How the Bible Actually Works: In Which I Explain How An Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse Book Leads Us to Wisdom Rather Than Answers―and Why That’s Great News

Nearly everyone who studies the Bible in an academic manner and within its proper historical/cultural context has to deal with this transition from a naive biblical literalism to a more mature understanding that must accommodate nuance, ambiguity, and innumerable tensions contained in the Bible at the textual, theological, and historical levels. Most churches do not equip their members to deal with serious questions about the Bible, theology, and church history. Everyone's journey through this terrain is unique; some people find it a relief to no longer have to believe in Hell or in the historicity of the Canaanite genocides, for example; others miss the certainty of just taking everything in the Bible for granted. If it helps, theologians (especially the "liberal" type) think about and wrestle with these issues all the time. The late Bishop Spong wrote a lot of books on how to reapply the Bible in a non-fundamentalist way, like Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and Unbelievable. Pete Enns also has several books targeted at people like yourself, such as How the Bible Actually Works and Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming. Authors like Marcus Borg and Rachel Held Evans have books that might help you as well. Many theologians, such as Paul Tillich, would say that true, meaningful faith is not blindly believing what you were told about the Bible and religion, but choosing to challenge and question it instead. Also check out progressive theologian Randal Rauser on YouTube.