So what about the Bible?

Ordinary Time XXIX; October 21, 2007

II Timothy 3:14-4:5

A website related to the Y2K problem back in the late 90s had a fun little scam on it and concluded with questions-and-answers. One of the questions was:

Q: Does the millennium really end on December 31, 1999, or is it December 31, 2000, as the purists say?
A: It ends December 31, 1999. It's in the Bible somewhere, so there's no arguing about it. (www.ufomind.com/misc/1999/dec/d18-001.shtml)

“It’s in the Bible somewhere, so there’s no arguing about it.” Someone gave me one of those just a few days ago: “It says (insert prohibition here) in the Bible.” And I asked, “Where?” Of course, the Bible does not say what the person was saying it did.

Who’s supposed to put the dishes away after dinner? The wife; it’s in the Bible. Who’s supposed to make the coffee in the morning? The husband (He-brews). Okay, I’ll get serious. What about the Bible? The use and abuse of the Bible that we see pretty much all the time in American political conversation prompts me to use this text from II Timothy as a basis for some reflections about the Bible. I hope by the time I’m done that I’ll have persuaded you that the Bible is a book you can read and you would like to read.

First question: What is the Bible for? I know; I’ve heard it too: “B-I-B-L-E” stands for “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.” In other words, astronauts are supposed to read it. No, what they mean when they say this is the reason for being alive is to get ready to die and go to heaven, and the Bible tells you how to go to heaven. Seems an awfully big book for such a small purpose. Besides that, the Bible does not claim that that is its purpose; if you want a purpose statement, here’s one: “so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” (3:17) In other words, the Bible teaches people who belong to God how to live as if we belong to God.

The Bible is not intended to be a manual for convincing people who do not agree with you that they had better agree with you or they will burn, eternally, in Hell. In fact, the Bible says a lot less about Heaven and Hell than preachers tend to. At the same time, people who claim to belong to God but never read God’s book – never take time to see what God wants us to know about how to belong to God – are simply hypocritical. The Bible has a lot of great stuff in it about how to live as people who belong to God, sometimes using direct teaching and sometimes by telling stories about people who have tried.

For material on how to be a good neighbor, look at Leviticus 19, as well as Jesus’ Top Ten hit, the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37). If you’re concerned about getting along with people who are different, check out Paul’s advice to Peter in Galatians 2. For Jesus’ thoughts about making relationships work, there are plenty of sources, but Matthew 18 comes to mind. If friendship is important to you and you wonder if God even thinks about friendship, read the story of Ruth and Naomi or the one about David and Jonathan. And what about money? Well, God’s thoughts on handling money are throughout the Bible; money is a bigger subject than any other. The Bible is a treasure-trove of instruction, good examples, bad examples and even some ideas that have been around for centuries and probably ought to be actually tried some day: material intended to help people who belong to God “be proficient, equipped for every good work.”

One of the fights Christians are having these days is over how to read and interpret the Bible. In this fight people like to trot out one of the lines from today’s text: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful...” (3:16). Of course, everyone who reads the Bible as the Word of God believes it is inspired, but we fight over what “inspired” means, and over whether to be inerrantists, infallibilists, or something else. I am a literalist. There is a tendency among certain groups to claim that they read the Bible “literally.” Perhaps many do, but fundamentalists certainly do not read the Bible literally.

A true literalist reads what the Bible actually says, for one thing. For example: Matthew and Luke both give the genealogy of Jesus; they do not agree with each other. They are different. A literalist can read that and say, “Well, this is what Matthew says” and “This is what Luke says” and not worry about it. A fundamentalist has to make something up, such as that one of them is the genealogy of Joseph and the other one is the genealogy of Mary – even though they both claim to be the genealogy of Joseph. The fundamentalist has to ignore what the Bible actually says in order to make it appear consistent. Or the stories of creation: Genesis 1 claims that human beings – male and female- are the last of God’s creation. Genesis 2 claims that God made a man, then started making other animals to look for a suitable companion, and finally made a woman. The fundamentalist has to find a way to ignore what is actually there in order to try to make them both conform to each other; the literalist simply says: oh, this is what Genesis 1 says; this is what Genesis 2 says. Another example: Noah’s flood. In Genesis 6, it says that Noah took 2 of every kind of animal into the Ark; in Genesis 7 it says that he took 14 of every animal that is ritually clean and two of every one that is ritually unclean. Which is it? The literalist can say, “Oh, there are two different versions of the story; they must be trying to make different points” but others will simply ignore what Genesis 7 says.

