(Ir)religiosity

A few posts I read last week (here, here, and here) got me to thinking about biblical proof-texting and why I believe it is destructive and counter-productive. For me, the fact of the matter is many texts in the bible can be taken out of context, used, abused, and misused to justify and legitimate just about anything (slavery, murder, racism, chauvinism, and so on). Personally, I have no use for any hermeneutic that involves taking bits and pieces of scripture out of context and using them to reinforce a pre-made theology or agenda. It’s a very narrow slippery slope that I believe does more harm than good.

That is not to say a completely reject the bible. I have a great amount of respect for it. I believe it is inspired by God and I believe it conveys truth (I’ll talk about what I mean by truth a little later because a lot of people mean a lot of different things, when they use the word. For now, just notice that I said “truth” and not “Truth”) about God and about humanity. But don’t worship it. I don’t take it literally and I don’t believe it to be completely historically accurate. I don’t believe it is infallible or inerrant. I acknowledge the fact that it was written by pre-modren people (mostly men, go figure) with pre-modern cosmology and so on. I realize that the books in the bible are products of many different communities with their own biases, prejudices, etc. and I know that much of the present text as been altered, redacted, and edited by many people throughout history. And yet somehow, in the midst of all that, I still believe that upon reading and studying scripture I can learn more about God, more about ultimate reality, more about the human condition, and more about authentic Christian hope.

Anyway, my thinking about proof-texting led me to the larger discussion of scripture itself, its role in the shaping of my theology, its authority, and its role within the Christian community. I claim to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus. By making that claim I am binding myself, to a certain degree, to the narrative of scripture; that is I am placing myself within an ongoing, ever unfolding story or narrative that is larger than myself. So, how does that work I wonder? How can I, living in a postmodern world, gain truth from stories that were written over 2000 years ago by pre-modern people? I’m not going to pretend to come up with a comprehensive answer to questions like this, but I do hope I can come up with a sound framework from which I can further wrestle with these questions. That is what I plan to do here over the course of a few posts.

~bh ><>