Posted by Helen on: 01.24.2007 /
Gregg Lamm recently e-mailed me this:
I’m wondering if a good discussion at CatE might be on how people have encountered the Bible in their lives … the good, the bad, and the ugly. Certainly the recent posts on the Native American experience with the Bible and how it was used “against them” shows a side of Christian evangelistic fervor (and a reading of and use of the Bible) that is so revolting I can hardly stomach it.
In what significant ways, good, bad or ugly, has encountering the Bible shaped your life?
These could be direct - from your own reading of it and application of it. Or indirect - how.other people highly influenced by the Bible have significantly affected, or do significantly affect, your life.
Comment by: Jim Henderson
1I rarely have the bible “speak” to me personally but that may be more a function of me not being very reflective than of the bible itself. My wife Barb often tells me about passages that encourage her.
My problem with the bible has mostly been a result of the fact that I always saw it as a “tool”. As a pastor I used it to teach others about what we are supposed to be doing.
About 20 years ago or so I began to read the bible as if it were a movie and I focused entirely on Jesus life.
While I havent increased my bible reading I find myelf reflecting on the life of Jesus as reported in the bible. That is how the bible has proven helpful to me
Comment by: Helen
2I can handle thinking of it as a collection of interesting short stories, poems and letters - which has been very influential in the world.
I can’t handle saying it’s ‘the Word of God’. I was just invited to a Bible study in which it would be presumed to be the Word of God. I went to the introductory session - out of curiosity and just in case it might somehow work out for me to go. I quickly realized (as I had suspected) I can’t handle that sort of study anymore.
The influence of the Bible on my life has been very mixed. It has shaped my life because I studied it for many years and spent time with other people very influenced by it.
It used to encourage me a lot when I believed it was true. Now I’m not sure it’s hard to be encouraged by a ‘maybe’. But I am encouraged when people are influenced to do good things by what’s in the Bible (and discouraged when they are influenced - or given an excuse - to do bad ones because of what’s in there)
Comment by: Karen
3Thanks for sharing your experience at the study, Helen. I was a BSF’er too! For five long years!
;-)
Comment by: Helen
4Karen, you were one too! Hey I have you beat - I was one for six years and three months! And I was a discussion leader for some of that time. Hey I wrote to the executive director worldwide last year and told her I use some of my discussion leader training in online discussions between people who are and aren’t Christians. I got a nice reply back from her - she said she was pleased to hear that.
Comment by: Karen
5Oh, that’s cool that she was pleased. I’m sure the leadership training is helpful for facilitation; my leaders were always very good listeners.
My husband has been a men’s discussion leader for many years. It’s quite a major time commitment.
Comment by: Helen
6Yes, it’s important to listen because otherwise it’s hard to make the affirming responses relevant to what was just said :)
Being a BSF leader is indeed quite a time commitment. But hopefully he enjoys it so it’s worth it. Not only does it take time, but apparently the mens’ group near here has their weekly leaders meeting at something like 5:30 a.m. so they can fit it into their schedules!
Comment by: Karen
7Oh, he absolutely loves it and gets a lot of affirmation out of it, which is important for him.
Yes … the 6 a.m. Saturday leaders meeting really takes a LOT of determination to attend every week!
Comment by: ncxian
8Quick, who said that? :)
Comment by: David H
9I had a couple of formative biblical experiences during a trip to central America to observe missionaries in action. It was early 1980s and I was a college student (one of the youngest people on the trip).
One of the missionaries we met was an older gentleman who had come to his post 40 or 50 years prior as a translator. The indigenous people he was sent to didn’t have a written language so he had to come up with an alphabet, rules of grammar — the whole works. He spends years working on this and teaching the people to use it so they can read when he finishes his translation work. However, during the process he discovers a cultural glitch. The people from this mountain area have never seen a sheep, much less a lamb — a critical problem, especially in the New Testament. Because he has lived with the people he knows that their common sacrificial animal is a chicken. While it works for the intended audience, the mission board is none to pleased when they discover he has made Jesus the “chicken of God.” They allowed him to remain as a missionary but did not use his Bible translation. He told us the story without editorializing, but I couldn’t help but detect a note of at least loss in his voice.
