By Andy Hale
This week on the CBF Podcast Conversation, we welcome essayist Liz Charlotte Grant to discuss her new book, Knock At The Sky. In this honest and beautifully written work, Liz invites readers into the wild terrain of Genesis as a way of seeking God after losing faith in the Bible’s literalism. Drawing from her own journey of deconstruction and spiritual rediscovery, she challenges the binary thinking that has long shaped evangelical interpretations of Scripture—true or false, inerrant or errant, good or bad. Instead, she proposes a more embodied, artistic, and reverent engagement with the Bible—what she calls a “flesh and blood memory” shaped by ancient encounters with the divine.
In this conversation, Liz shares why Genesis, with its mythic storytelling and flawed characters, is the perfect place to begin reimagining Scripture. We explore how fear-based views of God as wrathful or abusive distort the spiritual imagination and why every interpreter—no matter how progressive—is still at risk of falling into fundamentalist patterns. Through it all, Liz doesn’t offer easy answers but invites us to linger in the questions, embrace the messiness of faith, and be flabbergasted once again by the wonder of the biblical story. If you’re looking for a way to hold on to Scripture while letting go of rigid frameworks, this episode is for you.
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Andy Hale is the creator and host of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Podcast. Hale is the Associate Executive Coordinator of CBF North Carolina. He’s also served as CBF’s Church Start Specialist, the founding pastor of Mosaic Church of Clayton, and the senior pastor of University Baptist Church of Baton Rouge. Follow on Twitter @haleandy.