Homosexuality, marriage, abortion, charismatic gifts, capital punishment, women in ministry, prophecy, Jesus… you name it, people are curious (for various reasons) to know what the Bible has to say-or not to say-about the topic.

Scot McKnight, professor of religious studies at North Park College in Chicago, Illinois, begins his forthcoming book The Blue Parakeet (Zondervan, October 2008) making this very observation. But the truth is, to address these issues, we all pick and choose what portions of the Bible to follow. Most of us, to some degree or another, give lip service to the Bible’s teachings in favor of convenience, political correctness, or social sensibility. Recently I received a copy of Dr. McKnight’s book and over the next few posts we’ll be reviewing the book by major section and concluding with my general impressions and thoughts.

Chapter one of The Blue Parakeet is about how we read (and thus interpret) our Bible and how we choose which parts of it to pick and choose. In chapter two, McKnight outlines three ways people read their Bible:

1. Reading to retrieve: we either want to follow everything, word for word, the Bible says (which turns out to be impossible), or we only salvage some of what it says (and thus let culture dictate what we keep).
2. Reading through tradition: we interpret the Bible only as did the historic Church or we jettison the Church and instead interpret only as “we’ve always done it.”
3. Reading with tradition: we understand how the Bible has been historically read but we do not allow ourselves to be boxed in to the past.

Ultimately, McKnight’s thesis is to promote this third way of reading the Bible. He writes, “We need to have profound respect for our past without giving it the final authority… the final decision should always rest with the Scripture,” (pg. 35, italics original).

McKnight’s thesis seems to be right on the money. What Protestants must realize, and what McKnight highlights, is the inherent risks the Reformers ran in giving the Bible to the public: in our own hands, the message of the text can be skewed, forgotten, or diminished if we move away from the orthodox tradition we have inherited. The Bible is applicable for today, but we must see it in the interpretive historical light it belongs.