Yes, it is Monday. Dan Brown, the author of The DaVinci Code and others, released his newest book The Lost Symbol a week ago. I bought it on Wednesday and finished it on Friday of last week, wrote this review, and scheduled it for Monday so you had more time to finish it.

::::: NOTE: This review has FULL spoilers. Stop reading, bookmark the page, click the star in Firefox, in Google Reader click S (to star it) then J (to keep going), and come back when you are done. :::::

While I’ve warned about spoilers, this is not a review of the plot, the characters, who is who and what plot twists there are. However, scattered through the book and culminating in the final chapters is a concept that needs review and a certain amount of hacking. Read on for more.

::::: YES, this review has FULL SPOILERS. STOP READING NOW! :::::

When I entered the ministry, I got a greeting card from a friend’s parent who had watched me grow up.  It was a picture of a sun obscured partially by a cloud with the text “Seeing is not necessarily believing. But believing is seeing.”  On further inspection, of course, the cloud had an image of Jesus in it.  For those that believe, it seems, it is easier to see Jesus in everything (like potato chips, wall grime, or grilled-cheese sandwich [/snark]).

A common theme through Brown’s books has been secret knowledge hidden in plain sight.  In art, architecture, and literature, the illuminated read the same words or view the same pieces that the masses see, but see something incredibly different.  Once illuminated upon the quest, the hero Robert Langdon builds upon each piece of human art until they all culminate in one expression of secret knowledge…hidden in plain sight. 

While the cynic in me says that artwork (written, built, painted or sculpted) is evocative of many responses that can easily be crafted into one tangled thread by a gifted storyteller,the Book has several themes that I want to draw out about secret knowledge that are important to talk about.

The “Lost Symbol,” (the subject of the book) in the end of the novel, ends up being something right in front of our eyes, in most every hotel in the nation, in every pew in the world.  The Lost Symbol ends up being a reference to the Bible, which contains secret knowledge that can transform our world.  The novel uses several examples of Scripture which, “properly” viewed, parallels advances in science.  If we “believe” and “see” then the secret knowledge will redeem humankind and lead us to heights unknown.  According to the novel, this hidden knowledge is in plain sight, and yet has remained only a trickle of revelations over the last 2000 years.  By study of the text, we can seek the divine being wrought within us.

But in my view, even if we accept the novel’s premise as fact, I feel that the novel fails to accurately place the Lost Symbol.  The failure of the antagonist in the novel (in a sense…you read the book, right?) is taking as literal that which is metaphorical.  However, the failure of the novel is taking as metaphorical that which is, in my mind, literal.  That is, expressed in letters, in words.

I don’t think the Bible has secret knowledge ala The Bible Code, the secrets hidden in the Gnostic Gospels, etc.  But I do think secret knowledge comes forth from relationships.

• Some secret knowledge comes from conversations between humans and the Divine (mystics come to mind). 
• Secret knowledge comes from mentoring relationships and transformative experiences. 
• Secret knowledge comes forth like a dam breaking when an epiphany shines a light in a counseling session.    

In short, The Lost Symbol ends on the claim that the divine is located within the person, light within dark, spirit within flesh, which is a gnostic idea.  In contrast, I believe that the divine is located in the space between two persons in relationship.  In this way, the divine truly is, in the original Hebrew, elohim, the plural form of God, who made humanity “in our image” (Genesis 1:26), and thus the locus of divine transformation is not within one entity but between two entities.  

It is this location of the divine that transforms our relationships, that makes us truly evangelists not seeking individual redemption but in the shared space of conversation and conversion lies the true hope for all of humanity’s redemption.

It is this location of the divine that makes religion so hard as we have to deal with different icky people with weird beliefs and backwards thinking that somehow, in some fashion, transforms us.

Finally, it is this location of the divine that makes today’s political climate of yelling, of mock protests, of calculated outrage, of marginalizing dissent so dangerous.  When we seek to end the conversation, finding the divine, unlocking the secret knowledge that will redeem our species edges further from our grasp.

Whew.  Part 2 is tomorrow.  Thoughts today?

It’s Friday and I just finished Dan Brown’s recent book The Lost Symbol that came out on Tuesday.

I have to say I enjoyed the merriment and semi-plausible story that is Brown’s forte, and no, my faith is not shattered nor have I become gnostic.

