I don’t take the Bible literally. I take it seriously. No Christian really takes the Bible literally, if they are honest. If they did, books such as “A Year of Living Biblically” (A.J. Jacobs) wouldn’t become bestsellers, because all Christians would be living that way.
Every Christian interprets scripture. John Wesley of Methodism said that we bring the faith tradition, our God-given reasoning ability and our personal experience to the reading of scripture, then we consider it humbly in community so that we have checks and balances on our personal interpretations.
If we are honest with ourselves, that is what we all do. We bring our sense of the tradition and our personal experiences to the reading scripture. We can’t help but do this. And God gave us the ability to reason and think through what we are reading – we are meant to use it!
The minute we read the Bible in anything other than the original Greek and Hebrew, we are dealing with interpretation. We are reading someone’s interpretation, as they translated it, that is based on their understanding of the tradition, personal experiences, and unique reasoning. There are words in the Bible for which we have no translation, either because English does not have a word that means the same or because the original meaning of the word has been lost to us. In addition, there are phrases, sayings and situations included in scripture that had deep meaning for those of the original context, meanings that we can only guess at because we live in a totally different context and time. So, the truth is that we all interpret scripture.
If Christians took the Bible literally, then we would all own one pair of sandals, have just one set of clothes, and have no home of our own. (Matthew 10:9-11) Or at least when we are travelling, we would take nothing with us, not even money or food, make no plans for where we are going, and rely on someone’s good will when we got there. In fact, if we were taking scripture literally, we would own nothing, having sold everything to give it to the poor (Mark 10:21) But we don’t do this. We look at the word “sandals” and say, “Well, in Canada, we need to wear winter boots part of the year, so it is okay as Christians to own a pair of winter boots, too.” We have interpreted the scripture.
Very few Christians have sold everything and given all the money to help others. We have homes, a multitude of material possessions, bank accounts, and retirement savings plans. If we followed scripture literally, then we would have none of those. But we all have our reasons for not selling everything, some better than others. We have interpreted scripture! We just need to be honest about that.
I’d love for more Christians to take literally and seriously the words of Jesus, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” I hear far too much “Christian” judgement of the LGBTQ2 community, of Muslims, of immigrants, and more. It scares me, as a highly-privileged, white, straight woman. The current rhetoric in society must terrify my LGBTQ2, Muslim, and immigrant friends. Too often the excuse of taking the Bible as the literal, inspired word of God just masks a questionable and personal interpretation of scripture.
I love the Bible and I take the Bible seriously. I read it, seek to understand it, pray about it, wrestle with what it says, discuss it with others, and let the words of scripture shape my daily life. It is an ongoing journey, which I love and which challenges me to live more fully the Way of Jesus.
What I learn from the Bible is that God is love! Love is used more than any other word to describe the Divine. Perfect love casts out fear; there is no fear in love (1 John 4:18). It is (and has been) convenient for those who want power to talk about taking scripture literally and to then be the only ones allowed to say what scripture means. It creates fear in the heart of the regular person, who dares to think differently about scripture. But God is love, and perfect love casts out fear. So we shouldn’t be afraid to question scripture, to bring our own experiences and interpretations to scripture, and to work within a community to understand what God is saying to us today, in our context, through the words of scripture.
Together, let us boldly engage the Bible, for it is an amazing book through which God can shape our lives and bring about hope, justice, peace, and most importantly love in our world – and does the world ever need it!
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