BWB represents an approach to the study of Scripture that stresses applicability to our own lives, but in a different way from more traditional methods. As opposed to searching Scripture for absolute and immutable truths that we must all obey, or at least "believe," it has us looking for the questions that the stories, parables, and sayings raise that were important in Biblical times as people like us tried to understand their own lives and which can be just as important for us who are trying to do the same today. It can be challenging and even life-transforming to take a parable of Jesus and, instead of deciding what it means, thus ending the discussion, rather to identify the characters in the story, identify their problems, their conflicts, their hopes, their disappointments, their triumphs, their failures and then look for similar characters or characteristics in our own world, our own lives, our own psyches. The insights that can flow are endless and lead to a new and richer understanding of Jesus and his mission to his and our world. Understanding that Scripture can be a way of helping us ask the questions that can save our own lives, rather than being a receptacle of established and immutable truths, has been a true epiphany for me.

- Robert Ruppenthal, Retired physician