On reading the Bible as a means of grace:

 One young adult from my congregation has continued to practice her faith by becoming involved in a bible study group at her university.  She is having difficultly, but remaining in conversation with her friends.  She attests to the deep truth of the opening chapters of Genesis — as do I — but not the historical fact of the narratives.  Her friends are unconvinced: if Adam and Eve didn’t really exist, then the Bible can’t be true.  It is my hope that their friendship will be more important to their faith than the argument.  It is not a dispute easily solved.

When discussing Scripture these days, it is most often not the text which is at issue, but our underlying, unexamined assumptions about what the text is.  As I suggested in my last post, this is the case with modern “conservatives” and “liberals” alike.  As faithful Christians we all agree that the Bible speaks of truth, but truth in our time — in a trajectory beginning in the mid-16th century — is clearly understood to be “facts”: historical, scientific, certain knowledge.  
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I have been privileged to be in ministry with highly educated sophisticated readers, PhD’s of all varieties, voracious readers.  Yet Bible study is often difficult, if not held in suspicion.  The importance of searching the scriptures as a means of grace — of encountering the One who is truth — has been lost in our mainline churches.  It was not until half-way into my twelve years of ministry, that I came to understand that the problem in reading the Bible (on the left and right) was much deeper than I realized.   

In any other context, a talking snake would be a clue that we are reading some genre of literature other than history or science.  We would not discredit the writer or the text.  We would simply read it differently.  We might even read it well, if led by a good teacher.  If Genesis 3 were approached as a classic piece of literature in a book not called the “Bible,”  we might easily discover that this truth telling narrative is a powerful testimony to the consequence of our lack of humility (in aspiring to God-like knowledge), and that shame emerges in the midst of alienation from God and one another.  In other words, the text is not about ancient history, but about our relationship with one another and the One we gesture at with the word “God.” I have found it very difficult to move Christians to this way of reading, because when our understanding of truth and ultimate reality are at stake, as stated on edges of ancient maps, “Here be dragons.”

A retired engineer once told me of a discussion he had with his college roommate.  He pointed out to his roommate that the scientific evidence seemed irrefutable that the world was  not created in seven days.  His roommate punched him.  It was not a rational reaction: it came unthinking from a place of deep fear and anxiety.  The question and the evidence struck at the core of his world view and what he believed to be true.  This is exactly what is at stake in our time about homosexuality and the bible.  

When our core understanding of truth and identity are at stake, a solution will not be arrived at by logical argument or parliamentary procedure.  In fact, for most people I would suggest, the argument over homosexuality will be settled not in Scripture, but in coming to know and love a homosexual. The engineer I spoke of, will bring the psychological scar of his roommate's fist into every dispute over scripture. The scar was the violation of a relationship; the Bible, or a particular, brand of Christian will be blamed. Just as is the case for every man or woman who has been labeled a Sodomite, or told that God hates their very being.  Not only do we approach Scripture with unexamined assumptions about truth, we also come to the text, with deep hurts, fears, and personal stories that will shape our conclusions, long before we pick up the text.

In “Biblical Authority: A Personal Reflection,” the Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, makes a remarkable confession:  “I have come belatedly to see, in my own case, that my [interpretive] passion is largely propelled by the fact that my father was a pastor economically abused by the church he served, economically abused as a means of control.  I cannot measure the ways in which this felt awareness determines how I work, how I interpret, whom I read, whom I trust as a reliable voice.” (1)

This leads Brueggemann to one of the most important observations about Biblical interpretation I have ever read:
The real issues of biblical authority and interpretation are not likely to be settled by erudite cognitive formulation or by appeal to classic settlements, but live beneath such contention in often unrecognized and uncriticized ways that are deeply powerful … And if that is so, then the disputes require not frontal arguments … but long-term pastoral attentiveness to each other in good faith. (2)

When our unexamined assumptions, and personal stories of hurt and hope are acknowledged and allowed to speak, our Christian conversation may truly become a  source of healing.  As Wesley contended, Searching the Scriptures and Christian Conferencing are means of the saving grace of God.  But when we fight our battles by majority vote, I fear, little is accomplished beyond deepening our hurt.  At General Conference there is much at stake, even in the debate on how we are going to debate. 

-- Rev. Mark F. Sturgess

(1) Brueggemann, Placher & Blount, Struggling with Scripture, “Biblical Authority: A Personal Reflection” (Lousiville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 23.
(2) Brueggemann, Placher & Blount, 10.

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