However, I have been writing. I’ve got 2-3 blog posts already written and lined up for Monday. So your weekend reading is to finish the book so we can talk. It will have spoilers. That’s how we can talk.

So read up this weekend, and we’ll see if we can have reasonable conversation on Monday.  Enjoy!

I recently finished Diane Butler Bass’s A People’s History of Christianity. Much like BU Professor Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, Bass focuses on the undercurrents of tradition alongside the established story that “everyone knows” about Christianity.

In doing so, she makes two distinctions from the outset. First, there are at least two different stories of Christianity to be told.

• The first is Big-C Christianity, full of all the triumphilism and conquest and Jesus that we know from history and Sunday School.
• The second is Great-C Christianity, for “Great Commandment”, that traces the stories of people who followed the Greatest Commandment in various ways without subscribing to Christendom.

Bass claims neither is better; she articulates that Triumphilist Christendom understands devotional life better and Great Commandment Christianity understands justice and ethics better. Both are necessary for the Christian life, and thus it is good that both are studied and learned from.

However, Bass is writing a Progressive Christian history, one that understands Tradition not as ways and philosophies that dominate one another, but rather tradition as “making connections though time.” She traces the times and instances, the backstories, the little powerful figures such as Teresa of Avila, the soft side of Augustine, and Abelard’s lover’s tragedy that rarely gets mentioned.

In particular, the latter example of Abelard drew back the curtain a bit more on my favorite Atonement theorist. The extended biography of his secret love, their hidden wedding, and the resulting castration of Abelard by his lover’s family was shocking and Bass’s connection of his experience of ‘rough justice’ and his rejection of violent atonement theories was very interesting. There are many such segments that trace a little-known side of a figure and use it to point towards the subversive history of Great Commandment Christianity.

Here’s a video interview that explains it a bit more: The Ooze TV (or on Youtube)

Personally, while I enjoyed the book, I know why. It seemed more to me like a “Pastor’s History of Christianity” with little nuggets of information that are woven together with lessons…much like a sermon. It’s goal is to persuade that since the beginning there’s been an undercurrent of Progressive Christianity that has only recently begun to rear it head. Since I do identify as Progressive…and I’m a pastor…then obviously it worked for me. But that’s not to say it will be acceptable to everyone.

All in all, I got a lot out of the book, but if you regularly pick apart your pastor’s sermons for factual accuracy and relevant historical lessons…you may want to pass on A People’s History.

Consumerism is the antithesis of contentment.  If we wonder why we are not content or happy or satisfied, in his book “Enough: Contentment in the Age of Excess” Will Samson explains that we have only to look at the advertisements and media messages to explain why our houses and cars are never big enough or good enough.

Samson posits further that consumerism has infiltrated our relationship with Jesus Christ in the opposite way.  We see jesus a low-cost, low-commitment counter to culture rather than the truly counterculture that Jesus represents.

Samson makes several damning points in his book that are relevant to even events in the past few months (long since the book’s publication).  Today, we worry about Swine Flu and other communicable diseases.  Samson points out that the way we live our life can be a disease on our bodies, minds, and indeed our very souls:

…as nations gain wealth, they increase in the risk of major health problems…perhaps lifestlye disease is communicable.  You catch it through prosperity. (Enough, 101)

Our lifestyle of consumerism affects our theologies by making Jesus into a low-cost alternative and everything else into conspicuous consumption.

But why isn’t our church doing more about it?  Why aren’t we more involved in opposing this Tower of Babel-Stuff that we create?  Perhaps because the church communities are too enmeshed with the ruptures of its seams.  Samson points to our multi-cultural world that breaks our assumptions of Christian community that the past few centuries have found socially easy.  Community is no longer something we are socially pressured into; it is something we must now earn.  What would it look like?  Samson says:

It seems to me that in order to move from mindless consumers of stuff to fully participating members of eucharistic communities, we must find the actions and language that can bring those communities together and allow them to interpret the power of Jesus to provide broad meaning for our lives here and now. (Enough, 143)

I enjoyed the book and, gold for a pastor, I found several sermon ideas and examples. However, I can’t help but wonder what Will would write today about our movement away from the Age of Excess.  His blog is long dormant.  But people are saying the Age of Excess is over, dead.  I disagree; I think it is just taking a breather, waiting on the wings to jump on the bandwagon again.  Will the Church be ready to respond when it does?  Or will we continue to buy more stuff?

Thoughts?

