“You don’t take the Bible literally, do you?”

According to a recent article by a professor at Iliff School of Theology, “No one reads or interprets the Bible literally – regardless as to what they profess.  To do so is simplistic, if not dangerous. All of us read our bias, our theology, and our social location into the text. There is no such thing as an objective reading; all readings are subjective.” 

Welcome to hermeneutical nihilism. But wait, it gets worse. 

If we were to take it literally, we would then be forced to “live illegal - if not immoral lives." To prove his point, the learned professor prepared his own pop quiz:

1. The biblical definition of a traditional marriage is one between a man and: a) many wives or concubines, b) sex slaves, c) prostitutes, d) his harem, e) all of the above.

2. Homosexuals are to be: a) tolerated, b) encouraged, c) killed, d) banned.

3. Women are saved: a) through baptism, b) by reciting a sinner’s prayer, c) through child-bearing, d) accepting Jesus, who died for their sins, as Lord as Savior.

4. God tries to kill Moses, but does not because God is appeased by Moses’ wife Zipporah, who: a) cuts off the foreskin of her son’s penis and rubs it on Moses’ penis, b) offers up a bull as sacrifice, c) takes a vow of silence, d) prays for forgiveness.

5. Evil and evil spirits come from: a) God, b) Satan, c) neither a nor b, d) both a and b.

6. Every year, one must take a tithe of all the land has yielded and: a) give it to the priests, b) give it to the church, c) give it to the poor, d) convert it to cash to buy wine, strong drink, or anything else their heart desires.

7. The Bible makes provisions for offering a sacrifice to: a) nature, b) the demonic god named Azazel, c) God, d) a and d, e) b and c.

8. My response to taking this test will be: a) stick my fingers in my ears and loudly sing “na na na na na,” b) question [the author’s] salvation again while again stating never to read such commentary, c) ignore these parts of the Bible so I can maintain my literalism, d) read the text for what it says and struggle with it in the humility of knowing that a clear answer may not be evident in this lifetime. 
 

His list of answers?

1. e -- I Kings 11:3, Deut. 21:10-14, Gen. 38:15, Lev. 18:18;  2. c -- Lev. 20:13; 3. c -- I Tim. 2:14-15; 4. a -- Ex. 4:24-26; 5. d -- I Sam. 18:10, I Kings 14:10, Amos 3:6, Is. 45:7; 6. d -- Deut. 14:22-27; 7. e -- Lev. 16: 8, 10, 26; 8. the choice is yours.

I could teach an introductory course on how not to interpret anything based on this quiz. 

To fifth graders.

I do not mind a learned discussion about biblical truth and authority. What I do mind is continually associating a ridiculously wooden interpretation of the Bible that violates the most fundamental rules of textual interpretation with "taking the Bible literally." This is such a tired caricature. Suffice it to say, such "quizzes" as offered above reveal both a hermeneutical and a theological ignorance. It is bad enough when the media keep getting it wrong; it’s unconscionable when we do it to ourselves to prove what really are biased, subjective points of view.

To take the Bible literally simply means that you take it at face value, which is the proper task of hermeneutics. If it is poetry, read and interpret it as poetry. If it is history, read and interpret it as history. It also means that you take into account the historical-cultural context, and the wider theological context of the entire canon. 

Is this so difficult to understand? 

Here are the three basic principles for interpreting the Bible: 1) always try and find out the author’s original intent; 2) always try and interpret the verse in light of its context; and 3), always let Scripture interpret Scripture. 

That's taking it literally.

And yes, I do.

James Emery White

 

 

Sources

“A Pop Quiz for Biblical Literalists,” Miguel De La Torre, at http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4066&Itemid=9

Original publication date: May 30, 2009

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You may be among the over six million, to date, which has viewed the startling video on YouTube titled Muslim Demographics.  If not, you will soon.  It is spreading virally with blinding speed.  The link is offered below.

Here’s the short version: the birth rate of non-Muslims, compared to Muslims – coupled with immigration – will result in Muslims taking over the planet.  We’d better start having babies, and amp up our evangelism.  And, if I got it right, probably in that order.

It is a disturbing video.  It is designed to alarm, and it does its job well.  As you would imagine, the video has already been taken to task for fear-mongering and truth-distortion, and to a degree, rightfully so.  But it does raise a significant cultural challenge:  Islam is on the rise, and its rise is a challenge for Christians throughout the world. 