During that same trip I lived for a few days in the town of San Pedro Sula, Honduras. It was a large enough community to warrant a mission-funded Bible book store. My host took me for a visit and I noted that the store carried only King James and Revised Standard versions of the Bible. The store manager — an American missionary — told me that those were the only versions of the Bible inspired by God (although the NIV was being considered because a well-known pastor on the mission’s board had recently had published a study Bible from that translation). Then the man added: “All other versions of the Bible are inspired by Satan to confuse unbelievers and sow dissension among Christians.”
I was raised by a Southern Baptist and had yet to come to terms with my indoctrination on the inerrancy and all-encompassing nature of the Bible. But what I did learn is that no matter what God’s intention was with the Bible, it was all too easily perverted by people.
Comment by: Gregg Lamm
10Friends,
I tend to think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and John Perkins. But while their hearts, actions and lives resonated with these words, the Bible’s earliest record of these words being spoken was by the Old Testament Minor Prophet Amos. Here’s Amos 5:24 from three different translations and a paraphrase …
Amos was a prophet who literally nothing is known about except what he tells about himself in the book that bears his name. He was a shepherd and a prophet and his Hebrew name meant “Burden” or “Burden Bearer.” And since most of his book is about calling the people of Israel and their neighbors back to the God he was in relationship with, Amos was a man who was bearing one big, lonely burden.
When Amos spoke these famous words he was in the midst of telling people that painstakingly keeping their religious festivals wasn’t a pathway that would lead them into a vital, intimate relationship with God … but that God wanted their attitudes and their hearts more than God wanted their actions.
And that’s about all I know. Well, I do know a little bit more, but then most of you probably don’t want hear me pontificate about Icelandic Literature. That’s what I have a Ph.D in. Oh, wait. No. It’s a friend of mine who has a Ph.D. in Icelandic Literature. I barely made it past Dr. Seuss. Maybe I’ll get him to post something here and pontificate further about Amos. :)
And now, if you really must know, I’m off to conquer my wife Teresa in a game of Scrabble. She is the Queen of Scrabble in this realm, but I sense the aroma of an impending coup in the wind tonight. Film at 11:00.
Thanks for your prayers and good thoughts for my dear bride. She is recovering well and moving toward greater peace of body and mind than she has known for nearly two years.
Good night and Godspeed.
read.think.pray.live.
Gregg
http://www.stayingthecourse.blogspot.com
Comment by: Helen
11Gregg, I’m so glad to hear your wife is recovering well.
So: would you share with us what your encounters with the Bible have been like?
Comment by: HereandNow
12The thing I’ve always liked about the Bible is the way that, when discussed amongst a group of people (or read alone in solitary reflection) it always brings up more questions than answers–if we allowed it to. In my mind (and there are many who scoff at what I’m about to say) it’s not a book that easily blesses the efforts of systematic theology because of its frequent paradox and lack of rational arrangement.
When I read it almost every day I was of the mind that it was a “revealed” text, but the thing that strikes me now is how rawly human it is. Kind of makes me want to start reading portions of it again. As I think about it now, all good “sacred” texts grab the reader’s attention the most when the utter humanity of the authors comes out in full force and the reader says to herself, “someone else thinks this way too?” Having said this, I have a strong aversion to any sacred text when it gets legally/morally prescriptive or concretely difinitive about the character and nature of spiritual/supernatural things. We are all too wrong too many times to buy into those aspects of sacred texts (Eliza’s description of denominational disagreement and how flipantly the LCMS pastor can dismiss those who disagree with him is a great example of this). I was usually much more drawn to passages that talked about not judging and about loving than I was to passages full of codified judgements and condemnations. Trying to reconcile the prevelance of both kinds of texts eventually led me away from accepting a doctrine of inerrancy (and it was all down hill from there-read humorously).
I guess how I feel now is that any book that confounds my thinking is worth a second and third look. Even in my most skeptical periods, it is a book that has something to say, and much of it is so universally true that it doesn’t annoy me too much that I don’t believe a good portion of it anymore. I think it is still the best book about justice and mercy and the complicated and seemingly unreconcilable nature of those two things that I’ve ever read. As I write this, it strikes me that Jesus seemed to grasp the extremely complicated and unreconcilable nature of justice and mercy to the extent that even if we view all the “red” words in the New Testament as his words, he doesn’t seem to say that he is the reconciliation between the two things in the way that the church has believed for centuries. The Sermon on the Mount blows me away in this respect. That concept (that Christ’s death and resurrection nullified the inconsistencies between justice and mercy) got filled in with excessive clarity by Paul and other followers, but even after Christ’s death the conflict and lack of resolution continued in the book of James, Hebrews, etc. as near as I can tell.
