The Bible Tells Me So...

Have begun reading a fantastic book.  Peter Enns' The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable To Read It.  Someday perhaps in the not too distant future I will be starting a book group to discuss these ideas.  Here's some quotes and thoughts on the first chapter.

Many Christians have been taught that the Bible is truth downloaded from heaven, God's rulebook, a heavenly instruction manual--follow the directions and out pops a true believer; deviate from the script and God will come crashing down on you with full force.

If anyone challenges this view, the faithful are taught to "defend the Bible" against these anti-God attacks.  Problem solved.

That is, until you actually read the Bible....When you read the Bible on its own terms, you discover that it doesn't behave itself like a holy rulebook should. (p. 3-4)

Deep within me is a longing to figure out what to DO with the Bible.  I've been a pastor for over 20 years.  A Christian for over 35.  And the problems I have with the Bible seem to be growing rather than going away.  It has become harder and harder to just ignore the places where the Bible contradicts itself, presents God as an angry tirant, or is just plain unbelievable.  The "rulebook" or "instruction manual" view of the Bible is so dominant that even though I have been to a Bible college and seminary, and know better, that view and all that goes with it dies a difficult death.

Part of the problem is the "what then" question.  If we get honest about the difficulties in the Bible, do we just end up discarding it as irrelevant to our lives (to my life, to my children's lives)?  Enns describes 3 options.  Door number one is "The Bible is without error."  Door number two is "The Bible is irrelevant."  He proposes door number three: "Let's face what we see in the Bible, accept the challenge, and start thinking differently about it." (19)  This means asking ancient questions of the Bible rather than modern or post-modern ones.  It means trusting that God has something to teach us through THIS Bible, the one we actually have, with all the stuff we don't know what to do with.

The Bible we have, Enns argues, doesn't work very well as a how-to manual or answer book.  But it does work well as a model for our own spiritual journey.  An inspired  model, in fact. (24)

Random violence and a "God who never fails"

Earlier this week a couple of married youth pastors were driving with their infant son.  As they passed under a bridge that was undergoing some renovations, a large section of concrete fell on their car, crushing them and instantly killing all three of them.  (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/couple-killed-baby-freak-accident-were-youth-pastors-n341411)

One moment they were having an ordinary moment, with ordinary conversation, listening to the radio, and the next they were dead.  The members of their families and the members of their church now have the difficult task of trying to make sense of this random accident and the horrific results and grief it brings.

But it also causes grief to people who don't know them.  It seems so unjust, so unfair.  It makes God seem really distant.  After all, God could have prevented that from happening, right?  Had the family left just 2 seconds earlier or 2 seconds later they would most likely be alive today.

This morning I went to a prayer breakfast with other community pastors and we heard a speaker encouraging us to pray more, expecting action from the "God who never fails".  A line in the popular worship song "Oceans" says "You've never failed, and You won't start now."

But what exactly does it mean to say "God never fails" when a family of people who love and serve God get crushed in their car?  This incident is making it very difficult to pray.  If God knew that was going to happen, and God did not do anything to prevent it, then it seems like a failure.  If God will not at least do the minimum and cause a 2 second delay for this family in order to save their lives, should I really expect that if I pray God will do something to make my life easier or better (or my friend's lives easier or better)?

Obviously the story of the youth pastors' family is not unique.  History is full of innocent, even faithful and joyful, people victimized by random violence.  Terrorist acts, driving accidents, school shootings, all the way up to acts of war - the brutal truth is God's "modus operandi" is to NOT intervene to save people, whether they are following God or not.  There are occasional exceptions, and we hear the stories of miraculous deliverance, but this is not the normal way of the world.

These events remind me that if my faith in God is predicated upon a belief that God will miraculously intervene for those who serve God, that faith will be destroyed sooner or later.  It is only a matter of time until a senseless tragedy hits close enough to home to drive home the terrible truth that God most often does nothing to prevent these tragedies.  But if my faith in God is predicated upon a belief that God somehow enters into the suffering of this world, then perhaps I can hold onto that faith.  Through the incarnation, God became flesh and endured all the normal hardships of life, as well as extraordinary suffering through torture and execution on a cross.

I want a God who will keep me safe, but for whatever reason that is not the God who is.  And the sooner I realize that, the sooner I will grow up into a more reasonable and mature faith.

Questions about Noah

Recently a friend sent me some questions about Noah and the Ark.  Is this a historical story?  What difference does it make?

My answers to her questions are found below.

1.      Is there any scientific evidence to support Noah’s ark that you know of? I’ve been hearing things about scientific evidence but when I research it’s all speculation and nothing concrete.

No.  There are fringe conservative Christian groups that purport to have evidence of a worldwide flood, but to my knowledge these groups' "science" is not supported by the consensus of those using the scientific method and putting forth peer-reviewed literature. (an important part of the puzzle, as those who actually have knowledge in that area of research would either support or deny the claims. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology for more information) 

2.      In the story of Noah does God send the animals to Noah or does Noah go and get the animals?

This is easy enough to figure out with a quick reading of Genesis 6
19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.
and Genesis 7
8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.
So as the story is told, the animals came TO Noah.

