Some of us have turned the Bible into an idol. We think every word in the Bible was dictated
by God into the ears of the writers. But
that is not true! Jewish and Christian
scripture was written by human beings inspired by God. The Bible is not inerrant
or infallible.
There is no such thing as, “The Bible says.” The Bible on its
own cannot speak. It is only when a human
being picks it up and begins to interpret what it says that the scripture can
begin to speak. Even then, it is not
saying anything on its own. The words of
the Bible are always being interpreted.
And when they are being interpreted they are being interpreted from a specific
perspective through someone’s eyes. The
person interpreting may be an atheist, an agnostic, a member of another
religion, a conservative, moderate or liberal, a Christian, A Jew or a Muslim. We all wear glasses. And the glasses
we wear affect the way we read and interpret.
Everybody says they’re open and but everybody, at some point, is closed. We see what we want to see and hear what we
want to hear. Our glasses enable and
disable us at the same time. As soon as
you have a written text, you have the virtue and problem of interpretation.
Isn’t this all terribly confusing? Yes.
So, what we are forced to do is argue out our interpretations in
community. We each know our interpretations
are limited and could be wrong. We ought
to be eager to hear where we may have gone astray. We need to listen to interpretations inside
and outside our community. Which parts
of scripture and tradition are descriptive and which parts are
prescriptive? This is an ongoing debate.
By the way, the debate is part of faith. And it is ok to disagree.
Let’s stop driving ourselves crazy with our Bible reading. Jews, Christians,
Muslims and all the rest of us are not saved or related to God because of our interpretations. We live and breathe by the kindness or grace
of God, the universe, the force or whatever you call that power at the heart of
the universe, for us and not against us. All the rest is interpretation and commentary. Stay sane out there.
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