The Bible Tells Me So: Answering a Question

I wanted to take one more post and answer a thought that Thomas+ proposed in last week's post.

Let me start out by saying that I am very grateful to God for bringing Thomas into my life. Starting from Church of the Redeemer meeting at the old Otter Creek building to our association in the Nashville Cohort, he has been someone who provides some good perspective on several of the questions that I've been asking.

The thought that Thomas had was this:

Ultimately, I think Phil's problems have little to do with literal vs. figurative. It sounds much more like he is concerned about the character of God. He sounds like he would prefer a "kinder, gentler" god than the one he sometimes sees in the Bible. I understand that, having felt the same way many times.

But I think he is hiding behind figurative vs. literal. I could be wrong, certainly, but I think this is more about the God of the Bible than the Bible itself.

Thomas is not wrong on this. It's not the only question, but it certainly is a part of it. As I stated in the Old Testament part of this series. It does bother me that the God who is defined as love in the New Testament would call for the genocide of the Canaanites.

However, I don't that it's as easy to separate the Bible from the God of the Bible. If our entire definition(s) of God come from the Bible, then something that I have to deal with is one on hand, the truth of the Bible, and on another, the literal or figurative historicity of the Bible. Where I'm trying to get is maybe to not focus on the literal/figurative section. And maybe this is simply a step that I'm having to go through to a different understanding of it.

You see, my faith has always been lived through the lens of the Bible. And part of that problem is that if I'm honest with myself, I do have a lot of questions about the authors and the literalness of it. And if I begin to doubt the reliability of Scripture, then the natural next step is to doubt the faith that I have gained because of the Bible and the interpretations of it.

So what I'm trying not to is throw the baby out with the bathwater. If my view of Scripture is not the traditional (kind of) literal view of Scripture that I've had most of my life, then how does my faith change? Do I lose my faith? Perhaps some will, but I don't think I will. My faith is too important to me to let a changing view of Scripture and the God revealed within that Scripture subvert it.

I feel like I'm rambling a lot here, but there are some deep-seated questions that I'm wrestling with while trying to be honest with myself (and all of you). I don't know if that clears anything up or not or just muddies the waters more.

The Bible Tells Me So: Implications

In the last few weeks, on Friday, I've been thinking about the idea of taking Scripture seriously if not always literally. I've talked about my thoughts on the Old Testament and also why I tend to take the New Testament more literally. So for the final thoughts on this, I wanted to think about the implications of this mindset.

In my mind, there are basically three ways of interpreting Scripture, each with flaws.

• Entirely literally, which can lead to such things as believing that God (or Satan) planted the dinosaur fossils to challenge our faith and make it difficult to believe in God and the Bible.
• Entirely figuratively, which in my mind loses much of the value of Scripture, particularly when it comes to Jesus and His Resurrection, something I view as central to Christian faith.
• And then the way that I've been thinking, a combination of literal and figurative, which as I discussed in the first installment of this whole thing, can lead to cherry picking which Scripture we decide are literal and which are figurative, although .

In thinking about the third way, I freely admit that there are flaws and subjectivity within that perspective, but in a way I think it's harder than the other two. If you decide to take the Bible completely literally or figuratively, all of your decisions are made. There's very little discernment in that part. You then have to decide how you're going to enact those beliefs.

With the third way, there's discernment and study that have to go into determining what is intended to be taken literally and figuratively. In a way, this mindset would seem to free up the Bible to be what it seems like it was meant to be, not completely a rule book or law book to be followed completely (which almost no one does). To me, it is a way to acknowledge Scripture both as God breathed and human influenced, because I don't think the two are mutually exclusive.

The Bible Tells Me So: The New Testament

Last week, I looked at some of the problems I have with the Old Testament and asking what, for me, are some hard questions about Scripture. I definitely appreciate the dialogue that resulted and the gentleness and kindness with which it was handled.

This week, I want to think about the New Testament. As a member of a Church of Christ, most of my adult life has been focused around the NT. Heck, sometimes we're called "New Testament Christians," which seems a little redundant in some ways, but ok. I mentioned last week that I'm more inclined to take the NT more literally than the Old. Why is that? I will freely admit that one reason is that I probably just like it more. It fits more within my sensitivities. The way that Jesus is written about and talked about works more strongly for me.

People will naturally bring up inconsistencies between the Gospels, but my friend Adam Ellis had some interesting thoughts about that. If you asked me and Sheryl to tell the stories about the births of our children, we are going to tell those stories about the same subject from very different perspectives. We'll remember different details and aspects and perhaps emphasize different things, but we're telling the same stories. Now, that might offend Biblical literalists because it allows human frailty of memory into the discussion, but I believe that that is how God works, through human frailty.

