Rethinking the Bible
Sep. 9th, 2005 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatarperegrineWhen I wrote my article "Five Cool Things about the Qur'an," I intended to write a companion piece about the parts of my own religious tradition I began to appreciate more as a result of my increased exposure to other religions. As with any aspect of culture, there are things you don't realize about your own religious worldview until you've had a few encounters with a different tradition. Thus living here in the Muslim world has given me an opportunity not only to learn about Islam but also to reflect on Christianity in a broader context.
I had difficulty conceptualizing how to write that article, though, without it appearing to be something along the lines of "Five Things that Make the Bible Cooler than the Qur'an." I hope you all know me well enough to know that isn't my intention, but just in case I still have to convince you: I do not believe that a renewed appreciation for Christianity has to come at the expense of respect for the other wisdom traditions of the world.
So you've heard me say the things that impressed me about the Qur'an: its beauty, its consistency, and so on. Now, here's the thing that impresses me about the Bible.
It's messy.
The Bible itself is messy. It consists of 66 books (or 73 -- we don't even all agree on which ones count!) written over the course of 1000 years (we don't agree on that number, either), and it reflects all the cultural and theological shifts that occurred during that millennium. It has dozens of different authors -- none of whom, I might note, claim to be God. It includes works in practically every genre. You don't have to look at it for very long or be at all educated in higher criticism to realize that it's a rather uneven volume.
And let's talk about the inconsistencies! I just read a passage by a Muslim on the contradictions between II Samuel 24:1, which says that God initiated a census of the Israelites, and I Chronicles 21:1, which says that same census was provoked by Satan. The author was shocked that Hebrew Bible doesn't consistently distinguish between God and Satan. But that's just peanuts to the inconsistencies in the New Testament. As the 21st-century Christian community debates the value of the Gospel of Thomas and other Gospels excluded from the Bible and suppressed by the church, it's easy to start feeling like the early church was a bunch of real hard-liners, but it's actually pretty remarkable how literalistic they weren't. Think about it: they stuck four different biographies of our Messiah in the Bible. Do the Gospels agree on the details of the life of the one we consider the most important person ever to have existed? Heck no! If they did, there would've been no point in including them all. But instead of choosing one authoritative gospel and declaring it alone accurate (like Marcion tried to do), our nutty church fathers made them all authoritative.
This is something I'm used to staying fairly quiet about, in deference to my more conservative brothers and sisters who take it as an article of faith that the Bible is wholly consistent, inerrant, and divinely authored. But let's face it, folks: the Bible's heterogeneity is its most striking feature. The Muslim authors I've read on the subject are indescribably baffled that it would ever even enter someone's head to take a book like the Bible and call it holy.
Of course, Islam teaches that the Torah, Psalms, and Gospel were originally divinely authored. To them, however, the many inconsistencies are proof that the Bible has become corrupted and is no longer a reliable source of information about God. To us Christians, though, the inconsistencies are just part of the messiness of life. Was it God or Satan who told David to undertake that census? To the Muslim author I read on the subject, the ambiguity is unthinkable. To me, it's part of life: whether a given action is holy or demonic is often a matter of perspective. I truly appreciate having a scriptural tradition that doesn't see the need to offer one and only one answer to every religious question. Can we be sure if a given action is inspired by God or Satan? Not always. Why does suffering happen? The Bible doesn't give one answer; instead, it offers us stories of suffering -- Joseph, Job, Lazarus, Jesus -- and invites us to live in the ambiguities and nuances of the varying answers these stories may suggest.
Related to the messiness of the Bible itself is the messiness of the lives it portrays. On practically every page we learn of the foibles of God's chosen people. The "just" and "righteous" Lot gets drunk and screws his daughters. Abraham sends his firstborn son out to die in the desert. Moses' brother Aaron is so thick, he reverts to idol worship in the actual physical presence of God. Likewise Jonah literally hears the voice of God giving him a holy mission, and he's such a chicken he tries to run away. God's anointed king David sends one of his subjects to his death so he can get it on with the guy's wife. Elisha uses his holy power to kill small children who tease him for being bald, and Jesus uses his supernatural powers to create booze for a party. And then, to top it all off, the absolutely most central story of our religion is that God incarnate comes to show humanity the way, and manages one single year of ministry before he gets himself captured, tortured and executed.
