Monday, May 18, 2015

Reading the Scriptures Without Throwing your Brains in the Toilet

Blind faith is stupid faith.  The notion that believing in God without asking questions or having doubts is the most virtuous kind of faith is absolutely false.  To trust in God and not wonder about the integrity of that trust is to take the religious parts of your brains and throw them in the toilet.  After all, the word faith means to trust without knowing for sure.  If you knew for sure, you wouldn’t have to have faith, you would know.  Faith means not knowing for sure and yet continuing to trust and hope despite, because, and through your questions and doubts.  Questions and doubts, belief and unbelief, trusting some days and not others are all part of the life of faith.  If Jesus, who Christians call the Christ, wrestled with God and died with a question on his lips, what makes you think that you can live this life and not be compelled to also wrestle with God? 

For many years I have  been a student of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures.  I am not sure how much of what is in the  scriptures actually happened.  But I have concluded that all the scriptures are trying to speak the truth about human nature and the truth about God.  I have also concluded that whether something has or has not really happened is not as important as we think.  And, I have concluded that some things that never happened can be very true.

But first, why did anyone bother to write these books? The scriptures are a set of writings written by human beings in response to their experience of God and human nature.   They wrote the words to tell the truth of what they had seen and heard.  Near as I can tell, the writers were not concerned with whether the events happened in an exact historical literal way.  They wrote what they wrote to bear witness to the truth that had confronted them and they had confronted in their lives.  They wrote the words down to convince and persuade others that what they had experienced  was true and wise.

Taking the scriptures seriously is not the same as reading them literally.  To read the scriptures seriously is to be forced to interpret what you read.   Ask yourself: Is what I am reading intended to be read literally or metaphorically, historically or devotionally?  Does it have to be either/or or can it be both and?  Can authorial intention be read from the text as it sits?   Is the text describing the culture back then or is the text prescribing what we need know to to live with wisdom today?  The people who wrote the scriptures lived in a different place, time and culture than we do.  The goal of their writings was not to turn us all into Middle Eastern speaking Jews. Christians or Arabs  Otherwise we would all speak Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic today.  But, we don’t think we need to speak those languages to be religious.  Why not?  Because, the point of the scripture writers was to pass on to us the wisdom and faith that they had discovered.  The writers were also convinced that what they wrote would help generations of us to stay sane.  So, when the scripture functions to keep us sane, healthy and honest, then we can say it is inspired and revealed by God.  It would seem the scriptures are intended keep you sane throughout your life.

The writers of the scriptures were also not convinced that they had the absolute truth but that they had a truth which they believed  would help their community to live.  For the writers the only one who actually knew the whole truth about life was God.  The writers had only caught a glimpse of what was true and by writing down their narratives, poems, and laws, they invited their readers to wrestle with what they had written.  If and when the writings contradicted each other, all to the better. The writers knew that they did not know all there was to know.  Religious communities in every generation were called upon to debate and argue over the veracity of the texts.  The writings were not infallible or inerrant.  They were  attempts to speak about the deeper things of which human beings wrestle with inherently.  The goal of the writers seems to have been to call their communities to discuss, argue and correct the texts.  Sometimes the texts were right.  Sometimes the texts were wrong.  Sometimes the texts were incomplete.  Sometimes the texts reflected the prejudices of the writer or his time.  Sometimes the texts were intended to raise questions not provide answers.  Answers tend to close off the discussion.  Questions open the discussion. 

The scriptures we read were intended to be a vector toward the truth about God and human beings.  In point of fact, the relationship between the readers and the biblical writings are reciprocal.  They correct us and we correct them.  They question us and we question them.  They can be wrong and we can be right.  They can be right and we can be wrong.  And sometimes it is all quite confusing.  How can we know?

The name Israel means to wrestle with God.  We, as communities, wrestle with God as we wrestle with the texts, as we have always wrestled with the texts. The inspiration and authority of the biblical writings lies in their engagement with us over the crucial questions of life . To wrestle in such a manner requires courage and wisdom.  Since these two are not easy to come by, we wrestle in community and across communities.  The truth is not something we possess.  It is something that possesses us.  It is something we wrestle towards.  And something that wrestles to reach us.  We never quite have it.  We can never be sure that we are completely right.  Our conclusions over the texts are at best tentative because the texts themselves are tentative attempts to speak the truth.

There are three large monotheistic communities, Jews, Christians and Muslims.  They each have their own scriptures which they believe are inspired and revealed by God.  The Jews have the Torah and the Talmud; the Christians have the Old and New Testaments and the Muslims have the Quran and the Hadith.  Instead of seeing these varying scriptures and their long traditions of interpretation as competitive revelations, we would be wise to study together with people of other and different traditions.  We may have something in our traditions that will teach them how to live more wisely and they in turn may have something to teach us about where we have been right and/or wrong.  Since each religious community is only the tentative recipient of truth, they would each be wise to learn from each other.  Jews, Christians and Muslims have much to teach each other and much to learn from each other.  This does not mean we should not affirm, each, our own tradition.  Each tradition should proclaim its truths with respectful stubbornness.  At the same time we should all respectfully and critically engage each other’s texts.  And, remember, true wisdom is to humbly recognize that you could be wrong. 

All the scriptures declare that we ought love God with all out heart, soul, and mind.  The mind is not an enemy of faith.  The mind compels us to take the word faith seriously and honestly.  So. don’t give up using your mind when it comes to God.  When it comes to matters of faith, don’t throw your brains in the toilet. Grasp for a faith that encourages you to open your eyes and wrestle with God and the texts of our scriptures.  The real question is  not what you will do with the texts but what they will do with you.  Therein lies the true meaning of an intelligent faith.