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<\/a>This month at the Book Club, we\u2019re featuring the new book Finding God in the Bible: What Crazy Prophets, Fickle Followers and Dangerous Outlaws Reveal About Friendship with God<\/em><\/a>, by filmmaker and author Darren Wilson. The following interview is excerpted from our longer Skype conversation, which you can watch at the bottom of this post.<\/p>\nDarren, tell us about your new book. \u00a0I\u2019m intrigued first of all, by the title \u2014\u00a0Finding God in the Bible<\/em>. Of course<\/em> God\u2019s in the Bible! What do you mean exactly?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s a funny story. I never planned on writing this book. I was picking my kids up from some Sunday School thing and I had 15 minutes to wait, and I heard the Lord say \u201cPull out your iPad.\u201d So I did, and then I heard him say \u201cStart typing.\u201d And then this flood poured into my head \u2013 all these chapters and a couple of sentences on each chapter \u2013 half of the stuff I had never even thought of before in my life. I finished and looked at it and said \u2018Wow, this is incredible!\u201d And then I heard God say, \u201cYou go fill in the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n But it was all about the Bible! And I\u2019m not a Bible teacher or professor. I mean, I like<\/em> the Bible, but I\u2019m a story-teller, not a scholar. So what I did with this was go after the Bible as a story-teller would, not a Bible scholar. If God wrote a book, then He\u2019s telling a story. And if He\u2019s telling a story, He must use basic story-telling principles as all authors would. So I wanted to find out God\u2019s character and His personality especially by looking at how He interacts with His characters in his story. And as I started exploring it, I started to realize that this whole book was about friendship \u2013 friendship with God.<\/p>\n Sort of. I had become friends with God through making my films. At the end of the last one, Father of Lights<\/em>, I feel like I stepped into true friendship with God. How I define friendship is: \u00a0Your best friend is the person you trust the most. I fully believe God loves everybody, but He doesn\u2019t trust everybody. Trust has to be earned. But it\u2019s a two-way street. We have to trust Him, which most people can\u2019t do, and He has to trust us. He trusts us by us trusting Him.<\/p>\n In fact, you take one of the most difficult stories in the Bible \u2013 Abraham being asked to sacrifice his own son to please God \u2013 as one of the stories that best embodies this trust issue. \u00a0And it\u2019s a story you\u2019ve never liked.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Most of the stories I write about are the ones I had big problems with growing up.\u00a0 They were the stories that made me afraid of God and not want to trust God. The ones that showed that if you get too close to God, he was going to ask really horrible things of \u00a0you. You\u2019re going to have to sacrifice things to prove that you love him. \u00a0So I spent most of my life trying to find the \u201csweet spot\u201d of Christianity: \u201cHow little do I have to do to still call myself a good Christian, but keep God at bay?\u201d<\/p>\n I thought it was funny the Lord told to me focus on these particular stories, because they\u2019re the ones that kept me from him. And now I realize He just flipped the script on me and I realized these stories\u00a0aren\u2019t stories about sacrifice. They\u2019re stories about love.<\/p>\n You\u2019re mostly known for your films you produce with Wanderlust Productions<\/a>. And you have a new movie out called Father of Lights<\/em>. Tell us about it. Who\u2019s it for?<\/strong><\/p>\n All of my movies are really for the Church. I feel like my job is to poke the sleeping giant \u2026 wake up the church. With this one, I really wanted to get to: \u201cWho is the Father?\u201d I think He\u2019s gotten a really bad rap over the years. Everybody\u2019s cool with Jesus but when you start talking about the Father, people get really antsy and nervous. So I wanted to make a movie finding out who He is, what His personality is, what His character really is.<\/p>\n In all my films, they\u2019re like documentaries. I travel the world and try to find different things about what God is doing around the world. They\u2019re big and outrageous and audacious, but people seem to really like them.<\/p>\n Did you grow up in the Charismatic church?<\/strong><\/p>\n No. I grew up American Baptist, about as mainline Evangelical as you can get. \u00a0People call me Charismatic because of my movies, but I don\u2019t consider myself a Charismatic person. I like things quiet and normal. And then God takes me to these churches where people are bouncing off the walls. I\u2019m comfortable with everything, from High Church to the crazy churches in the mud huts of Africa. I\u2019m cool with it all, as long as you\u2019re going after Jesus, I don\u2019t really care how you express it.<\/p>\n Who did you write your book for?<\/strong><\/p>\n I make all my stuff for the \u201cold me.\u201d The \u201cold me\u201d was fed up with church, didn\u2019t trust God, and felt that there was more than just going to church and being a good person, but didn\u2019t know what that \u201cmore\u201d was. So I really wanted to reach people who were just dissatisfied with normal Christianity and \u201cplaying the game\u201d of church. I wanted to show everybody, hey, it\u2019s not about Church, it\u2019s about relationship.<\/p>\n What I see around the world, is when people truly encounter the Father and the Father\u2019s heart for them, that\u2019s when crazy stuff happens, and change happens, and your heart gets turned on fire for Him. It\u2019s not about doing more stuff and even being a better person, it\u2019s about figuring out who you are as a son or as a daughter.<\/p>\n What are some of your favorite stories in the Bible that capture best this idea of God as trusted friend?<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, I cover a dozen different people in the book. But Moses is a stud. I love Moses. He\u2019s interesting because when we first see him, he\u2019s a murderer. He\u2019s this guy with this rage issue who goes Martin Scorsese on people. He kills a guy for really no good reason. In the book I try to get into his psychology. Like, who does<\/em> that? Who sees an injustice and goes and kills<\/em> the person? \u00a0This <\/em>is the guy that God pegged to be his best friend? This doesn\u2019t make any sense! But God always chooses these people who are weird, and have so many flaws. The crackpots.\u00a0 But those are the ones \u2026 God doesn\u2019t hang with the cool crowd.<\/p>\n My favorite chapter is the last chapter on Jesus.You know, that\u2019s the best glimpse we get of the Lord\u2019s character and His personality. And he\u2019s a lot different than the Sunday School version I grew up with. He not super-serious. He\u2019s not like a meek little lamb, which is what I always thought that he was.<\/p>\n I just love the patience that God has and the characters he chooses to hang out with. It gives me hope. If He\u2019s willing to call these guys His friends, then doggone it, I think I got a chance.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kA_keR5zUJY<\/a>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/54\/2013\/08\/BC_DarrenWilson_bio.jpg\" "\\"BC_DarrenWilson_bio\\"")
<\/a>So this notion of God as friend \u2026 had that been your relationship to God prior to writing this book, or is it something you discovered while looking at the Bible in this new way?<\/strong><\/p>\n