A couple of years ago I did an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle for a feature they publish on line called Finding My Religion. The writer of the story thought it was intriguing that I played poker and so he did a story about some of my transformation called the “Poker Playing Pastor”. I had no idea that the article would stir so many people up. I acknowledge that I was naive. I forgot that the internet is global and not just regional. The words I chose were intended for the audience I thought I was speaking to. Unfortunately many of my more conservative Christian friends (and many who I don’t even know) rushed to judgment on my comments.
One of the issues I was asked about in the interview was what I believe about the inerrancy of scripture. I believe what the Bible says about itself – that “all scripture is inspired by God.” I believe that the Bible is trustworthy and is a sacred text that can help people know about God, and to come into relationship with God. However, I also believe that the issue of inerrancy is an argument that was birthed in modernity. In the modern era people longed for certainty. An inerrant scripture gave people a sense of certainty and absolute truth. Many modern thinkers have the Bible and thus God, all figured out. I don’t think that the vast majority of people with a post-modern worldview care. Our arguments about inerrancy seem senseless and sometimes hypocritical to post moderns. I also don’t believe that a person’s opinion o f inerrancy is necessarily an indicator of their spiritual fervor or their obedience to God. It seems to me that we have made inerrancy an unnecessary stumbling block.
In the San Francisco Chronicle article I said that I view the Bible more as story or narrative than as an encyclopedia of answers. A couple of authors have said similar things:
People want to see and hear stories and experience their own stories in the context of larger, maybe more dramatic, more explicit, or more intense ones… I am sure we all want to hear stories, from the moment we are born to the moment we die. Stories connect our little lives with the world around us and help us discover who we are. The Bible is a storybook, and the Gospels are four stories about the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, who himself was one of the greatest storytellers.
From Henri Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey
It has been my experience that most people don’t see the Scriptures as a collection of stories about God and his people in creation. The Bible is supposed to be something else entirely. If the Bible is God’s Word, then certainly it has to be more than a book of stories. Doesn’t it? It is almost as if we believe stories are for children. And ironically, we often dismiss children from our worship services to let them be told stories in their Sunday school classrooms. Meanwhile, we adults deal with the more “meaty” aspects of faith. We go to the Scriptures systematically, seeking to extract principles from them. If the stories are acknowledged at all, it is as if we are embarrassed by them, by their particularity, their earthiness. So we mine them for universal truths that instead can be applied to anyone or everyone. We explain them. We domesticate them. We apologize for them. We neuter them. We ignore them. What a tragedy.
The Bible as encyclopedia of topical religious information? Check. The bible as blueprint for how to make life work? Check. The Bible as a book of answers, especially for refuting those with whom we disagree? Check. The Bible as supporting material for systematic theology? Check. The Bible as the story about the confusing presence of a persona deity engaging bizarrely unpredictable people in astounding and mundane ways over a long period of time? Can I get back to you on that?
From Tim Keel Intuitive Leadership
And while I’m at it, let’s make a group decision to drop once and for all the Bible-as-owner’s manual metaphor. It’s terrible. It really is.
It is a book of ancient narratives.
The Bible is a collection of stories that teach us about what it looks like when God is at work through actual people. The Bible has the authority it does only because it contains stories about people interacting with the God who has all authority.
The Bible tells a story. A story that isn’t over. A story that is still being told. A story that we have a part to play in.
Binding and loosing can only be done if communities are willing to wrestle. The ultimate display of our respect for the sacred words of God is that we are willing to wade in and struggle with the text – the good parts, the hard-to-understand parts, the parts we wish weren’t there.
From Rob Bell Velvet Elvis.
I like to describe the Bible as God’s photo album. God gives us these snapshots of people and their relationship with him. We get to see how people have interacted with God since the beginning of time. We get a glimpse of God’s purpose and ongoing story. We get to see our stories as part of his bigger story. This is from Ken Shuman in his mind.
Well that’s some of what I’m thinking. What are you thinking?
