How should we read the Bible? This is Brian McLaren’s second question and it deals with the authority of the Scriptures. In conservative church circles this is a particularly sensitive subject and daring to question the ‘word of God’ is seen as a step too far in any quest. McLaren tackles the issue, however, with a penetrating force that cannot simply be ignored.

Science textbook
He suggests that we have ‘got ourselves into a mess with the Bible’ and that this mess is threefold. First, we are in a ‘scientific mess’ where some insist that the Bible has to be read as a ‘divinely dictated science textbook’. This approach, however, has led the church to being on the ‘wrong side of truth’ many times as the scientific community has come up with new answers to many questions.

Slavery
Second, the whole question of ethics has become problematic, he suggests, as conservative church has used biblical passages to address issues that they were never meant to address. During the history of the church verses have been used to justify positions that should never have been sanctioned and McLaren gives a fairly detailed account of how the pro-slavery movement used the Bible to defend their views. This is a particularly powerful section of the book and should make those who hold a conservative position on the Bible think very deeply about their position.

War
His third point is about peace and how the Bible is persistently used to advocate war and justify military action. He points to periods when this was done with great effect from the Iraq War to the Rwandan genocide where the Bible was quoted to ‘strengthen an us-versus-them mentality’.

A constitutional document
The problem lies, says McLaren, in the way we read and use the Bible. What has happened is that we have taken the text and turned it into a ‘legal constitution’ rather than reading it for what it actually is – ‘a portable library of poems, prophecies, histories, fables, parables, letters, sagely sayings, quarrels, and so on’. Treating it as a legal document has meant that we find ourselves acting like courtroom lawyers plucking out verses one at a time to ‘prove’ our viewpoint, repeating that well-worn mantra, ‘The Bible says’, as we do it. The problem with this approach is that single verses have been used to justify two things that wholly opposite to each other. For example, when faced with wanting to know how to treat our enemies do we turn to Matthew 5:44 and love them, or to Psalm 137:9 and smash their children against a rock? Both verses are in the same legal constitution that we know as the Holy Bible. But which to choose?

In the next post I will outline how McLaren proposes to respond to this problem.


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