What a relief. I wasn’t sure what to expect of this book by Elizabeth Jeffries. I am weary of folks who separate humanity into binaries and was afraid this might be just that- one more separation. Instead, as I read “Through the Kaleidoscope,” I found a refreshing and honest perspective on why we don’t need to limit the world to a binary system along with sound reasoning for considering Biblical scripture as truth, but not the only truth.
Based on genetic examples she explores what it is to have multiple truths coincide, or layer upon each other. Agouti mice from the same mother do not look the same at all. Their genetic code is the same, but they turn up yellow and brown, big and small from the same litter. She explains that it is true to say the agouti gene produces yellow mice. It is not true to say it only produces yellow mice. It also produces brown mice, but not only brown mice. Suddenly multiple truths are possible. The question is, what is the foundational truth that filters through all of them?
Image after image, she produces a book that leads us through her own narrative of questioning the “immutable truths” of evangelical Christianity. The ending leaves the reader with comfort that she has not abandoned her faith, but has instead expanded it and allowed herself to see God through the lens of lived experience rather than limiting God to a set of bound rules and understanding.
As a Lutheran, I especially relate to her arguments for “approaching biblical wisdom with an understanding of the power of contextual interpretation” (p.71) as she searches for underlying and foundational truth that “rests beneath these multifaceted layers of interpretation.”
If you are struggling with the seeming limitations of Christianity, this book may help you break from the mono-lens and see God #throughthekaleidoscope. Through that glorious riot of color and multifaceted view point we can see Jesus as he rejects “the very structure of mutually exclusive, strictly defined categories” (p.73). Suddenly the world is no longer an us/them, he/she, black/white, sinner/saint landscape, but one that is full of possibility and creative genius that is seen in all the variety of humanity.
This book will remain on my shelf and I suspect, become a go-to for years to come.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
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