The Ultimate Authority

For years I used the Bible as my ultimate authority to tell me what was right and what was wrong.  And I believed that the Bible spoke conclusively and clearly on moral issues.  “Uncompromising” was a word that I took pride in.  Gray was not something I acknowledged.  There was no excuse for sin.  The Bible clearly laid out what was right and wrong. 

But a few years ago, I began to face the reality that the Bible frequently contains verses that seemed to both approve and condemn the very same behaviors/beliefs.  I found verses to support both sides of various “moral” issues such as; War, Death Penalty, Assisted suicide, Drinking, Smoking, Marijuana, Polygamy, Slavery, and the submission of women.  And I found verses to support both (or many) sides of various theological issues such as; The tribulation and rapture, Once saved always saved, Predestination, Speaking in tongues, Baptism, Hell, Salvation, Creation interpretations.

For many years I relied on pastors to help me figure out these (and many other) seeming contradictions.  These were respected and educated pastors who were known for preaching “from the Word”.  But if I honestly look at most of the sermons I've heard, I see that they typically consist of "studying" a passage (1-5 verses??), and then using that content as a springboard for the pastor to discuss whatever (usually at least tangentially related) topic they wanted to cover that day.  Sometimes it would be a presentation about the gospel, or some current cultural/political battle, or some fundraising campaign which was sprinkled with other Bible verses (taken out of context).  Frequently they would include personal and humorous anecdotes to illustrate their points.  If they ever did address a thornier theological issue that was present in the text, I've noticed that they always seem quite sure that what they have been taught by their particular professor(s) from their particular denominational seminary is really the truth (and the other pastors who were taught differently in their different seminaries are surely wrong).  In short, they are not really teaching "the Bible", they are really teaching the current evangelical worldview (indoctrination) using the Bible as an unquestionable justification.

And what I see is that intelligent and educated men differ greatly and yet are convinced that their particular interpretation of this "ultimate authority" is the correct one.  I have really come to believe that maybe they are no more capable to find the inherent truth in the Bible than I am.  This is not to say that I am as educated as they are, but perhaps their education/indoctrination into a particular version of Biblical truth is a part of the problem.  And more to the point of where I am heading right now is the idea that trying to find THE particular version of Biblical truth that is the "right" one is a fool's errand.  Maybe we have put so much importance on finding God in the Bible that we are tied in knots trying to explain the contradictions, trying to wave away the cultural contexts, trying to ignore the very human elements of the Bible.

So I am left humbled - a humility that comes from a glimpse of just how difficult it is to interpret a book written over the course of 1500+ years by scores of writers in cultures dramatically different than my own.  A humility that comes from understanding that when it comes to determining morality (the very will of God) or theology (the very nature of God) from the words of these differing authors, that maybe the Bible cannot stand as the “ultimate authority” that I so desperately always wanted and assumed it to be.

The Magic Book

I don’t think I ever believed that the Bible’s origins were word-for-word from God.  The Book of Mormon supposedly came from engraved golden tablets that required special glasses worn by Joseph Smith to translate from “reformed Egyptian” to King James English.  And the Quran was recited by Mohammed after the angel Gabriel made him memorize this message from God word for word.  These are both examples of a Scripture’s exact words being credited directly to God through supernatural means, but I never thought of the Bible in those terms.  I never thought that God directly wrote the Bible word for word.

Nonetheless when I was young my view of the Bible was still pretty immature.  During my elementary years I felt it was written by very holy men from long ago who had incredible insight and they had hidden the secrets of the universe in the Bible.  There was a mystical and magical element that somehow infused the writings so that God himself was in the writings and reading and speaking it was akin to speaking some sort of incantation or spell.  I believed that the secrets were only revealed to holy men or perhaps geniuses who could crack the codes of the various symbols and numerology contained within.  It was one part secret code, one part Ouija board (one that really worked), and one part a book of magic spells. 

