He’s taking something that had been understood one way and opening it up in a deeper direction. Which means this kind of wrestling… this kind of reimagining… this kind of honest engagement… isn’t a departure from the Bible. It’s exactly what the Bible models.

From Jacob... Israel, the one who wrestles with God… to Jesus saying, “You’ve heard it said… but I say to you” … Scripture has always been forming people who can live inside that tension without losing themselves. Which is why we keep coming back to this: The Bible is a place you learn how to wrestle, not a place you go to stop thinking.

So, maybe those moments where things feel unclear… where the text doesn’t resolve cleanly… what if that’s not something going wrong? What if that’s you stepping into the story in a way it was always meant to be lived?

What now?

Which brings us back to the original question... what do we do with the Bible now? If it’s not the inerrant, airtight answer book we were handed… then how do we actually read it?

I think it starts with learning how to ask better questions. Not, “How do I prove this is right?” but “What does this produce?” What happens when this interpretation is lived out in real life? Does it move people toward love, honesty, freedom, mercy, and justice? Or does it lead toward fear, control, exclusion, and harm?

You’ll also begin to notice the Bible doesn’t just sit there waiting to be understood. It reads you. It reflects back what you bring to it. If you come looking for control, you’ll find passages that seem to support it. If you come looking for certainty you can weaponize, you’ll find verses that can be shaped into that. If you’re trying to justify harm, you can build a case for it. But if you come looking for healing… for wholeness… you’ll find that too.

Which is why people can read the same text and walk away with completely different understandings. It’s not just about what’s in the Bible. It’s also about what’s happening in us when we read it.

You can start paying attention to your own reaction as you read. What draws you in? What bothers you? What feels alive? What feels off? What are you hoping to find before you even start? If you let it, Scripture has a way of bringing those things to the surface.

You can slow down and stay with a passage instead of rushing past it. Let it sit. Let it interrupt you a little. Let it ask something of you instead of immediately trying to get something from it.

When you’re not sure what to do with a passage, zoom out before you zoom in. Ask what’s happening around it. Who is this written to? What’s going on in their world? Why is this being said here? How does this connect to the larger story?

And keep coming back to that question: what kind of fruit does this produce? If I live this out, who do I become? How do I treat people? What kind of world does this create around me? That’s a grounded way to engage Scripture.

For so many, this will be super helpful because the questions don’t just disappear. But with this approach, they stop feeling so terrifying. The pressure to get everything right begins to fall away. Instead of feeling like the Bible is something fragile you have to hold together, it becomes something that can meet you where you are.

Wherever you are, your story with God is still unfolding.

That’s where I want us to land this morning. Not with everything resolved. Not with every tension tied up neatly. But with a different posture. A little more aware. A little more honest. A little more open to what God might be doing in you through this.

The Bible is not a place you go to stop thinking. It is a place you learn how to wrestle.

A place where people have always brought their real lives... their fear, their hope, their questions, their joy... into conversation with God. A place where Christ still meets people and shows us how to live with courage and clarity in the middle of this.

If you’re deconstructing, keep going. If you’re rebuilding, keep going. If you’re just beginning to ask better questions, keep going. If you’ve been doing this a long time and realizing there’s still more ahead of you, keep going.

So, as you step into this week, don’t rush to tie everything together. Don’t force clarity where it hasn’t come yet. Stay in the wrestle. Because what’s at stake here is not just how you read a book. It’s the kind of person you’re becoming as you read it. It’s the kind of God you come to believe in. It’s the kind of world you help create by the way you live it out. The Bible is not a place you go to stop thinking. It’s a place you learn how to wrestle. And that wrestle, over time, is what forms you into someone who can live with honesty, with courage, and with love.

If you’re new, I end each gathering with a time of observation and reflection. I do that to allow you the time to listen to your body and to listen to the spirit. The band is playing so it’s not an awkward silence. Lights will be turned down to help create intimacy and I will ask a few questions to guide that process. So, just like we began our gathering, I invite you to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Allow yourself to be drawn into this moment.

• When you think about the Bible, what has it felt like for you—pressure, confusion, comfort, resistance? What comes up honestly?

• As you read or hear Scripture, what do you notice it reflecting back to you about yourself—your fears, your hopes, your assumptions?

• Where in your life might you be trying to force clarity or certainty, instead of staying present in the wrestle?

• What would it look like this week to engage Scripture with curiosity instead of control… to let it form you instead of trying to master it?

Prayer

God who meets us in the struggle, you are not distant from our questions. You are not threatened by our uncertainty. You are not waiting for us to get everything right before we come close.

You meet us the way you met Jacob... in the dark, in the tension, in the places where we are still trying to make sense of it all.

And so, we bring you our questions. We bring you the parts of Scripture that have confused us, hurt us, shaped us, and stayed with us. We bring you the ways we’ve tried to hold everything together… and the places where it’s already come undone.

Give us the courage to stay in the wrestle without shutting down. Give us the wisdom to recognize what leads to life. Give us the humility to see ourselves honestly as we read.

And as we engage these words again, teach us how to listen. Teach us how to discern. Teach us how to live in a way that reflects your love in the world. Not because we have all the answers, but because we trust that you are still with us in the questions.

Give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Bring comfort to the afflicted, healing to the broken and freedom to the chained. In the name of Jesus, the one who held Scripture with wisdom, who lived it with compassion, and who showed us what it looks like when love is the lens. Amen. And so it is.

Benediction

As you go from this place,
may you go with the awareness that you are not alone in the wrestling.

May the Christ who stood within the tradition
and still said, “you’ve heard it said… but I say to you,”
go with you into every question, every tension, every place where you are still becoming.

May you have the courage to stay open
when it would be easier to shut down.
May you have the wisdom to recognize what leads to life.
May you have the grace to let yourself be formed, slowly and honestly, over time.

And when you find yourself searching for certainty,
may you remember that you are already held.

Go in peace,
go in courage,
and go in the love of Christ
who meets you not at the end of the journey,
but in the middle of it.

Amen.

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