Beth Moore has told Bible stories for years. Now, with the publication of her new memoir, All My Knotted-Up Life, she’s telling her story.
Moore started as a Bible teacher at First Baptist Church in Houston, which grew into a two-decade-plus relationship with the Southern Baptist Convention’s publishing house, Lifeway. Along the way, she came to be known as perhaps the SBC’s most famous author and Bible teacher.
In All My Knotted-Up Life, Moore comes ready to tell her legion of readers what she has been through over the last few years. Her path includes derision and rejection for having the temerity to preach while being a woman, as well as a spiritual journey that led her to the Anglican Church.
Goodness and mercy
“When I looked back at it, and I could see how goodness and mercy had followed me all the days of my life, I thought, ‘Lord, you have never left me,’” she said in an interview.
“You can know that with your head — that he has never, not for one moment, left me — but when you really take a look back and you are honest about how often he’s come through, even something that you would never, ever, ever have wanted. And yet you can’t even picture how you would know how to minister today …. You just have to bow down and go, ‘God, you know, you are Lord of all, and you are all-wise.’”
Although Moore isn’t teaching a Bible lesson, one thing is clear: She is content and thankful for what she has gone through. She was ridiculed by John McArthur, who told conference goers she should “stay in her place” and “she needs to go home.” She also walked away from the SBC, including Lifeway.
“It would’ve been the most tempting to name names,” she said of writing about her recent experience with the SBC and with evangelical leaders. “But I stayed away from that in the book.”
Deep pain of leaving
But she acknowledged the deep pain of leaving her childhood denomination while expressing her love for people in that denomination.
“I was going to say it nearly killed me, but I think it would be fair to say that it did kill a part of me.”
“I was going to say it nearly killed me, but I think it would be fair to say that it did kill a part of me,” she reflected. “And, yeah, so much of my identity was in it. So much of what I knew best in the world. And so, I cried through quite a lot of trying to relive parts of it through the writing process. However, I love those people so much.”
Moore credits God’s grace for her ability to retrace her past while writing her book. “What I couldn’t have counted on is how the grace of God would always not just be enough, but would overflow and abound in me,” she said.
Moore believes grace got her through her recent season, stressing she still loves Jesus and is thankful for her call into ministry.
Raised to love the Bible
“What I did know is that there was no other life for me but to encourage people to love Jesus through the pages of Scripture,” she said. “I had appreciated it long before then. I was raised in church. I was raised to love it. I was raised to admire it, raised to be thankful for it. But by 1994, I had already been bitten by that bug, and I knew I was ruined at that point. I thought, well, I don’t know what the rest of my life is going to look like, but it’s gonna look like life in these pages” of the Bible.
“I have ridden a bucking bronco for all of these years. I have just like bounced up and down and hit the fence and fallen off, gotten back up,” she said. “But my God has remained constant and so faithful.”
Moore acknowledged the difficult parts of her journey — the criticism and conflict —caught her off-guard. “I wouldn’t have seen any of it coming. I wouldn’t have asked for it,” she said. “I wouldn’t have even asked for the good parts of it, I wouldn’t have thought to, but I’m so glad that I didn’t have any idea, and I just had to walk it out with Jesus.”
Moore hopes readers will see the walk-it-out-with-Jesus part of her story as a constant theme in her book.
Moore hopes readers will see the walk-it-out-with-Jesus part of her story as a constant theme in her book. She also hopes her story of abuse at the hands of a family member will encourage and empower other abuse survivors.
“I have told people I have an abuse background since the earliest days of writing, but I have never told any of the particulars until now,” she said. “And I have been anxious to come to a point where my brothers and sisters, my family and I, could live with me telling more of my story because I want to be able to minister to those who have gone through abuse under the roof of their own home.
Protector, perpetrator
“All abuse is disturbing and destructive. But let me tell you, when your protector becomes your perpetrator, your life is turned utterly upside down.”
Moore wants to give her readers permission to break through their own struggles, share their stories and experience the freedom she has found. Although what Moore has been through has been a struggle, she still has a deep desire to minister to people and an even deeper desire for them to know God has been, and still is, with her and them.
“I constantly prayed through (writing) the whole thing,” she recalled. “But somehow at the end, I knew I was satisfied that I had told it as well as I could at this moment. I was relieved and satisfied that as messy as it is, it was mine.
“And it was not just my story. It was my story with a very faithful Savior, who I love and trust more than anyone I can see in this entire world, who makes miracles out of disasters.”
Maina Mwaurais a freelance writer who lives in Atlanta.
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