Sorry in advance for the preamble, but I think I this case, context is important: (if you want to skip it, just scroll to the asterisks)
When I was young, I was taught that the scripture was meant to be taken literally. No other levels of meaning necessary. I was also then taught that it was both perfect and inerrant. As a kid and young teen? No issue.
You know what else was literal, and (theoretically) perfect and inerrant? Every textbook I was given in school. I was at a stage of life where I was learning “life’s framework…” science, math, history, music, art and… of course, religion fit nicely in the middle.
Problem is, as most will relate to… as I got older, I started to have the wriggling feeling that some things didn’t gel the way I’d been told. Or they even seemed to contradict. Which might not be a problem for some… but in a “literal-only” abiding church, this meant if it any part of the text was self-contradictory, it eroded the confidence of all of it. The other problem (for me personally, and I imagine, many others over the centuries) is that when you inquired about anything that challenged these parts… it was immediately shut down and attributed to faithlessness. So I did what any moody, arrogant, spiteful child would do in the situation… I called them “meanies” and ran away to look for someone who WOULD indulge my curiosity, even if they didn’t have the answers.
Cue sports montage of me reading, listening, debating and learning: I spent the next two decades learning about other religions, philosophies, metaphysics, mythologies, artists, scientists, futurists, strategists, you name it. (It is noteworthy: that even when I lost my religion, I never stopped searching for something to replace “God…” because somewhere deep down I knew “meaninglessness” wasn’t the “meaning.”)
And here’s where we catch up to modern day.
Without going “full testimonial…” suffice it to say I found my way back into a church, hearing old messages with entirely new meanings. After decades of searching for meaning down well-lit, dead-end streets… I’d found the house at the end of the road I’d been seeking. Every “literal” statement and event, now full of metaphor and allusion, layer upon layer of depth and color, interpretations sitting on top of other interpretations. It was the vein of gold that ran 2000 feet into the mountain I’d been standing on the whole time.
But here was the catch: Because of my upbringing, and the pushback I’d gotten from church elders… even though I now found myself wholly believing in the Bible’s wisdom, truth, value… I’d largely dismissed a lot of the Bible’s historicity or (better said) factual, literal parts… and I didn’t know what to do about that.
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Believe it or not, we’re just now getting to the point of this blog… so, buckle up and grab a snack.
Somewhere along the journey of finding what this all meant and what to do with it, I found myself having convos with people who were still reading it purely literally. Where they saw a very specific history, I saw a profoundly complex metaphor at the micro, macro, personal, relational, communal, societal, political, and universal scales. I struggled to express these, however, but in that struggle I found something incredible… I could still use this literal language out loud and in explanation without losing the inherent meaning I was intending. Not only was it meaningful, but it was true poetry. A language coded to mean that which the observer is capable of viewing. From that point on, I realized I could speak the same words, same points, same events… And they could mean “this AND that,” not “this or that.” The metaphors didn’t come at the cost of the literal, and the literal didn’t have to overshadow the meaning. Hand in hand they could live, and in moments of doubt, I could move between them freely, focusing on what the Holy Spirit was teaching.
This realization truly changed everything. Where I had previously hit roadblocks while reading the text, I now found that by “moving up” a layer or “moving laterally” in the text I could spend my time focused on separate, parallel, but alternate, plane of meaning… I now had a tool by which I could withhold any judgment, opinion, action, or reaction about that particular layer of meaning, until a time came when I had more info to deal with the layer I was unprepared for.
I still have parts of the Bible that I contend with, wrestle with, disagree with, take issue with, or flat out don’t understand… but what would have been weeks of fruitless searching and eventually dismissing the total text for lack of clarity…. I could now keep going, cataloguing the challenges, and then holding them in limbo of sorts until the answer revealed itself later.
A great man (who is far better with pithy statements than I am) told me later, “When the Bible doesn’t seem to make sense, it’s not because it’s wrong; it’s because I’ve yet to learn what I need to learn to understand why it’s right.”
And man, was he right. Now, instead of getting frustrated when I encounter a challenging scripture or concept, I get excited about it… wondering what divine revelation will be made of that confusion at the end of the day.
Happy interpreting, Friends.
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Addendum: Far after this was written I came to learn about Walter Brueggemann and his ideas about scriptural interpretation. His position comes from a different perspective than the above but I find it very related and hope it can add a bit more depth. He contends that yes, scripture definitely has contradictions and differences, but it’s IN the wrestling with those that you learn/experience the subtleties and nuances of the faith that can’t just be handed over in simple text.
His words are better than mine, but I hope to add an early writing of mine about this if I can ever find it again.