Book Club

We had a good book club meeting last night. It keeps sounding like people in the community might be invested in joining us, but as of yet nobody has made it.

Last night we studied The Shack. It was interesting to see the diversity of response to the book. One of the responses was by my neighbor Scotty. Scotty thinks that we have this culturally conditioned view of God, and of the supernatural for that matter. In reference to angels, he is convinced that his guardian angel looks like a triceritops dinosaur. I laughed out loud, but thought it was great. Certainly the angels in Revelation look more like a dinosaur than it looks like our renaissance picture of angels.

One of our more mature ladies was frustrated that the author didnt include Bible verses, until she reread the cover of the book and realized that it was fiction. So cute.

The smart alec side of me did want to say....verses are not in the Bible. Well...they are, but they are not. Verses were a later addition to the Bible, and are there so we can understand the Bible better. But John did not write his gospel with chapters and verses. That is just how we have put things together as people.

That got me thinking...how much of what is "inside" our Bibles are not really a part of the Bible at all. Paragraph divisions. Subheadings. Footnotes. Cross-references. Study notes? How do they condition our thinking? Define our way of reading?

Anyway...there was a little bit more personal sharing of things.

It is interesting. I am getting to use these book clubs to discuss theological issues--most have one or more theological themes. So I am getting to teach a whole group of folks that do not usually come to a traditional class/bible study.

btw...I was just elected as president of friends ofthe library...lol...life in a small town...life as a small town pastor.