This is my first book review after becoming part of the Ooze select bloggers.  As always, while I claim I can be bought, as you can see, buying me doesn’t guarantee you will get kudoes!

I recently had the opportunity to read Who Goes There: a Cultural History of Heaven and Hell by Rebecca Price Janney.

Janney’s premise seems to be that when death was an everpresent reality, heaven and hell were more integral components of Christian thought.

• By looking at memoirs and Boston gravestones, the early American settlers, with their infant mortality rate and short lifespans made death a present reality and fear.  People thought often about where their loved ones went and where they would go.
• People during the Second Great Awakening who were suffering in real life found comfort knowing a better life was before them.
• Soldiers in war knew they would directly enter heaven if they died in battle for their “Christian” nation.

From these observations, her premise hinged on the numbers: Christianity hit its highest levels of social discourse and influence in times of death and wonder about the afterlife.  Still today, even as the mainline church hits its decline, the segments of Christianity (such as Pentecostalism and Baptists) that are growing the fastest are the ones most decisive about who goes to heaven. 

Is there a lesson for the rest of Christendom?  Should we emphasize further heaven and hell to grow the church again? 

What struck me most was how many pastors in history resorted to emotional ploys and appeals to emotion.  Charles Finney exhorting emotional reactions from New England “Frozen Chosen,” Tract societies (still to today) using cartoony appeals to emotion, and telling a young man that his father was in hell and he had to choose eternity with hellbound father or with heavenly Jesus.  Geez.  Great examples.

The question both bothers me and hits home…what is the Christian to do with heaven and hell?

Putting trying to answer that question to the side, while reading the book, I noticed a growing sense that amidst all the facts, figures, and personal accounts (that were all utterly fascinating)…there was an evangelical slant to the reading and a slow bashing of mainline denominations lack of discussing heaven and hell.

• The mentions of eulogies that didn’t emphasize heaven/hell (which I actually found most helpful) were presbyterians, social gospel proponents, or those who said hell wasn’t an afterlife but a present reality after WWII.
• The slant goes up a notch when we get to JFK, where she writes “Kennedy didn’t seem to understand that many issues are largely morally or spiritually driven” (pg 174).  Ahem…what?  (a) how do you know he didn’t understand, and (b) given the great diversity of moral/spiritual responses, how else does a secular president of a secular nation bring consensus except by not being partial to one moral/spiritual viewpoint?

There’s more, but it was just difficult to read a book that peppered you with so much excellent source material that you didn’t realize her written text was slanted in a particular direction.  I know every book does that, but it was too transparent in this book for my taste as a scholar who tried to make a cultural history into a cultural agenda for today.

This agenda became clear in the conclusion:

• Janney claims that our lengthened lives and medical science means that “we have nothing to fear at death.”  I was a hospital chaplain and I offer funeral services to a dozen families a year: there’s plenty of fear at death!
• Janney claims that if we “endure pain and heartbreak for no apparent reason” and life is “without meaning or purpose” then that doesn’t give any semblence of hope or coping.  Again, that is not my experience.  Suffering does not have to have a divine purpose to be made sense of.  The stench of determinism in this claim is incredible…we don’t need to ascribe purpose or God’s will to make sense of suffering.
• Finally, Janney claims that “unless hell exists, there is no moral deterrent.”  Actually, she quotes Chuck Colson who apparently knows something about deterrence given his role in Watergate.  But that aside, claiming that hell as a deterrent to bad behavior is an echo of the colonial and revivalists who wanted to scare people into righteous living via emotional appeals.  What kind of discipleship is it that relies on scare tactics to keep you in good standing?

As if there was any doubt, Billy Graham, Chuck Colson, and Pat Robertson all are on the next to last page.  Any reasonable mainline preacher?  None.  Sigh. 

Janney’s call to action seems to be a repeat of history.  The only thing apparently that will save Christianity is the great numerical growth that comes from megapreacher events with emotional appeals.  In conclusion, she seems to call for a contemporary Great Awakening that will somehow have an equal effect of past spectacles even though Christianity’s place in society has inverted since the last one.

In short, I really enjoyed the source material, even the stuff I didn’t agree with.  Kudoes for finding all of it and putting it in my hands.  What I didn’t agree with was calling this a “cultural history” when it really does provide space for the successes of the evangelical and pentecostal traditions of emotional appeals while ridiculing or painting as “failures” the groups that did not.  That’s not a cultural history, that’s an agenda.  So if you want an agenda, read the book.  If not, read the book…but only the source material, because that’s the really good stuff.

