About This Blog

After a lifetime engagement with the Bible, I feel as if the Bible’s in my blood. Its words and its thoughts captivate me, puzzle me, inform me, shape me, challenge me, and surprise me. No matter how many times I read them or listen to them being read aloud, something is likely to jump out of the text, grab me by the torso, and pull me into a spiritual wrestling match. I never seem to master it as much as the Bible seems to master me.

I have created this blog to share with others something of the never ending dialogue that I finds the Bible constantly pulls me into. Sometimes I will share insights that I have gained. At other times I will express the questions it raises in my mind. And sometimes I may just revel in the sheer beauty of the text. For in its words, I come to glimpse something of the sheer beauty of the Lord to which it witnesses.

I share this in hopes that you, too, my readers, may come to be bitten by the Bible bug just as I have. I welcome your comments, insights, questions, and reactions.

What I demand of myself as well as of others who join me is a close reading of the text. My way of reading the Bible (what professional scholars call exegesis) has been heavily influenced by a college course in poetry writing. I try to pay close attention to just how the Biblical authors express themselves. Their specific choice of words, the context (both literary and cultural) in which they write, the flow of the text, their omissions–all are factors that influence how we need to hear them.

I bring to my conversations the following academic training: a B.A. from Wheaton College in Illinois, a M.Div. from Yale Divinity School, and a year of theological study at Oxford University. I also bring my lifetime of reading works others have written about the Bible and its worlds. For some 40 years I have also been teaching the Bible to adults, largely in church school settings. For more information on my teaching ministry, please visit my website www.gordonlindsey.com.

As a Christian believer, I believe the Holy Spirit breathed upon the Bible’s authors as they wrote their works. This is the ultimate source of the Bible’s power. But I do not believe that the Spirit gives the gift of infallibility of interpretation to any one individual. We best approach the Word of God in a process of dialogue as we read and study and debate about the text together. So I invite you into this journey.

— Gordon Lindsey