There are two equally mistaken reactions to the relationship between the cross and the crescent. 

The first is to panic over Islam’s muscular, aggressive growth.  We’ve been panicking about this since the crusades.  Some of it is certainly warranted, as Islam has expanded by force at various times and places throughout its history, and as Samuel Huntington has written, there is clearly a clash of civilizations taking place between Islam and the West.  Huntington even predicts that Islam will come out on top due to its willingness to be aggressive and even militant in exporting its views.  Yet the danger of giving in to panic is that the relationship between Christians and Muslims becomes one of us vs. them, good guys vs. bad guys, white hats vs. black hats.  In short, they become the enemy.

The second reaction, equally mistaken, is to say “peace, peace,…when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14).  There are some who seem so intent on making up for the widespread post-9/11 caricature of an entire religious population that there is little, if any, acknowledgment of the deep differences between Christianity and Islam, and the need to robustly convey the distinctive message of Christ to the world. 

As Timothy George has posed, “Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?”  The answer, George writes, is surely Yes and No.  Yes, in the sense that the Father of Jesus is the only God there is.  He is the Creator and Sovereign Lord of Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius, and of every person who has ever lived.  But the answer is also No, for Muslim theology rejects the divinity of Christ and the personhood of the Holy Spirit - both essential components of the Christian understanding of God.

Yes, the world is changing.  Islam is growing while Christianity, in many quarters, is waning.  The best response is to neither demonize Muslims nor deny the differences between Christianity and Islam.  The best response is to know what we believe, why we believe it, and then carry that message to the world.

And maybe have some more babies.    

James Emery White

Sources

To watch the “Muslim Demographics” video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU.

Robert Parham, “Anti-Muslim Immigration Video Spreads Fear, Distorts Truth”, posted Monday, May 11, 2009, at http://www.ethicsdaily.com/news.php?viewStory=14194.

 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

Timothy George, “Is the God of Muhammad the Father of Jesus?”, Christianity Today, February 4, 2002.

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Penn Jillette is the “talkative” half of Penn and Teller, the Las Vegas comedy-illusion team, now with their own program on Showtime titled Penn and Teller: Bulls***!  Penn has been an outspoken atheist.  But he posted a video blog on his personal website about a man who gave him a Bible, which has much, I believe, to teach Christians:

At the end of the show as I’ve mentioned before, we go out and we talk to folks, you know, sign an occasional autograph and shake hands and so on.  And there was one guy waiting over to the side in what I call the “hover position”...he had been the guy who picks the joke during our psychic comedian section of the show.  So he had the props from that in his hand because we give those away, the joke book, the envelope, and the paper, and stuff...

And he walked over to me and he said, “I was here last night at the show, and I saw the show and I liked the show...” he was very complimentary about my use of language and complimentary about honesty and stuff.  He said nice stuff, no need to go into it, he said nice stuff. 

And then he said, “I brought this for you,” and he handed me a Gideon pocket edition.  I thought it said from the New Testament but also, Psalms is from the New Testament right?..Little book...And he said, “I wrote in the front of it and I wanted you to have this, I’m kind of proselytizing.”  And then he said, “I’m a business man.  I’m sane, I’m not crazy.”  And he looked me right in the eye and did all of this.  And it was really wonderful. 

I believe he knew that I was an atheist.  But he was not defensive.  And he looked me right in the eyes.  And he was truly complimentary,...it didn’t seem like empty flattery.  He was really kind and nice and sane and looked me in the eyes and talked to me and then gave me this Bible.  And I’ve always said that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize.  I don’t respect that at all.  If you believe that there is a heaven and hell and that people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward...How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?  How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? 

I mean if I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn’t believe it, but that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you.  And this is more important than that.  And I’ve always thought that and I’ve written about that and I’ve thought of it conceptually. 

This guy was a really good guy.  He was polite, and honest, and sane and he cared enough about me to proselytize and give me a Bible.  Which he had written in it a little note to me...just like, liked your show and so on.  And then like five phone numbers for him and an email address if I wanted to get in touch.  Now, I know there’s no God.  And one polite person living his life right doesn’t change that.  But I’ll tell ya, he was a very, very, very good man.  And that’s real important.  And with that kind of goodness its ok to have that deep of a disagreement.  I still think that religion does a lot of bad stuff.  But man, that was a really good man who gave me that book.  That’s all I wanted to say.” 