What about Paul, the great writer and evangelist? I tend to view Paul through the lens of the culture he was writing from the culture he was writing to. Some of his writings might seem homophobic and misogynistic and condoning of slavery. And the truth is that his culture was all of those things, but Paul was trying to help create a reality where differences were put aside for the cause of Christ. But that also means that perhaps some of his commands were limited to the churches to whom he was speaking and not necessarily to us.

I'm not sure if that helps explain my thoughts on the New Testament very well, but it is why I take it more literally than the Old. Next week, I want to think about what the implications for this way of thinking about Scripture are, because there are some serious ones, obviously.

The Bible Tells Me So: The Old Testament

Last week, I wrote about trying to find a spiritually mature way to take the Bible seriously without taking it completely literally.

So, let's think about what this could possibly mean for the Old Testament. Wait, before we do that, a few disclaimers. I am not a Biblical scholar. I took Bible classes everyday in college at Lipscomb University for 4 years, but things like this weren't really discussed. I'm a neophyte who's thinking off the top of my head and I could be way off base here.

Ok. Let's start at the beginning. I talked last year about how when someone asks you how old the earth is, they're really asking what you think of the Bible. But let's just take for a second that the Biblical account of creation is mythical and the current scientific understandings about the beginning of life and the universe is closer to correct. What does that mean for a Christian? Well for some, it means that the rest of the Bible isn't trustworthy. If that one part is wrong or incorrect, it means that the whole thing collapses. For someone else, what it could mean is that the author of Genesis was reflecting the understandings of his (or her) time and assuming God's action in that. Did they believe it? Probably, but that doesn't preclude it from being scientifically incorrect. Now, should we put our complete "faith" in scientific understanding? No, but one thing that science does is allow the possibility of saying, "I don't know." Scientists don't know what caused the presumed "Big Bang;" they don't know what sparked proteins to come together to start the cycle of life. And to me, that leaves open the possibility of God's action in that.

That one is one that a lot of people have thought about. But another piece of the OT that I've thought a lot about are God's commands to Joshua in the same named book to completely annihilate the Canaanites. He tells them to utterly destroy them: men, women, and children (Joshua 8). I really have two issues with this: 1) it seems to go against the God is Love declarative in 1 John; 2) it makes God seem like a racist and "bad." Why would he direct the destruction of children? So, what if what we're reading is the writing of someone who is inserting God and an understanding of His word into their actions. Basically giving His sanction to the actions that they're doing. Telling history from their perspective. Someone once said, "You can be sure that you've created God in your own image when He hates the same people that you do." Was that going on here with the Israelites?

Now what that opens me up to is someone saying, "But Phil, aren't you just trying to explain away the parts that you don't understand or don't agree with to fit into your understanding?" Well, maybe, but the alternative is taking a view of a God inconsistent from the New Testament God, and that's a dangerous road to consider, in my mind.

Yes, I realize I'm opening a can of worms, playing with fire, insert cliche here. But if I'm being honest with my thoughts and my faith, this is what I have to do and questions I have to ask and try to come to some resolution on.

Next Friday, the New Testament and why I tend to take it quite a bit more literally than the Old.

The Bible Tells Me So

I was planning today to write a piece about reading the Bible and if there is a mature way to come to be able to take the Bible seriously, but not completely literally. And then I realized that I'd already basically done that last June.

I don't know why I'm having so much trouble with Scripture these days. If you search for Bible on my blog, you can see how much I've been struggling with it. Just in the last couple of years, I've been digging and thinking and pondering about the nature of Scripture and our relationship to it. I'm getting to the point where I believe that the Bible is part of God's work in our world, but not the only part. I'm getting to the point where I believe that the Bible is from God, but not inerrant. I've been at the point for awhile where I believe that God inspired the Bible, but that didn't preclude people's tendency to inject personal issues, foibles, and perspectives.

I guess what I'm wrestling with the most is what is the place of Scripture in the life of a Christian who believes that God inspired it, but doesn't believe that it is inerrant, infallible, or whatever other theological words we come up with. And the big question even in that is, how do we decide which parts to follow? Do we cherry pick the parts we like and ignore the parts we don't (not that most Christians don't already do that)?

I'm trying to come to a position of respect and honoring of the Scriptures, but not deifying them, not creating them as a new god to be worshipped, as I and others have probably unintentionally done. And I hope and pray that that leads me to a greater respect for them, the people that wrote them, and the God I believe inspired them.