OK, so that's an interesting place to start. Seems like a systematic beginning. My struggle with the Bible came with the question, "What is the Word of God?" If the "word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword," then how come there are people who read the Bible for a lifetime and are not any closer to God than when they started? I struggled for a year in seminary before I heard what I needed to get me beyond the question. Dr. McGorman said in class, "The Bible becomes the word of God to me when I hear the voice of God speaking through its pages." Sounds rather subjective, but so is my relationship with God. For me, the rather recent doctrine of inerrancy is irrelevant. Inerrancy is all about original manuscripts: "The Bible in its original form is without error." How many original manuscripts do we have available? Zero. To prove or disprove inerrancy, we need original manuscripts. But how many people could read them if we had them? Seems to me the more important issue is can my English Bible, translated from copies of copies, lead me to know God and is it sufficient to show me how God wants me to live? That's what I'm thinking.
ReplyDeleteYou made many great points through examples, excerpts and your own thoughts. Rick also had another important point to add about the original manuscripts. It's 2:19 AM and all of this is now swimming around in my head. It's really awesome stuff. That's what I'm thinking.
ReplyDeleteOK, so I don't know who Rick or JulieBee are nor do I know who else you have included on the list, some I'm just trusting that it is safe to say what's so for me.
ReplyDeleteFor me the process has been similar but a little different. The Bible has always been a place for me to get clear about what is so. Early on it was a right or wrong conversation that feed my self-righteousness and my desire to control the whole world and everyone in it. Over time, it became a place that helped me begin to give some of that up and take more personal responsibility for me.
The words themselves didn't have any magic in themselves, but in the moments when I can really open myself to the story, the people, the context and then wonder without fear or defensiveness how that story informs my faith journey - it can be very powerful.
My process with the bible made a turn when I began to realize that even if this was the "very words of God," I had a set of filters and experiences that made me "hear" those words in a particular way. In other words, I became as interested in my view of the Word. Why do I read certain passages like I do. Why do I make them mean what I make them mean. What if there is something that I don't know and I don't know that I don't know it - that if I knew it would change how I read and experience the words.
When I began to realize that I held the Bible to be true and that I had a view that made words say things that they may or may not be saying - when I really got into all that, I felt for a while like I was in a free fall - like some foundation that had given me some level of certainty (that, yes, I was seeking) had been taken away. It took a while to learn to live in that space and be ok. And once I got ok with that space, the Bible came alive for me in ways that I had never known.
I do go there looking for answers - but a part of what's changed is that I've discovered the answers are not there. (By answers I don't mean certainties - I mean choices, decisions, personal responsibility). Nor are they in me. They are in the dance between the words, the stories, the characters, and the authentic Jim that I bring to them. None of that in any way diminishes God or the Bible. In fact, if anything the place I'm standing today is a place that gives the Bible much more power to actually help me live the life God designed me to live.
Everything you have said and everything Jim has said is so for me as well. Here's something else that is so:
ReplyDeleteFor so long, I approached the Bible with eagerness, wanting to study it and learn all I could so that I could do everything "right." Not in the moral superiority sense of doing things right (although maybe that too) but I just really, really wanted to do things right and please God and participate in all the blessings God bestows and so on. I really believed that if I could just figure out the Bible, then I could have the confidence that I was doing things right.
The loss of that eagerness and certainty and naivete has made me sad. I can no longer just read the Bible to hear the voice of God with certainty. I miss the simplicity and the sweetness.
Would I go back? No. But I miss it.
What I find so wonderful about my time spent in the Word is, that I find more and more ways to apply it to my life's journey, and to help explain some of the things I've endured. Some days, I will just randomly open my Bible and start reading, and it's as if God led me directly to the corresponding verses. I know, to some, that sounds "cliche," but I promise you, I am not one to "go with the flow." There is no "figuring" out the Bible, but I believe it is our mission to read it, and to apply it to out "post-modern" lives. I am so far removed from the "traditional" Church, but I truly believe that that style is not exactly what God intended. I have had far greater "Church" experiences, in places where it is hard to believe that God even exists.
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