Shortly after I became a Christian in Jr. High I started to read the Bible for myself and my view of the Bible changed pretty dramatically.  I saw it differently.  I read almost exclusively from the New Testament and I saw that it held the account of Jesus’ life, some pretty deep theology (Romans), some practical living stuff (epistles), and then all that cool prophetic stuff was still there in Revelation. 

But good-sized chunks of my original view of the Bible as some sort of old, dusty, mysterious book of magic always lingered deep in my psyche.  And it was reinforced every time I heard someone proclaim the importance of the Bible.  It was “the Living Word”.  It was the “ultimate authority”.  It had the ability like no other book to somehow change what it said depending on who read it and what they needed to hear.  It had the power to comfort and soothe you.  It had mystic power to reveal things to you about yourself, about your life.  My first years in Christianity were spent with charismatics who always prayed “in Jesus’ name” for healing, casting out demons etc. because the Bible had showed us the correct words to string together for powerful effect.  People would sometimes close their eyes and randomly open the Bible and point to a verse to see special messages from God.  The Bible had a power all of its own, and in this way, my view of it being a “magical” book was confirmed though I quickly learned not to use the words like “magic” or “incantation” with it (but on a practical level it was the same). 

Along these lines my view of the Bible fit well and influenced what I believed about how people “got saved”.  I was taught that all anyone needed to do was to say a certain prayer (not a long prayer, and not every day or even more than once because that would be “works”), and to believe a few specific things (not a lot of things, just a few things otherwise that would be “majoring on the minors”).  In this way, a significant portion of my formative years in Christianity were spent learning about certain spiritual dynamics.  I was led to believe that these particular and specific dynamics were important to understand in certain ways and speak about in certain ways in order to have the desired supernatural results.  I learned that the particular ways in which I viewed the Bible, Christ, and salvation were critical to #1  Being saved  #2  Experiencing God’s power in my life  #3 Pleasing God.  All three of those things were vitally important to me, and so I was happy that God had put people in my life to show me the right way to think and believe.

And so I moved forward.  Wanting nothing more than to radically serve and know God.

From Assumption to Question - The Bible

The Bible and my interaction with it have always played a central role in my spiritual life and my understanding of Truth, so it should not surprise me that any change to my view of the Bible would have profound and cascading consequences. 

From the time I was born-again as a young teenager until shortly after I started college, I simply accepted the Bible’s meaning and interpretation provided to me by others.  But by the end of college, that had all changed.  I had become aware of the radically different ways in which certain passages of Scripture were interpreted and how those differing interpretations could affect how one lives and how one understands God.  But even in the midst of my changing attitudes toward certain accepted evangelical doctrines, a stubborn commitment grew to be radically committed to Christ and to knowing Him, and more to the point of this post, knowing Christ through the Bible.  My commitment was so intense and my refusal to compromise (even in the face of pressure from church leadership) so absolute, that some even began to think of me as a “rebel” unwilling to “play nice” with church institutions and their associated doctrines. 

This passion and desire was grounded in two affirmations.  The first was that Christ had sacrificed so greatly for me that I owed Him my very life, and the second was that by following Christ, I could play an important role in the transformation of this world into a better place for all.  In other words, I mattered and I had purpose.  These were both important drivers in my life and I was determined to move forward in spite of what I felt were the numerous scriptural misinterpretations, misapplications, and compromises the evangelical culture around me.

What I never questioned however, was the core belief in the Bible itself.  I “believed in the Bible” much as I “believed in God”.  That is to say that I trusted it without reserve.  I trusted its inherent divinity.  In college I came to understand just how difficult it really was to understand the Bible in regards to doctrinal and lifestyle issues; difficulties due to the limitations of the cultures within which the Bible was written as well as my own culture’s limitations, and also the inherent limitations of language itself.  But I never doubted the original nature or the essence of the Bible.  The Bible was God’s Word or the “Word of God”.  Thinking on this now, I wonder how many thousands of times I have heard that phrase, spoken and received without question, without filtering, cementing into my mind and heart many rather strange and unexamined assumptions. 

