Clergyman Charlie: On How to Read the Bible
August 19th, 2007 by Charles Lamb
Some people don’t read the Bible because they find it hard to understand. Some don’t read it because, frankly, they find it boring. Some just aren’t interested. Some think it is out of date.
All of the above are misconceptions. Some years ago I taught a class called Bible Basics for people who knew absolutely nothing about the Bible. It was open to all, but a beginner would feel at home.
We started out by explaining that it is a library, a collection of books. They are not arranged in chronological order. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to read it straight through. For instance, Psalms is a book of songs and poems. Reading it is like reading a hymnal. And the long lists of ancestors, who begat who, is almost like reading a phone book.
A good place to start is to get a good study Bible, with explanatory notes. The best ones, in my judgment, are Harper’s and the Oxford Study Bible. Then you can get an idea of who wrote a book and why before you start to read it.
But that isn’t enough. To really use the Bible today, you need to get clear about your idea of inspiration. Some people think that if the Bible is inspired, that means God dictated it, word for word, to people who wrote it down. That is a very difficult concept to retain. If you study the Bible seriously, you’ll find passages that seem to contradict one another, and you’ll find different vocabulary used by different authors.
You’ll also find some ideas that seem pretty primitive, if not barbaric. Let me give you an example: In Deuteronomy, chapter 20, verses 10-18, God says that when you conquer certain towns you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. That doesn’t sound like anything Jesus would say!
Some people believe that God dealt with people differently in past times than he does now. It is easier for me to believe that our understanding of God has grown.
Back to the meaning of inspiration. I think it is helpful to believe that the Bible is a very human book, belonging to the times during which it was written. But it is inspired in the sense that it contains ideas from God, in the midst of its human language, that we can heed.
How could there be any inspiration in that terrible passage from Deuteronomy? Well, in verse 18, the reason for killing all the people is given. It was so that they would not teach the people to do the abhorrent things that they do for their gods.
Moses wanted his people to be pure for God, not to worship idols, not to engage in child sacrifice, not to take part in religious prostitution. The only way he felt he could safeguard against that was to make sure there was no intermarriage, and so he wanted to purge the land of its former inhabitants. The method belonged to Moses, and the ancient times. But the inspiration was in the motive, to keep pure for God.
So what does that passage say to us? In our culture, how do we keep ourselves pure? How do we make sure that we are not influenced by the illicit sexuality, the drugs, the materialism, the greed, the violence and selfishness, that are all around us? Not by killing everyone. But God speaks to us through the passage, saying, as you are a part of this land, make sure you remain true to me, to my way of life, to your loyalty to me.
Then you find that the passage is inspired in that God speaks through the human words to our souls.
I don’t have room in this column to illustrate the point further. But once people are freed from the idea that everything in the Bible must be taken literally, and they start asking, “What does this passage say to me?” then they’ll find it interesting and helpful. May that be so in our lives.
Top photo c/o this bible reader
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