Yesterday I vented a little spleen regarding my negative feelings about the Bible.
I noted how it “is filled with wildly disparate perspectives, folk tales, a blending of genuine history and wishful thinking, and contradictory ideas about what a god might be and what God is or is not, as well as head-jerkingly wildly conflicting ethical codes…”
All true.
And, I went on to say therefore the Bible really isn’t all that helpful. But that isn’t really so. Yes, I think anyone who believes the Bible was dictated by God to various scribes is misinformed. And acting as if that were true makes those believers very dangerous to themselves and others.
But, at the very same time I believe the scriptures represents the gathered wisdom, first of the emerging Jewish people, and then with a rather powerful coda describing the rising of a prophet and his becoming the divine in some sense, and with that most of the surviving documents of the founding of a church built around him, some on his teachings, some on the story of his becoming divine. To see it as a collection of writings by many different people with many different agendas over many years is critical. Some of it I genuinely believe is inspired. Some of it is not. And some of it is in fact a venting of hatred at oppressors and outsiders that when generalized can become a terror for many.
The contents of the Bible, as I said, are wildly uneven. And so, I’m very uncomfortable with the “sola scriptura” traditions. It leads to things like taking the Bible as a science text which basically is almost always wrong. Similarly, it locks people into embracing various ancient purity codes as “true” and enforceable social codes, scapegoating others, and creating monsters.
A more healthful approach is seeing the Bible as part of religious community. The Anglicans at their best put it together well, I think, when they speak of scripture, tradition, and reason. All of them, with each part informing the other, where it is hard to say which is more important than the other, it is possible for something dynamic to happen, for the tradition to continue to grow in depth, and, critically, change as new information comes forward.
Me, I particularly welcome the liberal religious engagement with the scriptures. Again, “liberal” is a theological term meaning taking a broad and generous approach, suspicious of hard truth claims, favoring a dynamic and open ended investigation. And with that, I suspect, it needs to be informed by a knowing no one people have a monopoly on truth. The recurring wisdom of the world’s religions points to some deep sense of connection, called by various names, but mostly compassion, loving-kindness, or, most simply, as love.
The secret to finding truth in any sacred text is with the guidance of a critical eye and the help of wise friends. Particularly, I feel, with those wise friends. These sacred texts are not sacred because some deity supposedly spoke them into the ear of some scribe, but because human beings seeking truth presented the best they could, and then what they found is corrected, and made truer each time a human or two engages with heart and friends. I sometimes suspect the holy spirit only rests when two or three are gathered. That secret and open wisdom of the heart, of love, is usually found in companionship, among friends.
When the Bible is engaged this way, as an inheritance of collective wisdom to be interpreted and embraced or even on occasion rejected in the light of various modern disciplines like research psychology, it can indeed be useful. And useful in the ways that count most, in helping us see how our ancestors dealt with the great questions of life and death, and seeing how those understandings evolved, and seeing with that how our own understandings are limited and subject to new information.
Here we can see how some of the themes in the scriptures call us to generosity to each other, and to care for the planet that is our true home which can be hell, or heaven, mostly based on our choices and actions. Here within the richness of the tradition and its documents, we can find new ways, helpful ways, true ways.
And that’s the Bible I find helpful.
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