Comment by: Helen
13HereandNow wrote:
Yes - I agree. I find that all attempts to reduce it to a systematic theology seem to be missing a lot of what is there.
I really like how you didn’t write it off just because you decided it’s not inerrant after all.
Like I was saying on my own blog, I think it would be neat to have a ‘Bible study group’ where people could say whatever they liked - where it would be ok for you to say the above, because that’s how it is for you. And even if that’s not how it is for other people they wouldn’t try to push you into sharing their view.
I see unresolved conflict in the Bible too - I’m so glad you said that. I think a lot of the conflict among Bible-believing Christians today is caused by their unwillingness to accept that the Bible may include unresolved conflict (ironically). Because what happens is they each take a different side of the conflict and then tell each other “The Bible supports what I say and not what you say”. When in fact it might support both, because there’s an unresolved conflict in it.
Comment by: HereandNow
14Sign me up. We often have conversations with people along those lines, but not “Bible Studies”.
Sadly, that’s how political and religious conversations tend to go in our world. My wife and I are making a new commitment to not be “experts” about things because we have both noticed that we tend to always have something authoritative to say about things. In addition to that being annoying to the people that have to hear us drone on, it often sounds like we think we know what is “right” when in reality, we’re pretty ignorant about things in most cases and there is almost always more to be gained by taking in more than we spit out.
Comment by: Gregg Lamm
15Friends,
I’ll tell you what really yanks my chain … and that’s when followers of Jesus Christ view the Bible as being equal with God the Father, God Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit. When this happens the Bible is given more power than I believe God intended it to have. Orthodox Christianity has embraced the notion of the Trinity, not the Quadrinity, or whatever other pointy-four-cornered-noun you want to make up to describe this God-book beast some people erect.
I don’t believe that the pages of the Bible are any more holy, set apart or alive than the folds in the creases in my trousers. But what I do believe is holy about the Bible is that when the words of its pages settle into the minds and hearts of people reading it … and when those people then invite Jesus Christ (who I call my Rabbi, and my Present Teacher) to speak to them through its words … THEN the words of the Bible become alive and God can speak through them.
The Apostle Paul, in his second letter to his friend and mentee Timothy (the young [20something year old pastor of the church at Ephesus), said this about the Bible, and I’ve found his words to be true to how I experience it …
“All Scripture is God-breathed, and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right.” (New Living Translation)
I’ve got to run to meeting, but before signing off on this topic for now, here’s a quote I read a while back that takes the Cliff-Notes approach to the Bible and the narrative of it’s pages …
I’ll write more later about how I’ve seen the Bible misused by myself and by my fellow Christ-followers, and I’ll try to do so without copping a “holier than thou” attitude and without throwing stones. Godspeed.
read.think.pray.live.
Gregg
http://www.stayingthecourse.blogspot.com
Comment by: benjamin ady
16David H.
God that megasucks for your missionary friend. I know a little of the horror of being a “missionary” under immature overbearing leadership. Jesus as the chicken of god is so perfect.
My understanding is that nowadays the SIL people, who are more or less running the bible translation machine worldwide, are very very much into the idea of dynamic equivalency, and would mostly have no problem with the chicken of god thing. That comes up all the time in various places, and doubtless many american christians would be shocked and appalled at some of the translations. But they go through a very strenous process in which they teach natives to read, and then they expose passages to groups of these natives and ask them “what did you hear–what does it mean?” and then they take that into account–trying to create a text that carries *meaning* across from language to language, rather than just words.
That is really sad about the bible store in Honduras with only the two (unfortunate) english translations. they probably had a paucity of spanish translations too. Unfortunately there is a rather backward group of people called the trinitarian bible society who are trying to foist the insanity behind King James onlyism on the rest of the unsuspecting planet, pushing translations based on the seriously outdated textus receptus, and, for instance, in Latin America using a similarly ancient translation called “reina valera”. But fortunately they aren’t really that big or powerful, and meanwhile SIL/Wycliffe has translated the new testatment into well over 1000 of people’s heart languages. I love that term they use–”heart language”, because often smallerish groups of people will have written scripture in their second or third language–the trade language, or the larger area/multi group language. Yet SIL translators will translate for even really small groups into their own “heart language”, and often their reaction when they receive the final product is this amazingly emotional and beautiful “WOW, now I understand it, now I can read it–WOW.” It’s a similar reaction on a stronger level, I guess, to my original experiences with Eugene’s English translation.
