Russell Pregeant

NCLA Review: Iconoclastic titles seem to be in vogue of late, and this book rises to the top of the heap for creativity in this department. Pregeant aptly draws our attention to the variety of ways the Bible can be read for the wrong reasons—as a fortune cookie, fact book, crystal ball or rule book. Instead, Pregeant encourages readers to be grasped by the Bible (rather than grasp it), and let reading the Scriptures be an example of life in the Spirit, hearing from Scripture a gospel of show more grace and demand. Because Pregeant attends to many of the hot topics around Biblical interpretation, the book ends up being a primer in Christian faith and doctrine, since so much of the Christian faith circles around how we read and interpret the Bible. Two weaknesses of the book: first, although Pregeant is critical of all the wrong reasons for reading the Bible, he seems less than aware of how his own way of reading the Bible is itself culturally conditioned and somewhat narrow. Second, although the pull-quotes found interspersed throughout the text help guide the reader through the themes, the repeated use of a fortune-cookie picture to illustrate the pull-quotes is an unfortunate aesthetic choice on the part of the publisher. Rating: 3 —CS show less