Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.
(1st John 5:21)
During the depression in Louisiana we had a servant or two, poor as we were. Dad had taken a black dictionary and used it as a door stop for an innner door. Someone heard our old housekeeper passing that spot and pronouncing in awed terms, "the Word of God". Completely illiterate, she still knew what the word of God was.
Raised in a Methodist parsonage in Louisiana, I was never exposed to the idea that the Bible is perfect. My father, a respected member of the La. Conference of the Methodist Church for 45 years, held that the Bible is a collection of books. Open ended, he did not hold with the idea that God had miraculously closed the canon in 325, using ecclesiastical politicians as his miraculous agents. Dad would never have said any such thing; he just advised his congregation to add to their collection of books if they found anything more meaningful and spiritually nurturing.
As a teenager I knew that the people to whom Dad ministered generally thought the Bible was perfect-- without error, written by the hand of God. They believed this implicitly, usually without ever having read very much of it.
Years later in seminary, coming straight from a degree in science, the oft mentioned incident of Jonah and the big fish assaulted my sensibilities. OMG who said the book was a record of something that actually happened? some people apparently want to believe that, but there's no such indication in the Bible; it's a story, like the stories we tell our children.
So much of the Bible is stories; to get their true import we must rise about the material; these are stories with a spiritual dimension-- not about facts! Do you believe Job really happened? As an actual event it has relatively trivial meaning; as a philosophical and theological tome, it's a masterpiece.
What does all this boil down to? To me it smacks of idolatry; there's a special name for it: bibliolatry! It just takes too much of our spiritual energy to focus only on the material.
Did those things really happen? Who cares?
6 comments:
It's a true test of faith to abandon a linear thought process and consider that the Bible is a collection of stories.
My dad's position? Of course those things happened. God can do anything - why would it be in the Bible if it didn't? Besides, if you start to say that some parts of the Bible aren't true, then you can pick and choose what you want to believe happened/was said/etc. It's either all or nothing.
My position: Does the reality of the flood, of Jonah in the belly of a whale, etc. radically change my view of who God is, his love for me and the redemption of what he created? No. But I love to discuss these things - reminds me of how big God is.
Hurrah! At last I've provoked a rejoinder. Wonderful.
To Kiznath: your "dad's position? Of course those things happened."
My dad's position? God never said any such thing. He didn't dictate the Bible.
"if you start to pick and choose". My God told me to worship him with all my mind. I don't think you're doing that.
"All or nothing" is the refuge of an uncritical mind. Such as "if you don't do such and so, you don't love me."
Re "how big God is": God is much, much bigger than anything said about him, in the Bible or anywhere else.
Thanks, Kiznath for the stimulating comment.
Ruthie, some Christian churches "declared from the roof tops that the Bible is the Word of God."
Quakers don't. Quakers consider the Word of God to be Christ, the Christ Within. When asked what was his authority, Fox did not say the Bible; he said "let Christ be your teacher." Thank God for Christ, George Fox, and the Bible-- as the Christ Within opens it for us.
For me the simplest way out of the dilemna is toa sk if the bible even claims to be the infallible closed Word of God and basis for all faith and practice.
Answer: No it doesn't. In fact it suggests that if anyone or thing should make that claim we should not trust it. Biblical principles include -- requiring witnesses to witness to another and not to themselves and requiring multiple witnesses to base a claim.
The bible -- like all the witnesses recorded within it and all teh witnesses to spiritual truth since cannot claim infallibility nor does it or them require it. The test is faithfulness not infallibility.
Our world has become so englamoured with the successes of the physical sciences that it has forgotten the difference and religion has been seduced by it. The notion that the scripture must be interpreted literally or not at all is only a few hundred years old -- if that.
David said, "The notion that the scripture must be interpreted literally or not at all is only a few hundred years old -- if that." Thank you, David; that's a truly valuable contribution to this discussion.
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