|
Literalism: A Fundamentally Flawed View of the Bible August 15, 1999 Douglas S. Long North Raleigh United Church An anonymous message from someone who attended my former church came to me via the offering plate. "I enjoy the sermons most," it read, "that steer clear of Bible passages. For my nickel, do not try to make the Bible relevant... because it is not. Thank-you." Now, I beg to differ with such an opinion. The Bible is still relevant... the great majority of you here today I suspect would certainly affirm that... but can we say how and why... and can we say it with clarity? (Admittedly, there is no way, in one sermon, that I can delve into this topic in any comprehensive way… but what I hope to do is offer some thoughts for reflection and begin a dialogue. I hope you'll join me in the conversation.) Whenever there’s a really intense fight in American Christianity, sooner or later it seems to turn into an argument over the truth of scripture... You don't have to search very hard for these arguments. This week's News and Observer reported several. -Public Schools in Kansas will step back from teaching evolution as a theory of how the world came to be. -Schools in Kentucky will post the 10 Commandments. -This past Friday's Faith section ran a column by Yonat Shimron on literalism and the Bible. Every time you turn around there is another topic, another article that deals with the debate. How do you deal with Biblical interpretations? There are a wide range of responses. Because I'm an ordained minister whose name has fallen victim to the marketing data bases of our day, interesting mail comes to me all the time... some good things.. some pertinent things... even, occasionally, some spiritual things. For example... I received an offer a while back a minister of the Gospel would find hard to refuse. I know this because the letter told me so. It was an invitation to join, and for a bargain of a price receive, a signed degree from, the Institute of Biblical Studies. I don’t know what a credit hour costs at Duke these days... but here was a certificate of Biblical Studies, an entire degree as it were, offered for less than $150. Let me share a few excerpts with you: Biblical Studies… I believe in the importance of understanding the Bible… but I didn't take advantage of this incredible offer… Why? It wasn't just the secrets to success and prosperity that turned me away (Folks, it is a stretch to propose Jesus as a model to follow for success and prosperity).. The kicker was the signature that appeared at the bottom of the letter… and eventual certificate… Jerry Falwell. Now I don't mean this arrogantly, but more so as a simple and truthful recognition, I believe that Jerry Falwell, and many others like him, are fundamentally flawed in their approach to Holy Scripture. Articulating the flawed approach however is sometimes like swimming upstream. I requires a little work. Many of us feel uncomfortable with literalism, but we have trouble saying why. I'll give you an example. A few years ago I was reading the small town newspaper where I lived. Granted, Oberlin, Ohio is not your typical small town, but even in Oberlin a picture caught my eye…On the 6th page was a large photo of an traveling evangelist, Brother Jed, who was preaching to students of Oberlin College on the town square adjacent to the church I served . And in the picture, Brother Jed had a large sign calling all to repentance.... REPENT, DO NOT SIN, BELIEVE THE GOSPEL. Now, some of the coeds apparently wanted to give, what we call here in the South a ‘silent witness', ... so they just took off their clothes and sat in front of the friendly preacher.... ...which, I am sure convinced him that they did not agree with his spin on the gospel.... But can we articulate our spin? Can we, with our words, speak clearly about the Word of God? So I want to begin the dialogue this morning by offering three pegs to hang the response to literalism on, three broadly stated flaws of a literal interpretation of the Bible.
Hear carefully what I am saying. The two most common ways the Bible is diminished among us, us being the people of the 20th century, all of us, The two most common ways the Bible is diminished is by ignoring it, and, conversely and ironically, by deifying it as authoritative in all matters of knowledge. We understand what it means to ignore the Bible. We've all done that, I suspect. Taking the Bible seriously requires work… and perhaps more than needing to rescue the Bible from fundamentalism, we need to rescue it from our own apathy and illiteracy and neglect. 1) Literalism imprisons, it shackles, the full truth contained in the Bible. …in large part because it ignores the complexity of the literature the Bible is composed of. There are, I know this is not new to most of you, but there are numerous kinds of literature within the pages of this book. To understand a particular text, we have to know its genre. Genre... the literary term that refers to the kind of work a particular text is. (I hesitate to say this because some of you make a living teaching such distinctions, but, to make sure we’re all aboard...) A novel, a work of fiction, is a different genre than, say, a biography, a work of history (or at least it’s supposed to be) and both are different from a lyric poem and so on. Different genres make different kind of 'truth claims'... different genres have different rules. We accept this everyday in what we read all around us and it affects how we read and interpret what is before us. Newspapers, novels, comic books… For example, you see these headlines in The National Inquirer... Alien Baby born to Margaret Thatcher Elvis Sighted At Texas Wal-Mart But if the same headline made it to the New York Times... we would read it very differently!!! We read something in light of its genre. Similarly, when it comes to the Bible, when we read an apocalyptic text (a genre of literature which uses code language about the future to actually speak to a present situation) like Daniel or Revelation, we often find ourselves puzzled, not knowing how we are to understand these particular texts. We are certainly not taking their truth more seriously if we take them as literal predictions about the future. To do so, we are, in fact, misunderstanding them as badly as picking up a page of the newspaper this morning and reading that a panther mauled a cowboy without recognizing that it came from the sports page. To misunderstand the apocalyptic genre of Daniel and The Revelation is to misunderstand the text. It is to limit, and in fact grossly distort, the truth of what was written. Karl Barth, the great theologian who helped shape many of us, explains the opening chapters of Genesis as a saga... ‘an intuitive and poetic picture of a pre-historical reality of history.’ (Church Dogmatics) Events are described which no human eye could have witnessed... animals talk, people live for centuries... its a different genre than the Gospels.. or the stories of the reign of David, the King. In its intuitive, poetic way, saga communicates truth about the ultimate origin of things, just as the narrative history of the Bible presents truth in another way, stories with moral lessons like the good Samaritan in another, and the poetry of the Psalms in yet another. We listen faithfully, we understand truthfully, only when we know what genre we are listening to. To read some texts of the Bible literally is simply misguided. Period. There is not only no truth in such attempts, there is great confusion and distortion and falsehood. 2) Literalism suffocates our relationship to the present words of God, robbing us of a vibrant, freeing, responsible journey today. Beyond understanding the genre, how do we interpret what we read? What gives priority to a story which reveals part of God’s nature, a story say, from the Book of Joshua which describes God as a warrior leading troops to decimate the Canaanites, ...what gives priority, or not, to those stories, versus the stories that Jesus told about God being a loving parent always embracing and ready to forgive? What organizes those radically different messages, stories for us? It is the present moving of God’s Spirit in our own lives... God speaks still… to us. Now that is a dangerous, but I believe true statement. The individual stories of God in the Bible are snapshots, still frames if you will, and it is only the present moving of the Spirit of God in our own lives that provides the energy to create an understandable order and movement from these snippets. We can know the true word of God. It is the present moving of God’s Spirit in our own lives... ...which is to say... the word is still being spoken... within and through us... and which is to recognize our responsibility in working to hear the Word. So how do we discern what a text means? How do we sort it out? After study, and prayer, and reflection, and dialogue… how do we come to a final sense of the Word in the text itself? Well, I’ll give you some guidelines that I believe are consistent with the Gospel in attempting to prayerfully discern the message of a particular text. Here are some questions to ask yourself. We have to allow God the opportunity to speak to us still today in order to understand fully the Word today. I recently came across a letter from a father to his son, his son dying with AIDS. Is this passage in the Bible?… No. Does it reflect the full import of Truth and meaning within the Bible. You tell me. Here is the excerpt of the father's letter to his dying son: (Anderson Clark... excerpt from a Father’s letter to his son dying of AIDS) You will not find those words in the Bible… but if they don't fully reflect the message within it, then I am wrong in every way in this venture called Christianity. The Word of God comes to us still, and it comes through the words of the Bible. Literalism, and confining God's words to those on any page, robs us of a present relationship to the Word. It shackles the full truth of the Bible… and 3) Finally, and as I said before, fundamentally, literalism limits our understanding of God. I have shared with some of you a relevant G. K. Chesterton story, ...G. K. Chesterton was a man of great intellect, an theologian who had read widely and well, and someone asked him the question ...'If you were on a deserted island... with no other civilization available to you... and you could choose only one book to have as your companion.. what would you choose?’ To which Chesterton replied, 'Why, I think I should choose a book on ship-building.' Which is one way of saying, there are simply some topics the Bible is not authoritative on. It is not a book of mathematics, not a book of science, nor is it a book of geography. For those who say it is, I'm sorry. The Bible is none of these things… and yet the State of Kansas is letting its science teachers be bullied by fundamentalists who don't know the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis from the creation story in the second. People, the Bible isn't a book of science. It is a book of ‘who God is’ and in those matters I do turn to it as authoritative. This Bible is a dialogue about who God is. What is at the center of God. So, let me summarize, let me tell you what the Bible says, and what it says about God, in one paragraph; What the Bible, the Bible that I know as the Word of God, says... ... is that we are loved by God so ferociously, that God will go to a cross for us.... that love is ultimately the strongest power in the universe... that death does not destroy... that life prevails... that truth perseveres.... that walls which divide will be broken and that peace shall come. What the Bible does not say is that the way will be easy or without struggle... it does not say the good will prosper now... nor that the righteous will be always protected... It does, though, assure us of a God who is with us always... whose presence is unfailing... and whose arms are outstretched for all who will receive them. Amen. |
Contact Doug Long at (919) 844-6661 or
send e-mail to: doug@northraleighunited.org |