Thoughts?  Check out other reviews on the Ooze page.

Recently I was asked by a 10 year old parishioner “What is the difference between Catholics and Methodists?” and I asked the facebookosphere for thoughts. Most of the responses focused on doctrine and tangy grape guice.

Little did I know that Kevin Watson offered the best response in his new book A Blueprint for Discipleship.

Watson, a United Methodist minister, hacks the traditional question of “What do Methodists believe?” and turns it into “How do Methodists believe?” By outlining the method of discipleship and discernment that John Wesley created, Watson offers support to the claim that it is not the “what” that defines Methodists, but the “how.”

In this way, Watson’s book fits nicely into “Hacking Christianity” principles and is worthy of a review.

Full disclosure: I received a free copy of Kevin’s book by being fast on the submit button. Again, yes, I can be bought.

Watson and I both hail from Oklahoma, so I resonate with many of the examples he uses in the book: the “two by two” evangelists roaming the dorms looking for sinners to convert, off-the-beaten-path idiotic biking, and such. So I felt an immediate kinship with his examples that paralleled the books’ content.

Watson articulates the “Bad News” for Christianity in this way:

• We live in a culture where people are turned off by a church that doesn’t practice what it preaches. (page
• [John] Wesley saw the main challenge not as getting people to come to a moment of conversion but as helping them live out the decision to give their lives to Christ (page 38)

These admonitions support the claim that the Sinner’s prayer is not enough and that to focus on conversion as the end of a journey misses out on the lifetime of discipleship that Wesley wanted and built in the Methodist church. Read the book to read more about how the three simple rules and the church structure can help along this journey!

Finally, Watson is very pragmatic and offers pages of support organizations for “how to put faith into action,” which is super-helpful and relevant…today, at least. In 10 years, maybe not as much! As well, the Appendix shows how to use the book in small-group study.

On the concerns front, most of them will appear in a forthcoming post tomorrow about the relationship between Rules, Law, and Love. It’s not specific to Watson’s book, so it’s another post.

However, my biggest concern is Watson’s condemnation of door-to-door fearmongering “if you die today will you go to heaven” while he articulates a nicer version of the same. He articulates people losing salvation here:

• “if we accept the gift of salvation but refuse to allow God’s grace to transform our lives, we put our very salvation in danger.” (page 64)

The UMC is not “once saved always saved” because it negates free will. So Watson is correct. However, he seems to articulate that it is through apathy that we can lose our salvation too. If we “refuse” transformation, isn’t that more intentional than “slumbering?” Is the whole of Methodism that slumbers instead of allowing transformation really in danger of losing their salvation? If we refuse to accept the means of grace through transformational discipleship…do we lose our salvation? Even Wesley when condemning the Pembrokeshire people didn’t say their salvation was lost…only their discipleship.

So it’s an interesting question: does “not participating” in sanctifying grace mean we lose our salvation? Watson’s argument is fine by itself; there’s no need to resort to fear. It doesn’t take away from the book, but it does seem to be the “rough edge” of the cost of refusing discipleship that I don’t see as well defined. I’ll have to ponder it a bit more and perhaps the more scholarly Watson will dialogue with me here.

A Blueprint for Discipleship works in “Hacking Christianity” realm as it isn’t an implementation of a rigid doctrine or even a constellation of beliefs that can transform the church: simply by re-examining how we do discipleship can transform our church. By hacking the process of discipleship back to its core Wesleyan components, I found Watson’s book a pleasure to read and it gave me a challenge in my local church.

All in all, Watson sees Methodism as a slumbering giant, one without the discipleship structure implemented even though it is in our DNA. Wesley called this “the form of religion without the power.” By reclaiming the general rules and intentionally living them out in accountability groups, Watson hopes to wake the church back to faith, works, and transformation of the entirety of our lives.

BTW: Watson blogs at Deeply Committed if you want to read his blog and converse with him there.

Thoughts?

So, for those of you that read my twitter and facebook statuses, you know I recently got into the Society of Biblical Literature‘s annual event in Boston by playing the “local clergy” card….which was fun.  Yes, I might have roped in Blake into the escapade, but I’m not saying either way.

