Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest? — Matthew 22:36

In one of her books, the eloquent Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, wrote these words about the Bible: “My relationship with the Bible is a marriage, not a romance, and one I am willing to work on in all the usual ways.”1 What she meant, of course, was that her relationship with the Bible was like any other serious relationship; it included good days as well as challenging days, days of clarity and days of confusion, days of joy and even days of dread. Everybody has favorite parts of the Bible, verses that make our spirits soar. But what do you do with those troubling parts of scripture, which, unfortunately, certain people like to wield like a club?

For example, last December, just as we Christians were prepar…