When I preached on the Song of Solomon, I used its portrayal of a randy romance as a model of God’s love. The uncritical, starry-eyed adoration of lovers for each other is an essential model of divine-human love.
When I preached on the story of Abraham and Isaac, I argued God deliberately misled Abraham into thinking he was required to sacrifice Isaac, just so God could contradict him at the last minute, thus creating an emotionally powerful narrative that would check individual’s impulses to harm others in the name of serving God.
When I preached on Revelation, I emphasized God’s involvement (rather than the threats posed by the beasts), the unexpected crowd of the faithful (the 144,000=the Great Uncountable Multitude in contrast to their apparent invisibility through most of the book), and God’s intention to place his people on the throne (rather than our ultimate destiny being on our faces before the throne.)
Some people claim that if we would all just agree to accept the Bible and Bible Only as our only authority (or at the very least our supreme authority), we would come a grand, harmonious understanding of spiritual life and God. Of course, this is on the face of it, false. The fiercest disputes in theology are between people who each support their views by appeals to the Bible and Bible Only.
What is the right way to read the Bible. I compare the Bible to a medicine chest. My medicine chest includes Kaopectate and laxatives, antibiotics and asthma medicine, eye-ointment and athlete’s foot medicine. The purpose of the medicine chest is healing not the veneration of medicine. I cannot facilitate healing by indiscriminately applying athlete’s foot medicine to everything. Or by dosing everyone who coughs with antibiotics. So I pull from Scripture those things I believe will be most conducive to spiritual health and healing. My highest, greatest goal is not “being true to Scripture.” That is an important intention. My highest goal is helpfulness to others in their spiritual life.
So most of the time I skip right over the stories of Judges, the summary execution of Uzzah, and the puzzling symbols of Zechariah. I go through the Bible cherry-picking the best stuff to facilitate hope and healing. That’s how I read the Bible.
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"Some people claim that if we would all just agree to accept the Bible and Bible Only as our only authority (or at the very least our supreme authority), we would come a grand, harmonious understanding of spiritual life and God. Of course, this is on the face of it, false. The fiercest disputes in theology are between people who each support their views by appeals to the Bible and Bible Only."
In contrast to the idea of the Bible as containing "a grand harmonious understanding of spiritual life.." is that of seeing the Bible as more of tapestry of different, although related, traditions--The Bible as a document of compromise. Scholarship on the OT reflects this variance (the theory of the P, E, J and D writers for instance), as do theories of the gospels being written for different faith communities with varying allegiances to the Jewish tradition. The contrast between the "faith not works" of Paul in Romans to the "works and faith" of James suggests another.
Glenn
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