Anywho, I got $200 worth of books for a bit over $100 (40-50% discount), which makes my continuing education fund happy as well.

Here’s what I got:

• Peter Rollins’ How (Not) to Speak of God and The Fidelity of Betrayal (thanks for the recs, Blake…if you were there).
• Incarnation and Imagination: A Christian Ethic of Ingenuity (Ray)
• Homosexuality and Christian Faith (Walter Wink)
• Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way (Wink…one of the “facets” series where you take a concept and boil it down to a 100pg book).
• In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance (Horsley’s the editor)

To complement my recent bible spree (The Green Bible and the Bible Illuminated), I was looking at two bibles.  The first was The Peoples’ Bible, which offered ethnic American perspectives as part of an NRSV study bible.  Let’s do the John 3:16 test on both these bibles (I check out how commentaries treat John 3:16 to see if I can stand it).

The Peoples’ Bible has the following note written by Miguel A. De La Torre, a professor at Iliff:

John 3:16 – God so loved the world–God’s desire is that neither the earth nor its inhabitants should perish but rather they they may have life.  salvation means that humans have sufficient food and the earth is safeguarded from those who would commodify it for gain.  When the few monopolize the earth’s resources so that the many cannot be sustained, the gift of salvation is nullified. 

Christians from industrialized Western nations have interpreted this verse as a call to evangelize the world; but impoverished peoples have responded by pointing out that the capitalist ethos has brought not life but death, as those nations have enriched themselves through extraction and exploitation.

Cool.  Great perspective, and I’m better from reading it from a less insular viewpoint.

On the other hand is what looked like an equally good contender is The Inclusive Bible.  I’m all about inclusive versions of Scripture.  Let’s do the John 3:16 test. In this translation, it said something along the lines of “God send the Divine One” instead of “The Father sent his only Son.”  A bit dodgy, but worked for me.

But alas, the shine was soon to fade from the latter and leave the former looking better.  While thumbing through the Inclusive Version, I remembered a scripture I was attempting to make inclusive, so I turned to the Beautiful Bridegroom section of Revelation (to the guy at the Sheed & Ward bookstore who didn’t know his Scripture, it’s Revelation 21…tsk tsk).

• What would they choose?  Partners?  Beloved? 
• Nope…”bride and groom.“  

Apparently, gender inclusive does not “relationship inclusive” and that means they will make it unreadable to all kinds of couples, Massachusetts or otherwise.

FAIL.

So, I got the People’s Bible instead.

I think I made the right choice, as the commentary is worth more than an inclusive bible that falls short.

What books are you reading lately, or are excited to read?

There are probably two types of bibles: those that want to start a conversation, and those that want to add to the conversation.

• My previous review on the Bible Illuminated was obviously the former as the book tries to draw people in via unconventional forms and means. 
• This bible, The Green Bible, is probably part of the latter.

Essentially, The Green Bible takes a cue from the red-letter KJVs (the ones with the words of Christ in red) and puts all the words that deal with environmental topics or creation care in green. It colors them if they fall into one of four criteria.  Passages that show:

1. how God and Jesus are involved with Creation.
2. how all elements (land, water, plants, humans, animals, etc) are interdependent
3. how nature responds to God.
4. how we are called to care for creation. 

I’ll admit that my first impressions were negative. I am weary of these types of color-coded bibles. The redline KJVs often highlight the Messianic texts in the Old Testament, to my annoyance. But more importantly, one of my first bibles in college was The Five Gospels where the Jesus Seminar went through the Gospels and color-coded them based on how close they were to the original words of Jesus. This sort of thoughtful yet arbitrary color-coding did not make a strong impression on me (except how much of John is second-generation).

All that said, here’s some joys and concerns.

Joys
There’s some excellent “extras” found in the essays at the front of the text. Barbara Brown Taylor’s treatment of cattle and humans in the Creation story is hilarious and poignant. Gordon Aeschliman connects creation care with poverty initiatives. Brian McLaren talks about human sin taking precedence over Creation being Good and traces the extra-biblical notion of this Creation being disregarded.

Better yet is the “green trails” at the end which trace certain elements of Creation texts through Scripture: There are study and question guides on six topics, such as Creation as “Good,” being connected to Creation, the impact of human sin, and creation care as justice.  I essentially got six bible studies that I can get really excited about for $20…a bargain!

