Can the Bible Withstand our Criticism

In conversations like we had yesterday about re-translating the Bible into a form that we can both understand it and hear from God in it, the Bible takes a lot of hits. What do we do with the patriarchy in the text, or the violence, or the homophobia? How do we handle those verses? One wise leader reflects on this:

“There’s something about the Bible and orthodox Christian teachings -- the creeds, the Bible, the liturgy and, most certainly and importantly, the gospel -- that even the church can’t [mess] up. We’ve tried, and we’ve done a lot of damage, but there’s a resiliency to it... the central message of the Bible for me is the revelation of how God chose to reveal God’s self [in Jesus].” - Nadia Bolz Weber

There’s an invitation in Psalm 1 for the person ‘whose delight is in the teaching of Yahweh’ (Psalm 1:2). As we dig down underneath so many encrustations, what if we could truly delight in God speaking to us, God being for us, God loving us - all through scripture?

It might mean listening with a slightly different ear, more attuned to the major themes of grace and love that are woven throughout. At times we might also need to take a break from the Bible for a while to recalibrate our own spiritual health and sort of ‘detox’ from painful ways the Bible has been used against us.

As you think about finding this new way of listening to God in scripture, remember the picture that Psalm 1 paints for those who truly encounter God in scripture. It’s not a picture of frustration or of critique or of feeling diminished or chastised. It’s a picture of true flourishing. So if this is the picture of what hearing God in scripture is supposed to do, perhaps we might need to readjust how we listen to scripture if our version leads to anything less than this sort of true, abundant life.

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers. - Psalm 1:3-4