Any difficulties, contradictions, or outright factual errors which I came across I attributed to faulty men who had made transcription errors, mistranslations, or misinterpretations.  These must be man-made difficulties (I reasoned) because I “believe in the Bible.”  It was an article of my faith, and everyone around me operated with the same assumptions.  The idea of questioning it only occurred to me as a hypothetical, akin to “what if reality is all a dream?” which is an interesting question, but never taken seriously, and likewise the Bible was really the Word of God.  It was more than an article of faith, it was simply the way it was.

I (and those in my community) became skilled at dismissing any difficulties that would occasionally come up.  The issues were very seldom brought up within my own evangelical community, but I would happen upon them when (1) I read the Bible on my own and stumbled across passages which were rarely, if ever, discussed among evangelicals, or when (2) some outside source of truth would enter my consciousness.  In either case, I learned I could generally “skirt around” the conflict with tricks of semantics, appeals to translation or cultural or contextual problems, or simply chalking it up to being one of the many mysteries of God. 

For example, though the Bible had been used to justify slavery, I affirmed that while the Bible talked about slavery like it was no big deal, it never actually said the exact words, “slavery is OK” and therefore God can still hate slavery.  When God commanded the Israelites to commit genocide, I affirmed that the people group in question must have deserved it.  When God commands his army (after taking a city victoriously in battle) to “take the virgins for yourselves”, I affirmed that the army must have understood God to want them to marry those women and love them as precious wives (as I’m sure any invading army always treats its conquered women!).  When the Bible sets up laws and covenants that speak of and treat women/wives as property of men and less valuable than men, I affirmed that this must have been a step up from what they were enduring before and therefore God was actually improving the plight of women rather than codifying oppression.  When the Bible commands women to be silent in church, I affirmed that this was a cultural rather than an “absolute” command.  On and on it went, from horrific “acts of God” like the flood, the plagues, Sodom and Gomorrah, to polygamy and concubines, genocide, infanticide, abortion, murder, and sexism, not to mention the contradicting factual accounts found in the gospels of Jesus’ life etc. etc.  I could go on, but these are some examples just off the top of my head.  

To be clear, I am not one of those who hates the Bible and think it is evil.  The problems with the above mentioned items exist precisely because they contradict the Bible's clear depiction of God as a loving, merciful, caring, peace-loving, and patient Being.  But I am now in a season of my life where I can no longer simply wave my hand and make the difficulties go away.  I now must ask, “what exactly is the Bible anyway?”  Until I answer this question to my satisfaction, I can not move forward to learn how to love God and love my neighbor.

About this Blog

To anyone who happens to stumble upon this "blog",

I accepted Christ over twenty years ago when I was a boy in junior high school.  I have lived a life committed to God and serving Him ever since.  Though I would never claim to have lived a "perfect" life, my outward actions were in general a sincere reflection to my inward commitment to know/follow/serve/love Christ with my whole being.  I have led Bible Studies, delivered sermons, gone on mission trips, led others to Christ etc.

I now teach at a private evangelical christian high school.  For many years I have been completely surrounded by evangelical Christians; my spouse, my professional colleagues, my friends, my children's friends, my in-laws, my boss, my students, I even have a Christian dentist, Christian doctor, and a Christian accountant.

This blog is my attempt to "talk through" my thoughts and feelings as my spiritual journey is taking me farther and farther away from my evangelical Christianity.  Unfortunately, my employment depends upon my personal beliefs, and I can lose my job for thinking the "wrong" thoughts.  Frankly this frightens me because I like my job.  A lot.  Therefore if I want to honestly talk things over with someone, or if I want to have a sounding board for my ideas, my options are severely limited.  Hence the creation of this blog, and the necessity of my continued anonymity.

I am not a trained/skilled/interesting/witty writer.  I don't teach English literature or grammar, nor am I a trained theologian.  I am simply a committed follower of Christ on a journey that is taking queer and marvelous turns.  In all probability you will disagree with some if not most of what I write.  If you choose to read further about the only thing I can promise you is my honesty.