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)

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...

Sometimes the Old Testament is just plain horrific

I like the "You Version" Bible app and it's reading plans which help me stay in touch with the scriptures on a regular basis.  The reading a few days ago was from Exodus 32.  

This is the infamous story of Aaron providing a golden calf for the people to worship while Moses has seemingly disappeared on Mount Sinai.  When Moses comes down with the stone tablets inscribed by the hand of God, he sees the people involved in wild idol worship practices and tosses the stone tablets to the ground, unceremoniously shattering them.  After consulting with Aaron, and getting a really lame answer from him about what has happened, we read this...

25 Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. 26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him.

27 Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”

OK.  So Yahweh is so upset with the unfaithfulness of his people that he orders some of them to go through the camp and plunge a knife into the gut of as many people as possible.  This would prove their devotion to Yahweh above all other gods.   In fact, it is their zealous obedience to this bloody command that sets them apart in a special way for service to Yahweh.  

I've read stuff like this in the Old Testament for a few decades.  When I was younger I just pushed through, ignoring the moral problems with the story.  I used to just focus on the fact that the people sinned, and God is perfectly just in killing people if they sin.  In fact such a story could be used to justify God killing His own Son many years later - as a cosmic whipping boy for people like you and me.  It used to work to look at these type of stories that way.

But increasingly, such stories trouble me deeply.  The image of a God who instructs people to take up knives to hack people down sounds like ISIS.  It sounds like Islamic extremism at its worst.  It sounds absolutely nothing like Jesus.  

I choose to read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus.  I choose to reject views of God that are incompatible with Jesus.  And that means I reject the notion that Yahweh actually ordered these murders, even though "the Bible says it".  The author may have thought Yahweh commanded it.  Moses may have thought Yahweh commanded it.  But sending men to kill their own brothers and kinsmen in the name of justice is impossibly unjust.  

Reading the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus means taking the approach that Jesus shows us who God really is and how God really acts in this world.  We should truly say "Yahweh is like Jesus", not "Jesus is like Yahweh."  And that's an important distinction.  

What about those creation stories?

While a junior at the Christian liberal arts university I attended in the late 80's, a guest speaker came to campus for a series of meetings.  He was a well-known pastor from a large church in the area.  Among other things he came to argue for the inerrancy of the Bible, meaning it is wholly reliable in everything it speaks of, including (and especially) it's creation account.

I listened to his presentations with dissatisfaction, but decided not to ask a question of him publicly.  Instead, I waited until after his presentation for a chance to talk with him.  I asked him, "What do you do with the two different creation stories in Genesis?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Well, there are two different stories about the Creation.  One in Genesis 1, and a different account in Genesis 2-3.  And unfortunately, the order of things created doesn't match up in both of these stories."

The guest pastor seemed surprised to hear this, and asked me to show him what I was referring to.

"Look here in the first chapter, starting at verse 20 it describes how on the 5th day God created all the birds of the air, then on the 6th day he creates all the land animals, and THEN he creates humankind (both male and female) as the final pinnacle of his creation.

"In the separate account in Genesis 2-3, God creates Adam, then creates all the animals to try to find a companion for him, then creates Eve."

I looked at him with a questioning look and asked him simply, "So when was Adam created?  Was it before all the animals or after all the animals?"  

I don't remember exactly how the guest pastor responded, but I remember the basic sense of his answer was that I was misunderstanding the text and I didn't have enough faith.  Misunderstanding the text?  I don't think so.  It is really quite plain in older translations (I noticed that the new NIV has created a fix by saying in Genesis 2 "now the Lord HAD created the animals" - a tense of the verb that is missing in older translations and appears to be a way to massage away this discrepancy.)

If indeed the entire Christian faith is based upon the absolute, perfect inerrancy of the scriptures, meaning there is absolutely no contradictions or discrepancies or things that are not literally true - then it appears that one needs to read no further than the 2nd chapter of the Bible.  If such a foundation is indeed the basic building block of the Christian faith, then Christianity should be rejected on the first day of a yearly Bible reading plan.

I've had multiple conversations with Christians about this over the years since then, and have heard all sorts of convoluted explanations why the clear discrepancy of the order of creation events is not really a discrepancy.  It is really painful to listen to.  Just read the text and chart out the events in order.

I try to tell people that it is not a "higher" view of scripture to call it inerrant, because it requires a person to judge the contents of the scriptures before actually reading them.  I encourage them that it is actually much more honoring to God and to the human authors of scripture to actually read the words that are there and form our beliefs about those words based upon what we read.  Let us create our statements about what the Bible is and how it works in the life of the Christian AFTER (not before) we actually read it through.

The good news is the inerrancy of the scriptures is NOT the foundation of the Christian faith.  The work, example, death, resurrection, and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth is the only proper foundation for the Christian faith.  "On Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand. All other ground is sinking sand."

The house of cards of Biblical inerrancy

I run into people all the time within evangelicalism who basically subscribe to this belief about the Bible:

"God inspired humans to write down exactly what God wanted them to write.  Therefore everything in the Bible, from Genesis to the Revelation, is God-breathed.  Since God is perfect, what he does is perfect, so the Bible is without error in everything it speaks of."

Although not a technical definition, this is the basic idea that is meant by the term "Biblical inerrancy".  This foundational belief leads to the next one:

"Good Christians believe everything the Bible says and never doubt it, regardless of what modern scholarship and science discovers. If there is a discrepancy between something in modern scholarship or science and the words of the Bible, good Christians will always hold to the Bible teaching and reject or doubt the modern discoveries."

Good, faithful people are taught that there are no discrepancies or contradictions in the scripture.  Or, if there are things that seem like contradictions, there is a way to "harmonize" the divergent facts and still hold to the doctrine of inerrancy.

Although this seems like a very "high" view of scripture, and very worshipful and faithful, there is an underlying problem that such a view of scripture sets up.  With such a view of the Bible, IF an error is found, the entire Bible is cast under suspicion.  "If there is an error there...how can I be sure that there aren't errors in other places as well?  And if God didn't write the Bible perfectly, then how can I trust that I can follow it's teachings to find eternal life? How can I tell where it is true and where it is in error?"

Thus, under the idea of Biblical inerrancy, a single discrepancy or contradiction or error found in the Biblical texts can actual derail a person's entire faith in Jesus, and make their version of Christianity fall to pieces like a house of cards.

Likewise, people on the outside of Christianity looking in feel that they could NEVER become a Christian, because they would have to accept the Bible as inerrant, a position which is intellectually impossible for them to accept.

As a pastor, I want to help my people to a more secure foundation for their faith.  As a father, I want to lead my wife and children to a more secure foundation for their faith.  I do not want them to feel that they either have to believe in modern scholarship and science OR the Bible.  I want to help people develop ideas about the Bible that actually work in our modern age for people inside and outside the Christian faith.

But it is a risky thing to even speak of what the next posts will discuss - glaring problems with the doctrine of inerrancy, starting with the 2nd chapter of the Bible.