The Blue Parakeet

I just finished reading "The Blue Parakeet" by Scot McKnight. I wrote a little blurb on facebook before I turned to the first page, I commented that I was ready to have my toe's stepped on. The subtitle of this book is "Rethinking How You Read The Bible." There were several areas that have stuck in my craw. (is that a bad word?, o.k. I just looked it up to be sure {stick in one's craw, to cause considerable or abiding resentment; rankle: She said I was pompous, and that really stuck in my craw.} per dictionary.com)

One of the first things that jumped off the page to me was the fact that we, myself included, can read through a passage of scripture and thoroughly accept one point and completely disregard the next. The disregarding I don't think comes as a blatant disregard, but scripture being read through tradition. The author writes about using the Great Tradition as being very helpful when trying to understand scripture. Great Tradition from my understanding are all those who have gone on before us and their learnings. The Great Tradition however does not mean "tradition." He writes of the destructive nature of tradition, we can see examples of this through our churches today, but in scripture we can see many examples of how the Pharisee's created rules to protect the rules. The Blue Parakeet is the scriptures that we disregard, or are not comfortable with and we wish we could just put them back in the cage where we don't have to deal with them. I love the story of how the author came up with "The Blue Parakeet" analogy.

I could say more about this book, but I don't know if I could say it well enough for it not to be polarizing. So if you want to have your toes stepped on and rethink how you read the Bible then you will have to read the book too!

I would say that this book has definitely given me some great insight and I am so glad I read it.