The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible
The Blue Parakeet is written by Scot McKnight and published in hardcover by Zondervan (November 1, 2008).
The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read The Bible by Scot McKnight is an excellent resource for serious students of the Bible who want more from their Christianity than is offered by out-of-touch fundamentalists and starry-eyed liberals.
My rating: stars
The Blue Parakeet offers readers a “Third Way” that goes well beyond the extreme socio-religious left and right existing in today’s society. McKnight, aided by an extremely vivid analogy born from a back porch experience that involved a bird feeder, a small flock of skittish sparrows, and an escaped blue parakeet, challenges readers to consider how they react when confronted with very difficult questions and/or passages (blue parakeets) in effort to not only understand their personal approach to the Bible, but also observe and learn from the experience itself.
The analogy of the Blue Parakeet resonates and reverberates with people who are disillusionment with the left and right. It was born in 2007 as McKnight was trying to read a book on his back porch. He spied a flash of blue in a row of nearby bushes, but it was not the sort of blue worn by familiar blue birds. This unfamiliar and distracting blue turned out to be the blue of a pet parakeet that had pulled off a prison break, somehow. The odd shape and creaky squawks and hyper movements of the parakeet freaked out the gang of sparrows that usually owned the backyard. Time, however, was very good to the sparrows and parakeet. The sparrows finally befriended the parakeet and they actually began to follow it wherever it went, reverently. Every so often, however, the parakeet would go spastic and do something that totally terrorized the flock of sparrows. Familiarity, obviously, was not accompanied by a total domestication of the parakeet. It would not be tamed. And the sparrow’s reactions to the parakeet somehow colored the overall picture being drawn in the backyard, at least for McKnight.
He writes, “How we respond to passages and questions will determine if we become aware of what is going on or not. When chance encounters with blue parakeet passages in the Bible happen to come our way, we are given the opportunity to observe and learn. In such cases, we really do open ourselves to the thrill of learning how to read the Bible. But, like the sparrows, we have to get over our fears and learn to adjust to the squawks of the Bible’s blue parakeets. We dare not tame them” (25).
Reading the Bible, or asking questions concerning the Bible, McKnight suggests, is filled with “Blue Parakeet Experiences.” The Blue Parakeet experiences raised by McKnight include obvious and not-so-obvious issues, such as: The Sabbath Commandment; Tithing; Foot Washing; Charismatic Gifts; Surrendering Possessions; Contentious Issues. Each of these headings is doorway into an experiential space wherein we will be forced towards deep interpretive self-reflection and applicable self-awareness.
We will also be challenged to stop merely picking and choosing which parts of the Bible will be celebrated and which parts will be subtly placed upon the proverbial dust shelf, and quietly ignored. This is a priceless challenge, in these days of socio-religious extremes.
This book is a must read. Period. This book is a really, really great start for Christians who are simply trying to find an alternative to the many dichotomies that are perpetuated in Christian America. So, if you need a good start, this is it. You got it. Get this book.
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I read this book in June of 2009 while I was leading a Teaching Principles & Mehtods class in Freeport, Bahamas. Fifteen years ago I would have struggled through it, but over the past decade and a half, I have rethought a lot of things. Thus, books from Frank Viola, Robert Lewis, Larry Osborne and other notable authors have helped me step outside the ecclesiastical, theological box. Scott’s doctrine resonated with my heart and where I am on my spiritual journey. As a pastor, I have not only used women to co-teach with me, but I have sat under Godly women who are gifted to teach and lead and who have been helpful to me spiritually. I have one question regarding a couple of scriptures that Scott does not address in his book. I would like to know how he addresses 1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:5-6 on elders or overseers being “the husband of one wife”? I don’t have Scott’s email, so I don’t know how to contact him on this question. If anyone does have a contact email, please email me. Thanks.