Influential Book 3 / Reading the Bible with the Damned

I have a confession to make. When I first heard the title of this book, Reading the Bible with the Damned, I despaired. I was heading to a conference in 2007 where the author, Bob Ekblad, was the keynote speaker and his book was required reading. What was I being asked to read?

To my delight, I soon found out that this wasn’t some hellfire and damnation treatise but an eye-opening journey where Bob reveals how he reads the Bible with those on the margins of our society: illiterate peasants, undocumented farmworkers, drug dealers, prisoners, gang leaders, sex offenders, street workers—these are the damned of the book’s title.

One of the things I’ve always found frustrating about many Christian teachers is that they can make throwaway comments like I shared the gospel, or I prayed, or I read the Bible with them with the assumption that their audience doesn’t need to have unpacked what they went on to say or pray or read. It’s not obvious, people. Yet the assumption is it is. Discipleship however, is about walking in the dust of Jesus’ feet—about seeing and then doing. I want to know how you did it, because I want the imagination to be able to see myself doing the same.

Never before had I been given a front-row seat to see a “Bible study” where the participants knew next to nothing about the Bible. Having the veil lifted within Reading the Bible with the Damned on what that is like (complete with the introductions, questions, passages, and prayers that Bob said) is a rare blessing. But being able to then read the comments and responses of the participants, and to find out how Bob encourages them to voice what they think rather than what they think he wants to hear, is rarer still.

Evangelism using the Bible… who’d have thought?

I’ve heard a lot of evangelistic talks and presentations in my time, and received loads of training on how to evangelise, but I don’t remember any of them suggesting to merely open up the Bible and read the stories in it. Bob carries this infectious faith that the Bible contains good news to the poor and marginalised. It’s contagious. Almost single-handedly, this book renewed my confidence in the Bible’s power to transform lives.

That in itself, would be enough to make any book influential, but that’s not what puts this in my top five. What does that is the way that Bob shows how the Bible challenges our common theology and assumptions about God and ourselves. The good news is experienced as we confront dominant perceptions of God as a judge who is focussed upon our morality and lifestyle, and instead reveal a God who saves through grace. The good news is experienced as we show how God doesn’t use violence to impose his will or bring about salvation, but confronts religious privilege and lifts up the least of us.

I had rejected a violent atonement by the time I read this book, but this was my first experience of seeing how a nonviolent reading of the whole Bible (and not just my understanding of the cross) could enrich my view of God and bring good news to everyone. This has underpinned my own approach to the Bible ever since.