It's not hard to see, really, why Muslims see it as self-evident that the original, divinely inspired stories of the Bible have been vandalized by the enemies of God. All of the people I mentioned in the previous paragraph are considered prophets of Islam, and Islam steadfastly refuses to believe that God's prophets could act so disgracefully and dishonorably. For a prophet to commit incest is unthinkable, and therefore it never happened. For a messenger of God to drink alcohol is unthinkable, and therefore it never happened. But the Bible just says: those crazy, crazy prophets! It's not that we approve of their mistakes, but this universe is a messy place that allows the will of God to be made manifest in the lives of the nuttiest, the lowest, the most disgraced of people.
God incarnate dying on the cross? Growing up with this concept in our culture, I doubt we hear the full impact of how bizarre at proposition this is (regardless of whether we personally believe it or not). I begin to appreciate why Islam sees it as blasphemy. It's an idea I also struggle with a lot, not because I am similarly eager to defend God's honor but simply because I don't necessarily accept it as a literal explanation of the Christ event. My skepticism is unlikely to subside anytime soon, nor do I think it should. But now I hear the story with new ears, with ears that for the last year have heard a wider range of religious worldviews and have begun to understand Christianity in a wider context. And I find that, instead of getting mired in textual criticism and endless navel-gazing about which creedal propositions I'm prepared to accept, I am becoming more grateful for the richness of meaning behind our off-the-wall story of a God willing to do the unthinkable and the wretchedly disgraceful in order to reach out to humanity in love, grace and compassion.
I had difficulty conceptualizing how to write that article, though, without it appearing to be something along the lines of "Five Things that Make the Bible Cooler than the Qur'an." I hope you all know me well enough to know that isn't my intention, but just in case I still have to convince you: I do not believe that a renewed appreciation for Christianity has to come at the expense of respect for the other wisdom traditions of the world.
So you've heard me say the things that impressed me about the Qur'an: its beauty, its consistency, and so on. Now, here's the thing that impresses me about the Bible.
It's messy.
The Bible itself is messy. It consists of 66 books (or 73 -- we don't even all agree on which ones count!) written over the course of 1000 years (we don't agree on that number, either), and it reflects all the cultural and theological shifts that occurred during that millennium. It has dozens of different authors -- none of whom, I might note, claim to be God. It includes works in practically every genre. You don't have to look at it for very long or be at all educated in higher criticism to realize that it's a rather uneven volume.
And let's talk about the inconsistencies! I just read a passage by a Muslim on the contradictions between II Samuel 24:1, which says that God initiated a census of the Israelites, and I Chronicles 21:1, which says that same census was provoked by Satan. The author was shocked that Hebrew Bible doesn't consistently distinguish between God and Satan. But that's just peanuts to the inconsistencies in the New Testament. As the 21st-century Christian community debates the value of the Gospel of Thomas and other Gospels excluded from the Bible and suppressed by the church, it's easy to start feeling like the early church was a bunch of real hard-liners, but it's actually pretty remarkable how literalistic they weren't. Think about it: they stuck four different biographies of our Messiah in the Bible. Do the Gospels agree on the details of the life of the one we consider the most important person ever to have existed? Heck no! If they did, there would've been no point in including them all. But instead of choosing one authoritative gospel and declaring it alone accurate (like Marcion tried to do), our nutty church fathers made them all authoritative.
This is something I'm used to staying fairly quiet about, in deference to my more conservative brothers and sisters who take it as an article of faith that the Bible is wholly consistent, inerrant, and divinely authored. But let's face it, folks: the Bible's heterogeneity is its most striking feature. The Muslim authors I've read on the subject are indescribably baffled that it would ever even enter someone's head to take a book like the Bible and call it holy.
Of course, Islam teaches that the Torah, Psalms, and Gospel were originally divinely authored. To them, however, the many inconsistencies are proof that the Bible has become corrupted and is no longer a reliable source of information about God. To us Christians, though, the inconsistencies are just part of the messiness of life. Was it God or Satan who told David to undertake that census? To the Muslim author I read on the subject, the ambiguity is unthinkable. To me, it's part of life: whether a given action is holy or demonic is often a matter of perspective. I truly appreciate having a scriptural tradition that doesn't see the need to offer one and only one answer to every religious question. Can we be sure if a given action is inspired by God or Satan? Not always. Why does suffering happen? The Bible doesn't give one answer; instead, it offers us stories of suffering -- Joseph, Job, Lazarus, Jesus -- and invites us to live in the ambiguities and nuances of the varying answers these stories may suggest.
