Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How We Read the Bible, by Scot McKnight

With his book Blue Parakeet, Scot McKnight builds an ancient-future perspective of theology and hermeneutics. As in A Community Called Atonement, McKnight is tackling the issue of hermeneutics, particularly the interpretation of blue parakeets (passages that create tension, division, and bewilderment) with a common sense approach that does not navigate the either/or of modernism but instead follows a pragmatic post-modern view, what some call critical realism, that sees the necessity of tackling issues with a “both/and” perspective.

The thesis of McKnight’s book, which he works out in the large case study on women in ministry, is that:

A) We recognize we read the Bible through our own particular lens…or, we are all pickers and choosers, and we must accept this as fact.

B) We need to read the Bible with tradition, not through tradition.

The first part of McKnight’s thesis is why he wrote the book, because he believes
many of us want to know why we pick and choose. Even more importantly, many of us want to know how to do this in a way that honors God and embraces the Bible as God’s Word for all times.

The second part of McKnight’s thesis is what makes this an ancient-future book and not a paleo-orthodox book or a book praising theological nostalgia. McKnight desires that we stop thinking of tension as a bad thing, and when we see and read blue parakeets in the Scriptures, we should not ignore them or distort them or cage them within our traditions. Instead, McKnight desires we live in the tension and wrestle with the blue parakeets. We are to have a deep love and respect for church tradition, according to McKnight, but sometimes, because of the biases or particular lens of the church fathers and mothers, tradition has gotten it wrong, and thus we must move from ancient to future, which are our own interpretations and living-out of blue parakeet passages. Like in A Community Called Atonement, where McKnight uses the analogy of a golf bag with many clubs that all serve a purpose as a metaphor for how we should look to the many different definitions of Christ’s atonement as a mosaic “both/and” and not as a divisive “either/or,” Blue Parakeet is a book which demands we recognize the difficulty of biblical interpretation and have the humility to recognize our personalities and church cultures play a role in interpretation. And with that humility, we must come alongside tradition and wrestle through issues in interpretation from the early church to the present. Most importantly, McKnight give license for differing with Christian tradition when the blue parakeets come to be seen in a different cultural context.

McKnight is not straying into liberal “la-la” land here—-he is being highly critical and humble in the case study on “Women in Church Ministries Today” presented at the end of the book. In making a case for “Women in Ministry”, McKnight is presenting a balanced perspective for cultural criticism and the Spirit’s role in interpretation with tradition and not through tradition. In order to engage in this broadened hermeneutic, McKnight stresses we must not read the Bible as system but instead as a Story made up of stories (wiki-stories, in McKnight’s parlance). The re-orientation from the Bible as systematic theology to the Bible as Story made up of little-stories encourages us to approach the Bible orally, and not textually. Instead of analyzing the Bible, we should listen to the Bible and discern wisely from it. The Bible is not to be analyzed for data but to be critiqued and applied as a Story of stories that enriches and informs how we live out our personal story. This narrative theology McKnight espouses is both topical (connecting the stories of women throughout the Bible to inform our hermeneutic and application of the Story to ecclesiology) and canonical (viewing books of the Bible as wiki-stories of the authors, i.e. reading John’s works together and Paul’s works together).

The book is a quick read, and McKnight writes in a pastoral and conversational tone that invites the less nuanced or “learned” reader into complex theological and hermeneutical discussions without all the jargon (jargon I have been using in this review!). The accessibility of this book, along with its even-keel approach to interpretation as a humble act of navigating the waters of tradition, culture, individual, and the Spirit, makes it a must read for those of us who are wondering what to do with all those blue parakeets, and when McKnight tells us we cannot do much but try and be happy in trying, we can find the contentment of living in a Story that informs our own stories which are still being written.

* * *

The Burnside Writers Collective fundraising campaign has begun. If you can donate a few bucks, we’d be grateful. Here are a few ways we want to say thank you:

Donations under $35: A Burnside sticker.

$35-$59: A copy of Donald Miller’s upcoming book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and a Burnside sticker. The book is due out in 2009. We may or may not be able to get copies before they hit the stores. Regardless, you’ll get when we get it.

$60-$99: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, a book of your choice penned by one of our contributors* (list of options below) and a Burnside sticker.

$100-$199: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, two books penned by our contributors, a Burnside t-shirt and a Burnside sticker.

$200 or more: An autographed copy of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, all five books penned by Burnside contributors, a Burnside t-shirt, a Burnside sticker and your name listed as a Burnside Patron on the new site.