A true literalist also pays attention to the Bible’s literary forms. Fundamentalists and many other Christians flatten everything into sameness; they pay no attention to the unique qualities of different types of writing. But a true literalist reads poetry as poetry, prophecy as prophecy, history as history and parable as parable, and the occasional legendary tall tale – God is not above spinning a good yarn – in just the form intended. And this is not hard: you can tell when you are reading a Psalm that you are reading poetry, and when you are reading II Samuel that you are reading history, and so forth. It is not hard at all.

Which brings me to the last question: What obstacles make it hard for people to read the Bible and how can those obstacles be overcome? One obstacle is the belief that the Bible is hard to understand. It really isn’t. Some of the translations are hard to read, and so you should read an easier translation: the Good News Bible is one of the best of the simple-language translations. Besides, the Bible is mostly stories and stories are fun to read. Yes, they’re old stories, so they often have weird details, but you can usually overlook those details, or there will be a footnote that tells you how much a denarius is worth, if that is important to you.

Another obstacle I think I will call the “stained glass effect.” The Bible is the sacred Word of God, so not just anybody should read it; we have to leave it to the professionals. Nonsense. The Bible was written for everybody, not just for professionals. If you’re not a professional then don’t try to start constructing some arcane matter of doctrine without careful scholarship, but if you want to read a good story about friendship and so you read Ruth and Naomi or read David and Jonathan you don’t need a professional to tell you how important friendship is in the mind of God. Or if you want to know what the prophets say about how a society can be just or what Jesus says about getting along with people, just pick it up and read it.

Another obstacle is the belief that the Bible is boring. Actually, a lot of it is boring. So skip those parts. But how can a story about a warrior who makes a stupid promise that adversely affects his daughter be boring? Or a story about two brothers and a sister trying to get a lot of stubborn people from point A to point B without constantly getting into mischief? Are you bored by some of the most exquisite poetry ever written? Are you, who claim to be a follower of Jesus, bored by what Jesus says to his followers? Yeah, I think you can do without I and II Chronicles, and unless you’re really into the poetry of agony then you can skim through Job. Read Leviticus and Numbers if you have trouble sleeping at night. But most of it? Far from boring.

It occurred to me recently that another obstacle, strange to say, is that we think we know the Bible because we know the movies, songs, plays and other artistic forms based on the Bible. At men’s Bible Study this week I suggested that the impression most of us have of the Crucifixion of Jesus comes more from Passion plays and Mel Gibson’s movie than from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It’s hard sometimes to keep ourselves focused on what the Bible actually says, rather than some interpretation of it we have seen somewhere. And when you expect Moses to look like Charlton Heston and Mary Magdalene to sing “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” then it’s hard to read the Bible and take it on its own terms.

But I urge you to try. When W. C. Fields was mortally ill, his friend Gene Fowler stopped by to visit and he found Fields propped up in bed, reading a Bible. Fowler was astonished; the closest Fields usually came to a Bible was to use it to prop up a martini. So Fowler said, “Bill, I’m deeply touched” and Fields replied, “Don’t bother; I’m only looking for loopholes.” (Art Linkletter, I Wish I’d Said That! Doubleday, 1968, p. 31) Read your Bible, not for loopholes, but to learn something about how to be a person who belongs to God, “equipped for every good work.”

Lord God, we thank you for the gift of the Holy Bible. We pray for the Spirit to prompt us to read it, to digest it and make it our own, that we may live as those who belong to you. By the merits of Jesus Christ we pray; amen.

Robert A. Keefer

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Clarinda, Iowa