{"id":2533,"date":"2013-11-13T14:39:03","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T19:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/?p=2533"},"modified":"2015-09-19T15:13:34","modified_gmt":"2015-09-19T19:13:34","slug":"sentimental-claptrap-part-1-the-bible-clearly-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2013\/11\/sentimental-claptrap-part-1-the-bible-clearly-says.html","title":{"rendered":"Sentimental Claptrap, Part 1: The Bible Clearly Says…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So last week, Addie Zierman wrote this great post in WaPo about the churchy phrases that are scaring away millennials<\/a>. I\u2019ve always been skeeved out by those exact same phrases, so I read the post with gusto. Good points, <\/em>I thought, and yet\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t satisfied with the idea that these clich\u00e9d phrases were just overly simple, vaguely creepy, and laden with poor connotations. That doesn\u2019t explain the way they make me want to pull my own hair out and shove it down someone\u2019s throat. There\u2019s something genuinely wrong <\/em>with these phrases: they present sentimentality as truth.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not comforting, they\u2019re not convincing, they\u2019re not even really sensible. They are dismissive platitudes that don\u2019t require the intellectual risk of questioning, the emotional risk of loving,\u00a0 or the spiritual risk of doubting. They make us feel patronized, infantilized, and profoundly unloved. Millennials see this crap and go, \u201cyeah, the rest of it must be lies too. Imma go hang out with PZ Myers now. He may be vulgar, but at least he tells it like it is.\u201d That\u2019s why I left church after high school, along with some of my closest friends. And, really, can you blame us? When we were seeking truth, we got Hallmark cards and a pat on the head.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m well aware that most of the people who say these things are good-hearted, well-intentioned people who probably think they really are speaking truth in love. Unfortunately, as I\u2019m fond of reminding the internet, the good intentions of the speaker rarely change the meaning of their words or the way those words are understood<\/a>. Since I love deconstructing things, I\u2019m going to take these \u201cchurchy phrases\u201d one post at a time and explain, in excruciating<\/em> detail, why they are the worst kind of sentimentality. In masquerading as truth, they actually obscure it.<\/p>\n

Sentimental Claptrap #1: The Bible Clearly Says\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

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You\u2019ve just been Catholic\u2019d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In college, those godforsaken papists<\/a> offered a class called \u201cThe Bible as Literature.\u201d In this class, they actually studied the Bible as if it were literature, <\/em>instead of the divine word of God. This was before I went over to the dark side, so obviously I didn\u2019t take it, but some of my friends did. When I asked what kind of stuff they were studying about the Bible, my whole universe imploded.<\/p>\n

They could have re-named the class, \u201cThe Class Where We Set Fire to the Foundations of Evangelical Reality.\u201d I kept trying to frantically insist that it was the Word of God <\/em>and these things couldn\u2019t be true, or if they were, maybe we should just ignore them and trust that the Holy Spirit spoke through the writers of the Bible in contemporary American English, specifically the language of the NIV. But my friends relied upon irritating things like historical evidence and discrepancies in translation and even a record of deliberate changes made by Luther himself to convince me.<\/p>\n

The books of the Bible were written millenia ago. Of course they were inspired by God, but they were written by people. And they were translated by people. And people like King James commissioned special translations with subtle changes that would reinforce his political agenda by upholding the episcopal structure of the Church of England. And people like Luther just took whole phrases out because he didn\u2019t like the implications. So what we\u2019re reading is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, muddled by thousands of years of human error. I believe that the Spirit protects it from total overhaul, but if the Reformation taught us anything, it\u2019s that religions can rise and fall on the turn of a single phrase. (A phrase which, by the way, isn\u2019t even in the Bible. Not even Luther\u2019s version.)<\/p>\n

Translation errors aside, though, anyone who says, \u201cthe Bible clearly says\u2026\u201d as if that settles the matter clearly hasn\u2019t read the Bible. The Bible contains more contradictions than it does unpronounceable names, and that\u2019s quite a feat. Additionally, it\u2019s nothing short of a complete denial of reality to discount the vast differences between the cultures the authors were writing for and modern day America, as if those differences don\u2019t matter.\u00a0 Remember this song?<\/p>\n