Concerns
Some of the texts highlighted are done because “they show Jesus or God interacting with nature.”  However, as eco-ethicist Marla Marcum told me, not all those passages are meant to be centered on how God or Jesus interact with nature, but simply to show the power of God. The ways how JC and God interact with Creation are not meant to be lessons of how we should, but rather exemplifications of the power of God. Take heed!

Conclusion
While not as revolutionary as the Bible Illuminated, The Green Bible is not meant to be so.  It is meant as a tool for personal or group study, and has many practical impacts. It is meant to add to the conversation to answer the questions of “what did Jesus have to say about recycling” and traces biblical themes in response. 

Thoughts or impressions?

I can be bought.  In that, I mean that you are welcome to send me a copy of something of interest to me…then I’ll give my honest impressions.
Such is the case with a new book The Bible Illuminated.  The media-rich bible project based out of Sweden has retained an American PR firm to do the promotions.  This savvy firm apparently decided to make paying attention to blog posts by pastors part of their media work.

Full disclosure: I wrote about the Bible Illuminated in a blog post (Two Edgy Bible Versions), and based on those few words, they contacted me and offered me a free promotional copy to review.  They were very polite and I recognized that impressions of an idea on a computer screen may differ vastly from actual material so I accepted their invitation.

So, done with the full disclosure.  I received the copy of the book last week at my church and showed a few parishioners and friends.

Wow.

It is sexy.  Not in a “rock me sexy Jesus” way, but in a sleek sophisticated way.  High-glossy cover with copper metallic lettering on the spine.  It looks like something you would put on a coffee table or on a rack at a high flutin’ style salon.   Which, of course, is the point: putting the text in a new form that is eye-catching that reaches new circles of people.

First, the specifics. The Bible Illuminated intersperses a New Testament with callout boxes of key passages and full-page or inserts of images that relate to key passages.  It reads like a magazine with text, images, and captions.

But it is a purer Bible than you might think.  The artistic license is not in the text (a standard Good News Translation) or in study content (no study notes at all), but in the choice of images to associate with particular texts.  This is a double-edged sword: The choice of which pictures to associate with which passages is both the best and worst of this kind of project.

There are many, many really poignant associations of text and image.

• Mad props for non-whiteness of the imagery.  Matthew has a woman in a veil representing Mary.  Luke has an African woman and child accompanying with the story of the birth of Jesus, and the three Magi are African-American guys who would look right at home on a New York street.  
• Acts of the Apostles starts out with images of a men’s soccer (okay, football) team in Sierre Leone where all the men have one leg (most lost due to civil war atrocities).  That’s an interesting twist to think of Acts of the Apostles being started by people who have been handicapped and hurt by the loss of their Jesus to violence…but push on anyway.
• In Hebrews, when talking about the priesthood and the changing law regarding Melchizedek, there’s an image of the first female priest in Sweden Margit Sahlin. The line is “when the priesthood is changed, there also has to be a change in the law.”  I like the theological assertion that when God has called those who are outside the law, then the law must change…not the other way around.
• In Revelation, there is an image of a man pumping gasoline with the Scripture “the whole earth was amazed and followed the beast.” That line summarizes a few other images before it: post-Katrina New Orleans, environmental degradation, and a four-page spread on an animal slaughterhouse (field?) in Nigeria.  Very political and edgy and disorienting imagery..I like it!

The front inside cover and back inside cover are images from Dreamhack in Sweden, a four-day marathon computer festival that draws over 10,000 people.  I’m not sure exactly what the publisher meant by images of thousands of networked nerds with neon case mods, but it is sticking with me.  Maybe this closed network of media-oriented people is the mission of this Bible, hmm?

There are two special sections that bear noting:

• The Gospel of Mark has a multi-section spread with famous people, from Mother Teresa, MLK Jr, Ghandhi, to Angelina Jolie, Bono, Princess Di, Bill Gates, John Lennon, and Muhammed Ali (amongst others).  The text?  ”God said ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you to open the way for you.’”  These are associations with prophets, secular and religious.  Interesting…and as a friend said “very African-centered” which they hadn’t seen in a bible before.
• The Gospel of Luke is interspersed with a multi-section spread on the UN Millenium Development Goals, with a call to supporting them.  The pictures are vivid and the goals are outlined and well-written.  Any bible that includes social action (and supporting the UN, which isn’t the AntiChrist supposed to come from it? Ha!) is awesome in my book.