Related to the messiness of the Bible itself is the messiness of the lives it portrays. On practically every page we learn of the foibles of God's chosen people. The "just" and "righteous" Lot gets drunk and screws his daughters. Abraham sends his firstborn son out to die in the desert. Moses' brother Aaron is so thick, he reverts to idol worship in the actual physical presence of God. Likewise Jonah literally hears the voice of God giving him a holy mission, and he's such a chicken he tries to run away. God's anointed king David sends one of his subjects to his death so he can get it on with the guy's wife. Elisha uses his holy power to kill small children who tease him for being bald, and Jesus uses his supernatural powers to create booze for a party. And then, to top it all off, the absolutely most central story of our religion is that God incarnate comes to show humanity the way, and manages one single year of ministry before he gets himself captured, tortured and executed.
It's not hard to see, really, why Muslims see it as self-evident that the original, divinely inspired stories of the Bible have been vandalized by the enemies of God. All of the people I mentioned in the previous paragraph are considered prophets of Islam, and Islam steadfastly refuses to believe that God's prophets could act so disgracefully and dishonorably. For a prophet to commit incest is unthinkable, and therefore it never happened. For a messenger of God to drink alcohol is unthinkable, and therefore it never happened. But the Bible just says: those crazy, crazy prophets! It's not that we approve of their mistakes, but this universe is a messy place that allows the will of God to be made manifest in the lives of the nuttiest, the lowest, the most disgraced of people.
God incarnate dying on the cross? Growing up with this concept in our culture, I doubt we hear the full impact of how bizarre at proposition this is (regardless of whether we personally believe it or not). I begin to appreciate why Islam sees it as blasphemy. It's an idea I also struggle with a lot, not because I am similarly eager to defend God's honor but simply because I don't necessarily accept it as a literal explanation of the Christ event. My skepticism is unlikely to subside anytime soon, nor do I think it should. But now I hear the story with new ears, with ears that for the last year have heard a wider range of religious worldviews and have begun to understand Christianity in a wider context. And I find that, instead of getting mired in textual criticism and endless navel-gazing about which creedal propositions I'm prepared to accept, I am becoming more grateful for the richness of meaning behind our off-the-wall story of a God willing to do the unthinkable and the wretchedly disgraceful in order to reach out to humanity in love, grace and compassion.
We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.... For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.
1 Corinthians 1:23, 25
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 04:37 pm (UTC)One of the things that really frightens me about Christianity are those who believe that the Bible must be literal truth. A viewpoint that the Bible is (1) metaphorical and intended to be interpreted and/or (2) distorted by historical processes seems much more, well, logical. When people abandon logic in favor of denial, that cannot be good or holy. In contrast, I applaud your open-minded and well-reasoned standpoint.
I've also enjoyed your perspectives on the Qur'an since that is a topic that, I freely admit, I know almost nothing about. Definitely a marked contrast to the Bible.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 11:18 am (UTC)What has really struck me is how much the Bible resists literalism. I mean, you'd think that having two contradictory creation stories in the opening two chapters would be a bit of a hint!
If I believed that a book had to be consistent and open to literalistic reading in order to be holy, I would convert to Islam.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 05:05 pm (UTC)I've always loved my mom's interpretation of the cruxifiction. Whether it happened, or not, she says it's symbolic of God's understanding of us, that he's willing to make a part of himself human to experience the pain we feel, which I think is such a cool idea.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 04:22 pm (UTC)And I hope you'll forgive me rudely drawing attention to a typo, but I think your misspelling of crucifixion is lovely. It's like crux-i-fiction... the decisive moment in the myth. :-)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 08:54 pm (UTC)"Jesus would be worth believing in even if he never exited."
I'm assuming you meant "existed" (to rudely draw attention to a typo as well), but either one actually makes sense. And I agree... with most religions, even if the stories are only myths, the symbolism in them is worth believing in.
A few years ago I had to give a speech in church on why I believed how I did. In trying to explain my belief in God, the only concrete reason I could find was "I believe because I want to. Whether I'm right or not, the belief gives me comfort, and that's reason enough."
no subject
Date: 2005-09-12 06:08 am (UTC)Touché! :-)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-09 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 04:22 pm (UTC)You're wrighting
Date: 2005-09-11 11:00 pm (UTC)You could have a future in writing with that combination.
Re: You're wrighting
Date: 2005-09-12 11:22 pm (UTC)Re: You're wrighting
Date: 2005-09-13 02:43 am (UTC)