Advent 2 | The Holy Scriptures 1998 | 1 Timothy 3:16

Back when I was a student at California Baptist College, and before I had made my all-important resolution against arguing with fundamentalists, I took great joy in baiting them. Now, I must confess that I had a long history of this. I used to invite Mormon missionaries over for the sheer enjoyment of baffling them with the logical inconsistencies of their doctrines. It was rather like pulling the legs off of flies for the sheer, twisted pleasure of watching them squirm.

One time I dropped in on a conversation where one fundie preacher-boy was going on about the condemnation of those pesky gay people. "So you think homosexuals should be put to death, do you?" I interjected.

That stopped the conversation cold. "Leviticus," I added. After a moment the two people whose conversation I interrupted nodded, "Yeah," they said, "Faggots and lesbians should be shot."

"Because the Bible says so." I offered.

"Yes." They replied.

"What about football teams?" I asked.

"What?" They replied.

"What about football teams?" I said again. "Leviticus also says that anyone who touches the skin of a dead pig should be executed immediately. If the Bible is infallably true, then one verse in Leviticus should be just as binding as another. Death to the 49'ers!!" I shouted.

They weren't buying it, but they didn't have a response to me, either. Instead, they retreated into their threadbare arguments about grace and the new covenant, obviously without making the leap that the new covenant could just as easily apply to gays and lesbians as to football teams. I didn't broach the subject of what should be done with gay football teams, though perhaps I should have.

Another time I ducked into the doorway of the NO EXIT, the rebel coffee shop on campus that I helped run, where I found some of the preacher-boys once again engaged in a heated conversation on - surprise - the inerrancy of scripture.

Now, you have to understand the extreme unlikelihood of this gathering. These guys felt that darkening the doorway of the NO EXIT was tantamount to visiting hell itself, as it was where all of us "sinners" hung out. When a new school year started, freshman would be whisked aside by these preacher-boys and warned that their eternal souls might be in danger if they bought coffee from us or even worse, started hanging out with our "element." We took this as a badge of honor, as you might expect, and were deep-down quite pleased that we had somehow contrived to fashion a fundie-free zone on this oh-so-Baptist campus. I remember that one time, the president of the college deigned to pay us a good-will visit, and walked through the door with all of the ghostly uncertainty of the spectre of Hamlet's father. He shook a few hands, and no doubt unnerved by John Lennon's "Why Don't We Do It In the Road" blaring in the background, made a hasty exit.

So you can see why I was surprised to encounter the preacher boys at our coffee shop, on heretic turf, you might say. I don't remember who they were arguing with, but it was the same old line: The Holy Spirit inspired every line of the scripture. Every word of it was infallably, inarguably, true. I listened for a few minutes while I poured myself a cup of coffee and grabbed a bagel. Finally, after I'd settled in a dusty, threadbare armchair, I retrieved my Greek New Testament from my book bag and opened it at random. "I've got a question for you," I said, interrupting. "See here, in the Greek" They were all familiar with the book I was holding as all preacher-boys studied Greek. "This verse, " I continued, "Has no less than" I paused to count, "thirty-five variant readings."

Now what this means was readily understood by them, but perhaps I should pause a moment to explain it here. One problem we have with New Testament scholarship is that we have no original documents. The most ancient copies we have date from the second century, which means nearly 100 years of editors and copiests adding and subtracting from the text, often by accident. We have quite of few of these 2nd century manuscripts, but the problem is, because of all the scribal errors and editing, none of them agree with each other exactly. So when a worthy copy of the Greek text is published, it is usually done with acres of footnotes documenting the variant readings.

I'm not sure if the preacher-boys saw it coming or not, but when I pointed out that this one particular verse had thirty-five variant readings, I paused for a moment before lunging for the jugular. "Which of these thirty-five readings is the inerrant one?" I asked. "They can't all be right."

It would be fair to say that the conversation stopped there. It would even be fair to say that I was never engaged in conversation by any of them again, which I would have taken as a loss had I not soon thereafter sworn off that particular variety of verbal bloodsport.

All this is not to say that I don't understand the preacher-boys' motivation. I do. This world feels out of control to most of us. In this day and age of instant, round-the-globe news it can seem that the whole world is poised on the brink of destruction, much moreso than when news travelled on horseback or by sea. It's not surprising that people are searching for some kind of anchor, some kind of steadfast rock to which they can cling for safety.