Comment by: benjamin ady
17oh–finally found the link again which I wanted to share. Check this out–it’s kind of kewl. World Scriptures
Comment by: SezMe
18HereandNow wrote:
I just cannot understand this postion. If “much” of it is “universally true”, how do you decide what is false? How much is “much”? 30%? 43.281%?
Similarly, if you don’t believe a “good portion” of it, why do you believe any of it? Suppose I told you a story that I claimed was true but you did not believe a “good portion” of it. Would that not throw the remainder into question?
I just cannot understand this either. The bible is drenched in blood, injustice, caprice and cruelty. It condemns me to an eternity in hell for holding true to my atheism, yet you seem to find justice and mercy there. A good Dr. Seuss book has more to say about justice and mercy than the bible.
I just cannot understand this either. We have no direct record of what Jesus said. We have no writings of Jesus. So what evidence can you adduce that Jesus grasped any “extremely complicated” issue?
Comment by: SezMe
19Gregg Lamm wrote:
This is very interesting. How do you know god’s intentions?
This question is especially pertinent when you later quote Paul as saying, “All Scripture is God-breathed…” How can a “God-breathed” text not have ultimate power?
Comment by: Helen
20Thanks for your comments, SezMe.
What if you were to think of the Bible as a collection of human writings? Then could you find nothing good in it? Would the parts you don’t like mean you couldn’t read any of it?
I’m just asking - I do understand where you’re coming from. It’s very frustrating to me when people won’t say “Yeah, that’s genocide - let’s call it what it is” - and the only reason seems to be because it’s in the Bible.
Comment by: HereandNow
21SezMe
Don’t we do this with every text we read? We read things and have to determine whether we believe them to be true or not. While I agree that I’m often wrong about what I think is “universally true” and what isn’t, I still contend that there are many things in the Bible that are universally true. I don’t think that this is only true of the Bible, but I do find some universal truths in it still the same. I’m not done living and thinking about it, and so I’m sure I’ll continue to reject things that I thought were true and even come to see a few things as true that I reject today. Do you not do this with books that you read?
No, I don’t think a text needs to be “wholly true” in order to have true things in it, but yes, when we find things in texts that aren’t true, it should lead us to question rigorously. Perhaps we should just say that we should question things rigorously. Period. Still doesn’t take away from the fact that a book with errors and flaws and untruths can also have truths.
I believe that in order for a text to be the best about a justice and mercy it needs to reflect its opposites too. And yes, according to the Bible, I’m condemned to hell too, because I don’t believe in the God it claims to reveal. But, I have learned more about justice and mercy from it than any other book I’ve ever read (and I have read and enjoyed a few Dr. Seuss books).
You’re right. I didn’t state carefully enough what I meant, which is the Jesus we know about in the Bible and the words that the Bible attribute to him lead me to believe that he grasped the extremely complicated and seemingly unreconcilable nature of justice and mercy.
Comment by: Gregg Lamm
22Friends,
Sezme writes …
I’m not claiming that I know God’s intentions any more than I can claim that you or I deserve the good looks we most likely have. :)
But the way I read the Bible is that God says He has revealed His intentions through the words of the Bible.
I wish I could post more here tonight, but I’m running behind the 8-ball on several counts. Good night and Godspeed.
read.think.pray.live.
Gregg
http://www.stayingthecourse.blogspot.com
Comment by: SezMe
23Helen asked:
I do think of the bible as a such a collection. And, of course, this does not prevent there being some good in it. And, finally, this might justify reading some parts of it.
I suppose I could emulate Jefferson and cut out all the parts I don’t like just as he did. (BTW, when I think of this, I always imagine Jefferson surronded by bits of confetti all over the floor as he furiously wields his scissors. :-)
But consider the thousands (literally) of excellent books that I could devote my reading time to…books that don’t contain gore, that have a coherent thread, that are exciting to read, the make me laugh my head off, books that are inspiring, that teach me history or philosophy, etc., etc. I’ll never get to all of it, and the list grows as each good new book comes out.
In that light, then, why should I invest my time in a book which has so many problems and so few redeeming features?
Full, ironic disclosure: All that protestation and I must admit I HAVE read most (not all - it is soooo repetitive) of the bible. Why, in light of the above? So I can try to understand those who try to argue its value, push it as the ultimate moral guide, etc.
