John Alan Turner
B&H Books, 2014, 224 pp., $14.99
It’s no secret the Bible is full of stories skeptics clap about. It seems as if God often goes from telling humanity He loves us only then to do something that appears hard and beyond our understanding of how we expect His love to look. Even weirder is the cast of extras, props and more He intentionally recruits to make His point clearer (or in some cases blurrier—and on purpose). The traditional interpretations of these passages haven’t always helped Christians feel confident in a response that doesn’t leave them feeling tongue-tied. It almost seems our only option is to avoid them altogether.
In Crazy Stories, Sane God: Lessons from the Most Unexpected Places in the Bible, John Alan Turner argues otherwise and somehow has created a street-level journey through it all that new and seasoned Christians can appreciate. It’s not light reading, as chapters dive into everything from rape, kidnapping, incest, human sacrifice, drunkenness, adultery, murder and “that time God became a fetus.” These awkward passages, Turner suggests, are meant to “connect with real life…to show us life as it actually is—not as we wish it would be… through real life we learn what it means to be human.”
My sense is this book is tremendous for most readers, but likely will make two groups of people angry: people who insist on a supernatural God consistently making sense naturally, and those who might struggle with hearing theological What-if’s? that transcend what they’re accustomed to believing. Turner offers some non-traditional slants, but they feel less like a foul and more like a remix—a new arrangement of your favorite song by another artist who changes the tempo or tone, yet reveals new life you didn’t know was possible. He also doesn’t mind cracking a joke to unearth something serious, which makes this a resource I can’t help but heartily recommend.