Throughout, the emphasis on social conditions as lenses by which the text is interpreted are relevant and interesting.  One friend said that the “social justice aspect” was better than any other biblezine they saw.

Do I have reservations?  Sure I do.  They are the mirror image of the above pluses: the choice of what texts to popout and what images to associate.  It’s all artistic license, but several images did not only disturb me (I would support that!) but downright offended me:

• In Ephesians, they chose to popout from the text “wives must submit to their husbands.”  Why that verse?  Further, they did not pop out the next line of “husbands, love your wives” to provide some semblance of balance.  That annoyed me greatly.
• In 1 Corinthians, they popout the “long hair on a woman is a thing of beauty.” Why? Is it to make it resemble a fashion magazine with biblical personal grooming tips?  Will the Old Testament version include Sampson’s lack of mousse?
• By far the worst page is In Matthew, where attached to “I come not to bring peace but a sword” there’s an image of a child holding a gun to your face.  Dude, don’t use children and handguns; that’s not cool at all.  Every single person I showed this to said that was just wrong and, in fact, one person had to walk away from the table while reviewing it because of that image.  Shameful.

My difficulty with those particular above text popouts is that they fall short of the mission: to associate images with texts.  Popouts like the above do not fit neatly with their expressed purpose in making this Bible.  From their FAQ (in a google cache, as it’s not listed anymore):

What is Illuminated World’s agenda? What is the goal in publishing The Book and other “Illuminated” texts?
The goal is to drive an emotional reaction and get people to think, discuss and share. It’s meant to trigger bigger moral questions. It in turn will help people to understand the common heritage between all religions through the Bible’s text. We hope people will find the images, design and layout intriguing—intriguing enough to talk about the actual stories in the Bible and what the morals and lessons mean to them and to each other. The more you know, the more you can participate in discussions about the world and understand the bigger picture.  
…

What do the highlighted passages and sentences mean?
Whatever the readers wants them to mean. They were highlighted and underlined for the reader to decide.

If the goal is conversation, great.  Well done.  But since this project is marketed to non-Christians, then popping out “women submit to your husbands” reinforces conceptions of the bible as anti-women and patriarchical.  Popping out “long haired women” passages reinforces the idea that the Bible is quaint and out-of-touch.  Without an image to discuss, there is no added benefit other than reinforcing stereotypical beliefs about Christians.

These are not the right type of conversations for a non-contextualized bible (meaning it doesn’t offer any support or context for the bible verses like study bibles) because they do not meaningfully add to the conversation but reinforce what the echo-chamber says about Christianity.  If you view a line without context, it will only reinforce what you already think, and not start a conversation at all.  In this, while the images are powerfully and well done (save a few), the seemingly random text popouts do not work when they are not thought through.

I don’t like bibles to interpret things for me.  I’d rather do the interpretation myself, thank you.  That’s exactly what I wrote in my previous review, and I’m sticking to it.  I spend more time as pastor ungluing non-life-giving conceptions of the bible in people’s heads, and I’d prefer publishers not to make my job harder.

However, every single parishioner I’ve showed this to loves this bible.  From newbies to longtime devourers of the Word.  The images draw forth an emotional reaction that reading the text doesn’t always do.  I was pleasantly surprised at how different this biblezine was compared to the other ones I’ve read.  Perhaps it is a continental divide, as this mag based out of Sweden has a very different feel than the ones published from Nashville, TN, USA.

While I disagree with some of the image’s appropriateness, the overwhelming emphasis on social justice and moral questions are excellent. Maybe I don’t mind this interpretation because it fits with my ideas and matches my own lens.  Fine, the critics can say that.  But I challenge you to compare this text with any other “pop” versions of the Bible and not see how it is more provocative and emotive than teen magazine versions of the Bible are.

So, in short, I would highly recommend you take a look at this bible to see if it fits your context.  You can purchase it directly from the Swedish manufacturer, or get it on pre-order at Amazon.com (it comes out October 28th stateside).

Scripture says you can’t put new wine in old wineskins.  But the Bible Illuminated is old wine, aged and rich, in a new wineskin that you may just want to pick up and flip through.  The project’s choice of provocative images that expose injustice and human cruelty gives a face to the faceless survivors to whom a bible is not enough to save them, but action with biblical precepts may just change the world.  And that vision of the kingdom of God where violence is eschewed is what this project calls us all to.

Thoughts? Discuss.