Part 1 of understanding the Bible
It seems to me that most of our problems ('our' being the chuch and the majority of Chirstians) stem from a misunderstanding of how we are to read the Bible.
Understanding the genre
For some reason we have decided to read it like a science book, apparantly God made the world in 6 days and tempted Adam and Eve with a talking serpent; a rule book, yeah because that's really appealing to the post modern world we live in; some people treat it like a history book that has to be accurate in every way... cos history is always full of facts right? Some people read it like a horriscope, ever read Word for Today? Others are more old fashioned and believe it to be an encyclopedia on how to live your life. Why is we throw our brains away when it comes to reading the Bible?
The Bible is a series of different books, some books are poetry (Genesis, the Psalms), some are biographies (The gosepls), some are parables, or storeis told with a plethora of meaning (Job, Jonah), some are letters (Corinthians and Galtians) and each should be read as such!!! Sometimes when we read the Bible we are aware of this, we don’t read the passage in Psalms about dashing the heads of children on rocks and think it’s okay for us to do this… why because we recognise it is a poem expressing anger towards God about our enemies. However sometimes we fail to realise that some parts of scripture were written as poetry but we read them as history. Genesis 1 is the classic example of this, the creation narrative would have been read around campfires like a piece of rousing Shakespeare, it ws a story with incredible meaning, and says some beautiful things about our God but it didn’t happen.
When we watch star wars we realise that the director is presenting an alternative reality, a reality that is saying something about politics, about the outcast, about the importance of tradition, faith and our heritage but we don’t have to assume that the things it alludes to are actually happening in order for it to mean something to us. Reveation is pregnant with meaning, pregnant with images of white horses and wild beasts, trumpets and angels, firey furnaces and all manner of other things. The number of people Ive talked to who think these things will actually happen is quite staggering. The writer is using imagery to paint an alternative political reality much like the director of star wars. It’s really not that difficult to see is it?
hi pete,what a dreadful peice of over simplistic tosh about how to read the bible, there isnt enough space in the box to go into it, but you really should do your homework,apart from anything,consider what jesus thought of genesis and learnsome hermaneutics before you write this rubbish and lead many young minds away.
Posted by: neil | February 07, 2008 at 06:32 PM