The Bible They Never Told Me About

Ray and Elsie Dewey raised their son to see differences as intriguing. Differences of ethnicity, religion, culture and nationality were fascinating and to be explored, never feared. So every prejudice he discovered within himself became a request for God to heal him. This open exploration challenged Roger’s view of the Bible. Brought up to trust it as God’s Word, he went to it for clarification when preachers claimed it promoted something he questioned from personal experience, especially about poor people and justice. He discovered that many who quote the Bible use invisible scissors to cur away huge parts they want to ignore or deny. He concluded that the “non-Christian” Jesus exemplifies a reality far more beautiful and transcendent than what we usually hear from Christianity’s apologists. Genuine spirituality is accessible to those lacking discipline and literacy skills or else God is not loving and just.

As Roger says, “This book is a summation of seventy years of discovering that the Bible has a lot more to say than I was being told. As a teenager I began to realize that in church a lot of the good stuff was being left out, and in its place I was hearing the limited religious message that I was not good enough, and never would be, and that God was angry with me. But I knew that was not true of Jesus. I remember saying to myself, out loud, “I’m not going to let them shut me out. Jesus is too important.”