Once More Around the Block (rewind from September 2018)

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;  2 Timothy 3:16  NASB

Scripture– “I wrote that when I was stupid.”  So said David Flusser when questioned by one of his students about an article he published years before.  That’s how I feel today.   If you ask me about something I wrote some time ago, I just might have to reply, “I wrote that when I was stupid.”

That also means I have retained the right to change my mind.  And I have changed my mind about a number of fairly important things when it comes to religious ideas.  So, for fear of someone a few years from now asking if I still believe what I will write today, I’ll venture forth and bravely commit to print what I believe to be the case now. In the future I might have to say, “I wrote that when I was stupid.”

First, I don’t think the Bible is a theological text.  Of course, that’s usually how it is used, but the more I read it, the more I am convinced that it is really a story—a story of the interactions of men and women with God.  And I don’t mean it is a story in “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” “all about your salvation,” sense.  The Bible is a collection of encounters with God, set in times and cultures of the characters in the stories.  They may (or may not) have application for us today, but they weren’t written as universal, timeless collections of theological truths.  And the more we try to codify, analyze, organize, and catalog the Bible theologically, the less we are in touch with its central concern, that is, the disconnection between us and God.  The Bible is an ancient Near-Eastern collection of books.  It doesn’t think like Westerners.  It’s not about abstract principles and timeless rules. As far as I can tell, the Bible is a book about very human actions and reactions, failures and triumphs, despair and hope—and all the other completely common human emotions of living in this broken world.  The Bible offers a unique perspective on life’s existence and invites readers to identify with this perspective.  And since the Bible is about real human trauma, we recognize ourselves in its stories. It speaks to us, not in creeds and doctrines and religious acronyms but in the pathos of being human here in this world.

Second, I find most religious articulation concerning the Bible, whether Jewish or Christian, to be overly concerned with philosophical and theological posturing, obsessively involved with proof and certainty, and, in general, of little real consequence to ordinary human living.  Perhaps that’s why theological teachers rarely make good preachers.  They are simply disconnected from the emotional sources that consume real life, the same sources that I believe are central to understanding biblical characters as real people, not as shills for theological insight.  In other words, I believe (today) that most of the Bible is about human concerns, written perhaps with a divine perspective but nevertheless, about the distress of relationships here on this planet.  If we don’t read these stories emotionally, we will miss something important, and we will typically import theological distortions in the process.  What I mean is that Paul’s letters are letters, not systematic theological texts.  It’s the same for John and James.  The “gospels” are not missionary flannel graphs or “proof-text” collections.  They are personal recollections of the teachings of the community’s accepted rabbi, Yeshua, who, by the way, is thoroughly Jewish in practice and program. The stories of Israel are not JEPD redactions of ancient tribal religious development.  They are deep mythology (don’t go crazy importing your naive idea about what a “myth” is), that is, they are designed to communicate to a displaced people who they are, why they are here, and what they are to do about it. The “history” books aren’t history in our sense of the word.  They are intentional history, that is, modified historical events intended to serve a purpose for the audience.  For example, Kings and Chronicles are designed to instill a divine sense of the Davidic monarchy for an audience that lived a long time after David rose to power.

Until we read the Bible as if we were the audience, we will automatically (and unconsciously) convert the text into statements about us, about our time and culture.  We will end up treating the Bible differently than any other work of ancient literature. Now, it’s entirely possible that we should treat the Bible differently because it embodies our concept of the “word of God,” but that doesn’t mean the original audience felt the same way we do about the messages delivered to them.  They also believed that God was speaking to them in the messages they heard, but what they heard was conditioned by the culture and time of the delivery.  That is obvious from their recorded reactions to the message.  Hindsight does not exempt us from mistaken conclusions.  If we begin by trying to understand why this particular message was communicated to this particular audience in this particular time, we may avoid some of the “timeless truths” errors of Western thinking.

Set aside the theological education you have received about this book.  You might not think you have a theological perspective on the Bible because you didn’t have any formal training in theology, but believe me, you have a theological point-of-view simply because you grew up in a culture that treated the Bible as God’s Word, a sacred text that could not be questioned.  You inherited a theology.  Now I want you to read this book from an emotional point-of-view.  Read Paul’s letters as fervent pleas to first century audiences about their lack of unity, their community problems, their griefs and joys, remembering that Paul’s letter is only half of the conversation. Read the Torah as an attempt to help ex-slaves regain their sense of worth and purpose.  Read the history books as political stories selectively chosen for a population that needed heroes.  Read the gospels as if you were trying to tell someone about your personal experiences with the Messiah.  Resist the Western “news” approach to events.  Stories ride the rails of emotional involvement.  The storyteller animates the actual events with his felt connection.  Try to hear that in these biblical passages.  It’s not about what happened when.  It’s about how the audience and the actors felt about what happened.  Capture that!  It’s all there in the text, under the surface, in the syntax and grammar.  Now you have to communicate that, or at least hear it, in order to experience the pathos, the excitement, the concern, the human element in the Bible.

Feel what happens.

Topical Index: Bible, 2 Timothy 3:16