The Abusive Hermeneutics of Rachel Held Evans

from Stand Firm by Matt Kennedy 

I’ve been following Rachel Held Evans’ writing for about a year now. It’s hard to read her regularly and keep your patience because she consistently misuses the bible to support her favorite causes. Most recently she’s accused John Piper of heartlessness in the aftermath of the Oklahoma tornado because Piper tweeted Job 1:19…

“Your sons and daughters were eating and a great wind struck the house, and it fell upon them, and they are dead.”

Here’s Evans’ take on the quote:

“While the world is still in shock, while we struggle to find the words to convey our grief and compassion and to weep with those who weep, he jumps in with an explanation, and it’s always the same: Bad things happen because God is angry. This is God’ judgment on undeserving, sinful people. Repent. We brought this on ourselves…read more”

I wonder if Rachel Held Evans even bothered to look up the context of Job 1:19 before she shoved off into her familiar demagoguery? The passage obviously has nothing to do with God being very mad or people being very bad. Instead it has to do with a terrible tragedy in Job’s life, the sudden death of his children, in light of his trust in God’s goodness and his knowledge of God’s sovereignty. It has to do with God testing a man he loves.
It is a good place to take people who mourn as they wrestle with similar questions. Rachel Held Evans, like most revisionist activists, has always been a terrible exegete. In this case she’s added malice to her incompetence and done something every bit as low as what she’s accused Piper of doing. She’s turned a horrific tragedy into an opportunity to mischaracterize her theological opponents, abusing scripture in the process.

There is, of course, at least one Spiritual Leader who calls for repentance in light of human tragedy (Luke 13:1-5), but Rachel Held Evans doesn’t appear to pay much attention to the actual content of his words either.