The Old Testament is a problem for many Christians. Some find it
puzzling, or even offensive; others seem to glibly misuse it for their
own ends. There are few resources aimed at enabling ordinary Christians
to understand the OT and use it in their lives as followers of Jesus.
In this book At Home in a Strange Land: Using the Old Testament in
Christian Ethics, Andrew Sloane seeks to address this need. He outlines
some of the problems that ordinary Christians face in reading the Old
Testament as part of Christian Scripture and provides a framework for
interpreting the Old Testament and using it in Christian ethics. He
identifies some of the key biblical texts of both the Old Testament and
the New Testament that both inform Christian ethics and challenge us to
live as God's people. Using the paradigm of learning to travel in
unfamiliar places, Sloane seeks to equip the reader with tools for
understanding many of the puzzling and difficult passages found in the
Old Testament. In sum, the book aims to "rehabilitate" the Old Testament
for ordinary, even skeptical, twenty-first century Christians.
While many of the issues have been covered elsewhere, there is very
little that seeks to bring together questions of interpretation and
"ethical application" in one book aimed at lay people. The book would
also be valuable in a college course on Christian ethics.