3.      Are we supposed to believe that the Noah story in the Bible is the literal actual account of the great flood?

Haha! This is the $28,000 question, isn't it?  The answer is: it depends who you ask.
Most conservative, evangelical Christians would say YES.  Everything in the Bible is historical fact and God told people to write it down exactly as it came to us.  
Most liberal Christians (and as it appears Jewish people as well) find spiritual truth in the early stories of Genesis (chapters 1-11) but do not consider them historically accurate. 
 
Conservatives would say it has always been the case to believe in the literal garden of Eden, talking snake, tower of Babel, Noah and the Ark.  But a careful study of history shows major theologians throughout the centuries have looked to these stories for spiritual truth instead of historical fact.  

I encourage you to read Genesis 1-11 and try to approach these stories as if you've never read them before.  What do you notice about them?  How do they come across to you?  Do they seem historical?  What type of literature do they remind you of?

Let me tip my hand a bit.  These stories make much more sense when seen in their cultural setting of the Ancient Near East.  Every religion/culture has a creation myth (a story with spiritual meanings).  If you read other creation stories a few amazing things stand out about the ones (yes there are two) in Genesis.  They are distinct from the others in that creation was planned by a loving God (not the result of some cosmic battle between opposing gods) and this loving God is in relationship with the creatures created.  

I know you're asking about Noah, but it helps to start with the creation stories.  When I see that at some point in history some Jewish person somewhere wrote down a different story of the creation, that was significantly different than the stories of those in the surrounding culture, we should pay attention to the differences.  (How was God involved in the process of creating this story?  That is something we will never be able to answer with complete certainty.)

As for Noah, there are also other "flood stories" that speak of a time of flooding in the Ancient Near East, roughly the same time as the Noah story.  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth) With just a very QUICK look at this article you can see that SOMETHING happened in which there was some major localized flooding, and there are a few theories about what might have caused it.  The fact that so many stories exist about a great flood do, in my mind, point to some event that happened in the ancient past that had been handed down generation to generation in the oral histories of each culture.  

What is unique about the Noah story?  Again, a loving God who is in relationship to humans creates a plan to rid the world of wickedness and start over.  Although this has so many moral problems to the modern mind (really, God kills MILLIONS of people!!!) the fact that God had a plan in the midst of the flood demonstrates the monotheistic idea of ONE God that was in control of EVERYTHING and who was in personal relationship with humans.  These are unique ideas in the world of the Ancient Near East.

Do I believe there was a literal man named Noah who spent over 100 years building a huge boat and thousands of animals came from all across the planet to get on the boat, and then God brought so much rain from the heavens and from under the earth as well that every mountaintop was covered over the whole planet and God deliberately killed every human except for a few members of Noah's family?  Umm.  No.  

4.      If there’s no scientific evidence of a great flood then the story of Noah seems rather complicated to explain to a non-believer and have it make any sense

It is only complicated if we take the viewpoint that everything in the Bible is historically accurate.  If one simply reads the stories in Genesis 1-11 and allows them to be a different sort of literature, and allows the hypothesis that they are not historically true but conveyed deep and meaningful ideas about the nature of the one and only God to ancient people (and modern people too!), we would not have to spend time arguing about the scientific or historic truth of the Noah story. 

5.      If we use carbon dating as a means to tell the age of fossils or other things from history like the Gospels then why do Christians throw out carbon dating when science uses it to prove  the earth is more than 3,000 years old?

Good question.  I'm afraid there is no good answer to that.  It really is pretty lame.  Seems like one either needs to reject the whole thing, saying "all the science behind carbon dating is suspect" (which in fact some fringe creationist groups do), or you need to accept the science as at least reasonably valid and not ignore the findings that are inconvenient.

As for me I am convinced that the starting place for understanding the scriptures must be actually reading them and then trying to form convictions about the nature of what we read.  Too many Christians start the other way around.  They have a conviction about the scriptures (They are "inerrant" - no errors at all, at least in the "original version" which no one has ever read!) and so everything they read must fit that preconceived idea about the scriptures.  Unfortunately, when you actually read the scriptures you run into a lot of problems with the "inerrant" position.

I believe the scriptures contain a record of people's developing ideas about the identity of the One-True-God, over the course of many millenia.  Some ideas found in the oldest scriptures and coming from the most ancient cultures get updated over the centuries and the understanding of the nature of God changes over time.  The book "The Human Faces of God" by Thomas Stark sealed the deal for me in answering my own questions about the nature of scripture and making sense of the glaring inconsistencies found throughout.

I think any attempt at proving or convincing skeptics that the Noah story is historical fact is doomed from the outset, and is a waste of valuable energy.

I think your Jewish friend has some interesting ideas and it would be fun to discuss things with her.  I can see how Jews think Christians have taken the Jewish scriptures hostage and don't understand them correctly, but I've never actually discussed that topic with a real live Jewish person!
Enough for now...