Comment by: SezMe
24HereandNow asked:
Hopefully, yes. But every text we read is not advertised as being the literal word of god or inspired by god or where ever you might fall on that spectrum. Very few claim to be the story of a god/man who provides the sole path to heaven. I do not expect to have to apply such a heavy dose of skepticism to a book with such a pedigree.
This seems to me to be a paradox. How can one be wrong about a “universal” truth? Maybe you can help me here by citing, say, three of the “many” universal truths you find in the bible.
Agreed.
I don’t necessarily agree but let’s take this statement to be true for the sake of the discussion. The bible does not just “reflect” the opposites of justice and mercy, it oozes them. I have a crammed full, one-page list (in 10 point font) of murders (just murders!) (of uncountable thousands of people) in the OT. In any other book this would be condemned as gratuitous violence.
Comment by: SezMe
25Gregg noted:
Sadly, everyone was off on lunch break when I reach the good looks stage of the assembly line.
But to your point, you lamented in post 15:
I don’t see how you can say this without knowing god’s intentions.
Fair enough but I sure didn’t get them. Can you name, say, three of god’s intentions as revealed in the bible.
Oh, and as an additional point when you come back with more time, your comment suggests that you consider the bible to be at least the inspired word of god since it reveals his intentions. Yes? If so, can you comment on my posts above regarding the extensive violence in the bible?
Comment by: Helen
26SezMe wrote:
lol :)
Why indeed? That’s a great question.
I suppose you might want to because you’re curious about a book which is very important to lots of people - and you’d like to see for yourself what’s in it and form your own opinion of it.
That doesn’t apply in your case - however I see that you already answered the question, below:
That’s a fine reason, imo.
Comment by: HereandNow
27SezMe
I should begin with saying that I’m a little surprised with myself at using the word “universal”. I’ve certainly discarded confidence in a sufficient number of things that I used to think were universally true as not true, so as to shake my confidence in what universal truths are. Still, I believe that there are things that are universally true, and that some of them are in the Bible. In the Gospels, some of the teachings that are attributed to Jesus are, I think, universally true. One thing that, in my mind, lends credibility to the notion of there being universal truth in some of these teachings is the way the same ideas pop up in other sacred texts. They mostly have to do with how we treat one another than with really developing a picture of any God that might exist. The Golden Rule, the idea that worrying is fruitless, and the many words directed against self-righteousness. While I agree wholeheartedly that there are many who don’t agree that these things are “universally” true, I still think they are. I may be shown in years or days to come that they are not, but currently, I see them as universally true. This may be a paradox, but I think paradox is a part of intellectual reality. Before you shred the universality of the examples I’ve offered, please help me understand how the lack of total agreement/acceptance prevents something from being universally true. I should add here that I also think that it is important to acknowledge of things that might be universal truths, that there is much, much more to know about them than what is written e.g. the implications of the Golen Rule are much more far reaching than the statement “Do unto others. . ..
Regarding the violence of the Old Testament, the mere presence of violent acts isn’t so troubling to me–it is, after all, largely written in the genre of historical narrative (even though it’s not good historical narrative from a 20th/21st Century western definition of the term). What is disturbing to the point of making belief in this God untenable to me is the way that God seems, by the authors’ intents, to be sanctioning and even requiring much of that violence. It just appears that the OT writers had brutal, uncompassionate fathers. Even more troubling to me is the way that so many believers in the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible don’t have a problem with their God being that way. I think we’re in agreement there. I admittedly pick and choose what I find of value in the Bible, but I do the same with lots of other books, and honestly, there are many other books that I enjoy more than I ever enjoyed the Bible, but I still marvel at the wisdom of certain passages that I have read in the Bible.
Comment by: SezMe
28I’m not going to shred your examples. I may not agree but I appreciate them because it helps me understand your perspective. But I have to comment on this snippet:
My mom set the gold standard for worrying as I was growing up so I have an abiding disgust with it. Man, if one of the 10Cs was “Thou shalt not worrry” I’d convert tomorrow. :-))
My question about “universal” truths arises because I don’t think there are any. I subscribe to situational ethics. Take your example of worrying. I can easily conceive of a circumstance where my mom’s worring might have led her to come looking for me and finding me in big doo-doo and getting me out of it.
Regarding the OT:
Thank you…I could not have said it better (and sadly, didn’t).