“All
Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make
us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and
teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his
people to do every good work.”
2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NLT)
2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NLT)
When
I first started actually reading the Bible I would vacillate between trying to
take every sentence in its most literal sense but then thinking of a certain
text, “this can’t be literally
true!” The retort, “God can do
anything” mostly didn’t work very well for me.
Since that time I’ve come to what I consider the most accurate way of
reading the Bible for all its worth. The
following guidelines have been helpful for me and I hope they help you.
1. Inspiration means that God
inspired the writer of the text.
2. Therefore I must consider
who the writer was, what he was trying to convey in his culture, what issue he
was addressing and how writers in his culture used words and illustrations to
make their point. This means
that sometimes what looks to us like the “plain reading” of a text could be
wrong if we read our culture, our presuppositions, our idioms etc. back into the
text, thereby turning it into something that it isn’t.
This means that reading the Bible well takes work.
We need footnotes, scholars’ insights, pastors, churches and the
overall Christian Community to help us understand and read it well.
Bible reading is a team sport.
3. I do not use the words
“infallible” and “inerrant”. Although
I can affirm certain definitions of those words, I have found that too many
Christians use those words as “heresy trials” to see who’s a real believer
and therefore “in” and who isn’t and therefore “out”.
4. Of the many Bible reading
challenges I have encountered perhaps the most frequently cited one is the
problem of the whale in the book of Jonah.
Is Jonah’s being swallowed by the whale an actual event that happened
in history? A literalistic
reading says yes. Skepticism
says no. What to believe?
I recall citing the story of something like that actually happening early
last century only to discover years later that this oft cited story by preachers
(including me) was a hoax.
But
what if we apply guideline #1 above? What
if the writer of the book of Jonah never intended that it be read as literal
history? What if the writer intended
that it be read as a satire or as a parable and his readers knew that?
In asking this question we are helped.
Those who take Jonah as historical reporting will cite their arguments
supporting their view. Likewise
those who take Jonah as a parable will cite their arguments supporting their
view. This way the question
won’t deteriorate into literalists accusing the non-literalists of not
believing the Bible. Both
groups believe it is inspired and each can be enriched by respectful dialogue
regarding the interpretation of the other.
But,
some will ask, didn’t Jesus cite Jonah as his “proof text” predicting his
resurrection making it proof positive that Jonah has to be historical?
Yes, Jesus did cite Jonah. No
that does not mean it has to be historical.
After all I cite Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia as if he is historical
and no one thinks I’m reading the Chronicles literalistically.
Those who see Jonah as a parable simply see Jesus citing a well-known
parable and then bringing it to life in his resurrection.
5. The Bible is rich in its
variety of literary genres and I have come to realize that when I impose a 21st
century, “just the facts ma’am just the facts”, newspaper reporting style,
literalistic expectation on the bible, I can all too easily find myself on a big
adventure in missing the point.
6. Finally,
never forget that a “text without a context is a pretext”.
It’s fun to have a favorite verse, but when a verse is cited alone out
of its context it can way too often be used to mean something it was never
intended to mean. 2
Timothy 3:16 and 17 above tell us that scripture must interpret, change and
challenge us, not be subsumed into what we want to believe.
For
more:
follow on Twitter @jefflampl
No comments:
Post a Comment