September 15, 2013:

Liberal Christians and the Bible

As Liberal Christians, we are surrounded these days by those who claim the Bible is the source of their belief in the most absurd and sometimes terrible cruel things. These folks claim that those who disagree with them are, in fact, disagreeing with God’s truth which they believe they can prove by quoting selected biblical verses. For them, the Word of God, capital “W,” is the Bible and the words of the Bible are the words of God, eternally true and unchanging. They pride themselves on being biblical literalists; in fact, they are biblical selectivists. No one takes all the Bible as literally true.

Sadly, those of us who disagree with them — particularly lay people — may feel so beaten down by their harsh rhetoric that we may wonder if we have any answer to what they say. In fact, we who take the Bible seriously but not literally are much closer to the true meaning of the Bible.

The Bible was written by men attempting to understand who God is and what God wants for human beings. Sometimes they were wonderfully right; sometimes terribly wrong. The problem is that they — like we — were people of their own time. They shared much of the cultural norms and values of their time. Most of them accepted slavery, the secondary status of women, polygamy, yes, and the “evil” of homosexuality. As far as that last one is concerned, scholars now believe that neither the writers of the Old Testament or the New Testament understood the “normal” nature of homosexuality for those born with this sexual orientation.

One final thought: the two parts of our English Bible are called “Testaments.” You can see the same root there as our word “testimony.” Just as witnesses in a court case can misunderstand what they have seen and heard even though they are sincerely trying to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” so the biblical writers were sometimes “sincerely” mistaken in their understanding of eternal truth.

The bottom line: for Christians, the ultimate test to be applied to any biblical verse is whether nor not it is in agreement with the true “Word of God” which is Jesus the Christ. What would Jesus think or do or say is our best guide to ultimate truth.

Love,
Dave