A C Grayling, secular humanist/atheist has taken it upon himself to re-write the Bible- as a secular, moral document. It seems his motivation was to make available the ‘good’ stuff whilst editing out the ‘God’ stuff.

Fair play to the bloke, people have accused me of the same. The whole emerging church conversation has often been accused of sanitising the unpleasant judgmental side of the Bible in favour of a more accessible and cuddly message.

I do not agree with either Grayling, or the assessment of EC critics of course…

Because the God we encounter in the stories of the Bible is capricious, glorious, confusing, challenging, forgiving, condemning, war making, peace bringing. Because of this, no matter how hard we try, systematising and defusing our ideas of God always fail.

It might be possible to read the Bible as a book of moral fables, of quaint historical interest, but also vaguely character building in indefinable ways. You will have to ignore whole bits of the Bible to do this of course, and along the way may come to wonder whether the Bible can be regarded as ‘moral’ at all.

What makes the Bible vital, engaging and alive is the spine tingling possibility of- God. What transforms the reading of the Bible is the fact that we use it to approach- God.

Without God- there would seem very little point in reading this miscellany of stories of ancient people.

So sorry AC- I will not be reading your ‘Good book’, I will stick to my not so good one, in all its messy challenge.

But then you did not expect me to do anything else did you?