A friend writes me a note about his rediscovered faith. In it, he’s critical of those who, as he sees it, “interpret [the Bible] in a way that’s convenient for them [instead of taking] the Bible as a whole and literally.”
My personal experience is that many people who believe they are taking the Bible “as a whole and literally” are also interpreting it in a way that’s convenient for them.
An example: the branch of the Church of Christ I grew up in prided itself on saying, “We speak where the Bible speaks, and we’re silent where the Bible is silent.” We claimed no authority other than the Bible. We asserted the text of the King James Bible was very clear, very plain, and very easy for any honest person to read and understand. (A very convenient and subtle trick, that particular turn of phrase … it made anyone who drew conclusions different from our own into dishonest people!)
For years, I really believed those claims that our church took the Bible “literally and without interpretation.” But, ultimately, what to do about Jesus’ words in Luke 18? “For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye,” Jesus says, “than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
That’s a hard teaching when taken literally, because it says that the odds of something impossible happening are better than rich people getting to heaven.
So, we didn’t take that literally. Then came Paul’s bit about women not braiding their hair and never wearing gold, pearls, or expensive clothes (1 Tim. 2). We didn’t take that literally, either, despite the fact that it’s worded as a very specific directive. “These were culturally-influenced directions,” we said. “They don’t apply to the church today.”
I began to notice that we took very literally the passages that supported what we wanted to do, but that we found complex and convenient ways around a literal reading whenever a literal reading pinched a bit.
Amazingly, we still told ourselves, “We’re the only church that takes the Bible literally!”
It boggles the mind.
Add comment