Author's Preface to the First Edition

When I became a Christian at age seventeen, I experienced an immediate change in my relationship with the Bible. What had been a puzzle became a source of practical wisdom, an encouragement for faithful living, and a constant source of intellectual stimulation. In the decades since, I have never ceased to be interested in the Bible. And I have always found in the Bible a challenge to the commonplaces and easy assumptions which most of us in North America, all too wealthy and comfortable, tend to find ourselves settling into.

As a young Christian, I thirsted for help in understanding the Bible. I was blessed with many friends who shared such thirst, not least the woman who became my wife and continuing partner in discerning and applying the Bible’s message, Kathleen Temple. Our early passion for this task continues—and is expressed in our constant conversing about biblical themes.

I also was blessed to discover numerous written resources. Two monthly periodicals always full of stimulating biblically oriented writings, Sojourners and The Other Side, served as my mentors. They introduced me to such insightful biblical interpreters as John Howard Yoder, Jacques Ellul, William Stringfellow, Dorothy Day, and many others.

A third blessing, along with friends and reading materials, came later. Kathleen and I discovered the Mennonite church, learned to know Mennonites in our Eugene, Oregon, home community, and took the opportunity to spend a year at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. Surely the 1980-1981 school year was the most exciting ever experienced at AMBS!

Our teachers were superb. I learned the Bible from Willard Swartley, John Howard Yoder, Millard Lind, and Gertrude Roten. Our fellow students were even better. We made many lifetime friends and experienced amazing hospitality, given our marginal status as “Mennonite walk-ons.” An added blessing that year was an impressive roster of guest speakers who visited campus, including Krister Stendahl, Phyllis Trible, James McClendon, Tony Campolo, Allan Boesak, and James Cone.

Our time at AMBS convinced Kathleen and me to formalize our relationship with Mennonites by joining the Mennonite Church. Almost accidentally, I soon found myself pastoring, first as a Eugene Mennonite Church interim pastor. In the years that followed, my biblical education took the form of sermon preparation. I discovered that preaching provides a unique opportunity for thinking through the message of the Bible.

In a moment of inspiration (or beginner’s foolishness) I decided to begin my preaching career as a Mennonite minister with an extended series on the Book of Revelation. My kind friends in the Eugene congregation spoke words of affirmation, so I took the next step of submitting versions of my sermons as articles to the Mennonite Church weekly magazine, the Gospel Herald. Editor Daniel Hertzler accepted my articles—an act of generosity for which I still am deeply grateful.

The series of seven articles helped open several doors for me. These included my second pastoral assignment (interim pastor at Trinity Mennonite Church in Glendale, Arizona) and the opportunity to publish my first book, Triumph of the Lamb: A Study Guide to the Book of Revelation (Herald Press, 1987).

My approach to Revelation, summarized briefly in chapter 13 below, reflected my application of the approach to the Bible I had learned from my teachers. I tried to take seriously the original historical setting for Revelation but asked from the very beginning what this book has to say to us today, particularly in terms of our Christian vocation to follow Jesus’ peaceable way.

When we returned to Eugene in 1987, and I began pastoring there on a permanent basis, I embarked on several long-running preaching series on sections of the Bible. Probably the most interesting series for me was a yearlong treatment of key texts in the Old Testament. Again I took seriously the historical setting of the passages I preached on but also focused on the relevance of these parts of the Bible for Christian discipleship. I continued the same approach when we moved on to Salem Mennonite Church near Freeman, South Dakota.

Then I began teaching at Eastern Mennonite University in fall 1996. My very first class (meeting at 8:00 a.m. the first day of school!) was Faith and Christian Heritage, a historical introduction to Christian faith. The first third of this class dealt with the Bible. I drew on my sermons to put together class lectures.

God’s Healing Strategy is a revision of those sermons and lectures. My goal is to introduce the message of the Bible—which I continue to believe is a message of God’s love and human responsibility to live lives that reflect that love. I hope this brief book may open for readers a door to much deeper and more comprehensive engagement with the Bible.

I have included an extensive list of reading resources I have found helpful over the years. Recognizing the importance of communal interaction in discerning and applying the Bible’s message, I have also included at the end of each chapter some questions for reflection and discussion.

This book is small but my debts are large. I am grateful to my teachers—in the classroom and on the written page. I am even more grateful to the three congregations that provided contexts for my preaching ministry and to Eastern Mennonite University for providing the setting for my teaching ministry.
In each of these situations I have been blessed with friends who continually confirm to me the wisdom of Kathleen’s and my choice to become part of the Mennonite Church. Another such friend is Michael A. King, publisher, pastor, writer, conversation partner. I am grateful to Michael for taking on this project through Cascadia Publishing House LLC. Kathleen, eagerly, and our son Johan, not always so eagerly, also have been and continue to be wonderful conversation partners in things of the Spirit.

Let me end this preface with a few comments about my mother, Betty Grimsrud. As a child, I was always encouraged to think for myself. I don’t remember our family spending a lot of time with the Bible, though we were certainly taught to respect it. In any case, the guidance I received from my parents was largely unspoken, modeling more than lecturing.

Only as an adult did I sit down with my mother and talk much about the Bible. In her retirement, she became a Bible study leader and enjoyed talking with her theologian son about what each of us was learning. Through these conversations, though, I realized that I had learned my basic approach to the Bible from her years ago, even without her overtly articulating it. That is, I had learned from her that nothing matters as much as love—and that love provides the context for understanding everything that is worth knowing in life.

My first book was published shortly after my father’s death. It was bittersweet to dedicate it to his memory—I would have much preferred him to have seen the book itself. So, when I first began making plans with Michael King for publishing this, my second book, I felt happy that I could dedicate it to my mother and give it to her to enjoy. Sadly, this was not to be. She died suddenly and unexpectedly of heart failure in May, 1999, about the time I finished the first edition of this book. So once again, I have the bittersweet privilege of dedicating a book to a recently deceased parent. I hope that in some small way, this book will help others know the love of God reflected to me through the lives of my parents.

—Ted Grimsrud
Harrisonburg, Virginia

Author’s Preface to the Revised Edition

In the years since I first wrote God’s Healing Strategy, I have continued to see the value of this “big picture” overview of what I understand to be the core storyline of the Bible. The book has been used in a number of college introductory classes and in other settings where many people have been stimulated to understand the Bible as a whole and as containing a message of God’s healing love.
Upon rereading the book with an eye for revision, I find little that I want to change. Of course, I recognize each time I look at this book how limited and finite it is. I often repeat a quote attributed to Samuel Beckett: “There are no finished projects, only abandoned projects.” I first “abandoned” this project in 1999. Now I must abandon it again, only partly changed from the first time—and not closer, really, to being “finished.”

I have gone through the entire manuscript, occasionally changing a phrase here and there for enhanced clarity. I have updated the sections of recommended reading. The most substantial revision are the additions of a new section in chapter six on Jeremiah, and new chapters dealing with materials generally dated between 2 Isaiah and the New Testament and with the Psalms.
I’d like to thank Michael A. King again for his wonderful work at Cascadia and his friendship. I’d also like to thank several of my friends and colleagues who have used this book in classes and given me encouragement and constructive criticism—in particular Paul Keim (Goshen College), Doug Miller (Tabor College), Laura Schmidt Roberts (Fresno Pacific University), and Kathleen Temple (Eastern Mennonite University).