James Emery White

Sources

Jillette, Penn Jillette (2008, December 8), Penn Says:  A Gift of a Bible. Retrieved from http://crackle.com/c/Penn_Says/A_Gift_of_a_Bible/2415037.

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Ten years later, we now know.

They weren’t goths.  They weren’t loners.  They weren’t in the “Trenchcoat Mafia.”  They were not disaffected video gamers.  They hadn’t been bullied.  The supposed “enemies” on their list had already graduated a year earlier.  They weren’t on anti-depressant medication.  They didn’t target jocks, blacks or Christians.

They just wanted to kill. 

And so it was that on the morning of April 20, 1999, our world changed.  Two seemingly normal, well-scrubbed high school boys went to their school in a prosperous suburban subdivision with the goal to kill thousands.  Their bombs didn’t work, so they proceeded to kill 13 classmates, and wound another 24. 

Never again would we say, “It could never happen here.”

What have we learned in ten years?  By 2002, the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Education Department had completed a study on school shooters and found that no single profile fit them all.  What was clear that few simply “snapped” at the time of the attack.  They had usually planned it with meticulous detail.

Conclusion?  “They are rage shootings,” says David Osher, a sociologist and vice president at the American Institutes for Research.

And the rage continues.

Does the name Byran Uyesugi ring a bell?  Robert Hawkins?  Mark Barton?  Terry Ratzmann?  Robert Stewart?  In an article titled, “Why are Americans killing each other?,” Ted Anthony writes that “each entered the national consciousness when he picked up a gun and ended multiple lives.”  The most recent, Stewart, killed 14 just a few weeks ago at a nursing home in Binghamton, New York.

And these are just examples from a far longer list.  Forty-seven were killed through mass shootings in March alone.

As Anthony notes, we now live in a society “where the term ‘mass shooting’ has lost its status as unthinkable aberration and become mere fodder for a fresh news cycle.”  But then he asks the pivotal question: 

“Why are we killing each other?”

The only answer that could be mustered was the loss of the American dream.  Eight years of terrorism angst, six years of war in Iraq, months of recession.  He laments that 663,000 lost their jobs in March, and worries how many might be angry about it – and might have a gun.

In truth, the answer is found in a word that an increasingly post-Christian world does not have in its arsenal.  In his book Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum surveys theory after theory regarding the Nazi leader’s atrocities. In the end, all of his explanations fail to confront the “laughing” Hitler, the bloodthirsty dictator who was fully conscious of his malignancy. He didn’t have to kill the Jews; he wasn’t compelled by abstract forces. In truth, he chose to, he wanted to.

Here was simply an evil man.

It brings to mind Jean Bethke Elshtain’s experience on the first Sunday following the attacks of 9/11.  She went to a Methodist church in Nashville.  The minister, which she describes as having a kind of frozen smile on his face, said “I know it has been a terrible week.”  Then, after a pause, he continued, “But that’s no reason for us to give up our personal dreams.”  She thought, “Good grief!  Shouldn’t you say something about what happened and how Christians are to think about it?”  But then she realized that if one has lost the term evil from his or her theological vocabulary, then it is not easy to talk about such a thing.

But talk about it we must.  That is, if you want to know the real reason why we are killing each other.

James Emery White

Sources

“10 years later, the real story behind Columbine,” Greg Toppo, USA Today, Tuesday, April 14, 2009, p. 1A and 2A.  Link to story:  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-04-13-columbine-myths_N.htm?se=yahoorefer&poe=HFMostPopular&loc=interstitialskip

“Lessons from Columbine,” Greg Toppo and Marilyn Elias, USA Today, Tuesday, April 14, 2009, p. 1D and 2D.  Link to story:  http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-04-13-columbine-lessons_N.htm

“Why are Americans killing each other?,” Ted Anthony, Associated Press, posted Sunday, April 5, 2009.  Link to story:  http://www.charlotteobserver.com/408/story/644582.html

Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler

Jean Bethke Elshtain, in the afterword to Evangelicals in the Public Square, ed. by J. Budziszewski (2006).

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