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.