Now, I have no problem with clinging to rocks. It's just that the Bible is entirely the wrong rock to cling to.

Now, you may disagree with me, but I suffer under the possible misconception that God granted us brains with the idea that we might actually use them. And that we use them not just for solving mathematical and agricultural dilemmas, but in all our pursuits, including religion. The fundamentalists would have us believe that like the Koran, the Bible was dictated to its authors directly from God's lips to their quills, with no possible margin for error in between.
The problem with this hypothesis is that the Bible itself contradicts it. The Bible makes no bones about being written by flesh-and-blood people, and very fallible people at that. The author of many of our most beautiful Psalms was a murderer and an adulterer-remember King David? St. Paul even mentions at one point in his epistles that what he is saying is just his opinion and shouldn't be taken as the word of God.

So what exactly is the Bible? And what good is it if we can't take it literally?

The Bible is the story of two communities: the Jewish people and the early Christian church. Morover, it is a record of these two communities' experience of the divine as they saw and interpreted it. And this is very important. The Bible is a record of these peoples' experience of God through their eyes, not through God's. Do I think that God really told the invading Isrealites to slaughter men, women, children and cattle? No. Do I think that the ancient Isrealites believed that God asked them to do that? Certainly.

Do I believe that God really struck Annanias and Sephira dead in the book of Acts when they lied about giving all of their money to the church? Of course not. If I did, I'd still be holding my breath waiting for Jim Baker to kick it. But do I think that the early Christians believed that. No doubt they did.

The point is that the biblical authors told us their stories not from the perspective of objective reality, but from their own distinct points of view. Points of view colored almost beyond recognition by cultural factors, by ancient lore, contemporary prejudices, and tribal taboos. They saw their relationship with God through the lens of their own cultural experience, which is very different from our own, and no doubt, very different from God's perspective as well.

This is a terrifying thought to many people of faith, because they feel that if they cannot trust the Bible, then they have no sturdy rock on which to build their faith. In my opinion, however, to build one's faith upon a human artifact is to make an idol of it. We should not be clinging to the inerrancy of the Bible for our blessed assurance, but to God's own self. Any time we set our locus of authority in some exterior object whether it be a human, such as the pope, or an institution, such as the Orthodox church, or in an inanimate object, such as the Bible, we are setting ourselves up for trouble. We should instead, focus our attention on God, and on our own interior experience of God.

For when our focus is turned entirely onto God and OUR relationship with God, suddenly the Bible becomes a much less threatening, and a much more valuable presence in our lives of faith. Not because the Bible is somekind of roadmap to objective reality as the Creaion Scientists would have us believe, but because it is in fact a roadmap to the SUBjective life of faith as recorded by it's authors. As such it tells us the truth; the truth about the feelings, thoughts, attitudes, and judgements of it's authors. The Bible records the real-life struggles and passions that these writers experienced in their own relationships with God. And is it reasonable to assume that these feelings, thoughts, attitudes, struggles and passions might be consonant with our own? We are people; they were people. Our experiences are very similar indeed.

Just read the psalms of David when he cries out from the depths, feeling that God has abandoned him. Have you ever felt like that? I have. Or how about when Thomas insisted on putting his hand in Jesus' wounds. Have you ever felt incredulous in the face of miraculous religious claims? The Gospel writer tells us the truth about Thomas' experience, and it resonates with our own.

The Bible tells us the truth! Does it tell us the truth about astrophysics? No. Does it tell us the truth about quantuum mechanics? No. Does it tell us the truth about anthropology or the evolution of species. No. But the Bible does do this: The Bible tells us the truth about the experience of being human beings in relationship to the divine. And that is the kind of truth I need to hear. The Bible is indeed a "lamp unto my feet" and by its light I gain insight into what it means to be a person of faith, in this or any age.

Let us pray.

God of all time and space, it is tempting for us to think that we have you all figured out, but more often than not the designs which we assume you must have are only our own projections, derived from our insecurities and neediness. Help us to weed out the idols in our lives, be they made of flesh or of wood pulp. Help us not to worship words, but only the Word, who has made himself known in the ordinariness of our daily lives, in our experience, and in our hearts. For we ask this in the name of Jesus, the very embodiment of your Holy Wisdom. Amen.