Sunday, December 07, 2003
(5:59 PM) | Anonymous:
Forget the bible... almost
The dwindling number of us who still read the Bible are likely familiar with what is commonly referred to as "the Law." Those wonderful passages that demand a woman be kept separate from the community while she has her period (of what, we never shall know), or that we should kill a man who is caught sleeping with another man. This demanding tone even appears in the writings of Saint Paul, although it is of less severity or authority than the judges had. Paul was not a higher up in the government afterall.
This is, if you are a Christian, our scripture. It is filled with petty, resentful and downright hateful commands and I fear many become Christians not for the sake of salvation but for the power they weild with permission of scripture. Yes, I know there are plenty of verses that demand we love and do good to the poor and so on and so forth but these other commands are given much more respect in contemporary Christianity. That is why most Christians are right-wingers or apathetic to the moves in politics (I confess, I can't make up my mind as to which one is worse).
I used to hold to the idea if a proper understanding of scripture (which mean my understanding of scripture, of course) could just be attained then everything would fall into place. This, I can see now, is complete bull-shit. As long as people hold to the idea that the Bible is our ultimate source of revelation or is the way in which Christians create their "world-view" or even as the description of the way in which the Church ought to be run (to where?) then the Church will be completely inrelevant. I have had too many arguments, mainly on Decapolis which I was kicked off of, about woman in ministry where the other side would claim, "If it was up to me I'd let woman be ministers, but the Bible says they can't." The same argument works for homosexuality and, if we take the bible's commands really seriously, fat people.
So what do we do with this book that has caused so much violence (and certainly so much love as well)? I can't throw it away, it is what the Church reads afterall. I don't want to say we believe some of it or that we pick and choose the good stuff because we do that anyway and it hasn't helped. It seems we must convince the Church to read scripture as if Jesus were the ultimate source of revelation and if anything doesn't match up with him then it is shit.
How do we do this without committing violence again? I must confess that I do not know if we can.
