So, all this talk about the Rapture and such got me thinking about some things I've been taught about the Bible. What came to mind was the teaching that the Bible must be literally true in all aspects, What came to mind was the teaching that the Bible must be literally true, in all aspects, for us to have real faith. If any part of the Bible can be doubted to be literal, then "God is a liar". (If you wonder why I thought of that, just consider the justification people gave for the May 21 Rapture date).
I used to believe that everything in the Bible had to be literally true. If not, how could we trust God? Then, some "heretical" teachings from some Native relations, along with life events which really challenged my faith, led me to reconsider the my position.
The argument (oh excuse me, professional Christianese for argument is “apologetics”) for a literally true Bible is this: if we doubt a passage such as Genesis giving a literal account of Creation-with six days of twenty four hours and such-then we have reason to doubt everything else in the Bible. This includes the very existence and nature of God as well as the Truth of Christ. This makes sense, at least if you approach the Bible in the same way a scientist approaches formulating an theory, or a detective investigates a crime.
Are we really supposed to approach Creator, and the Bible, in such a way? That same Bible tells us we must lay aside what seems “logical” and come to our Father as little children. I don't recall ever coming to my father when I was a child and interrogating him regarding the truth of his statements that he loved me, would care for me, would protect me and yes, would discipline me if I misbehaved. I accepted that what he was saying was true because he was my father. Why should he lie to me?
Ok, sure, it wasn't long before I figured out the truth about Santa Claus. But uncovering that playful fantasy didn't make me think dad lied about the really important things. In fact, as I grew older and realized that how I interpreted things dad said changed as I grew in my own knowledge of the world didn't make what he said untrue. It simply made my own interpretation of it suspect.
This realization led me to the above-mentioned challenge to my faith. It wasn't some dire event in which I felt Creator had abandoned me. Even in my worst times, I always felt His Presence and saw His hand at work in my life. No, it was looking at my own reasons for believing that led to doubting my faith. I didn't doubt my Father, but my own justification for having faith in Him.
For years I had been the sort who could use strong, logical arguments to uphold the literal truthfulness of the Bible. “God said it, I believe it, that settles it”, as the bumper sticker says. If there were inconsistencies in the Bible, (such as the incredibly high population figure for the Hebrews at the time of Exodus, which no archaeological or contemporary record substantiates) it was because I lacked faith. True faith meant I would take the Bible literally and come up with excuses-or simply go into denial-about anything that contradicted some aspects of scripture.
That hard case attitude never seemed to bring comfort when I most needed it. When I found myself crying out to Creator by reminding Him that the Bible promised me something, I felt empty, as though I was telling my earthly father I loved him while planning on not doing what he told me to do.
When I simply cried out “Father, I don't understand what is happening. Help me understand, or at least help give me peace about it all”, then I felt His strong, comforting presence. Maybe it's just me, but I found that acting like a child who couldn't handle things on my own brought me much closer to Creator God than when I tried to bolster my own faith by using the Bible like a field manual.
What I came to see was that declaring the Bible to be an ironclad, court-accepted proof of God's trustworthiness can actually be antithetical to the child-like faith we are called to have. As Hebrews 6 tells us, He wants us to believe that He is, and rewards those who diligently seek Him. I'm of the mind that such belief doesn't need any provenance other than what is in the heart of a child. Creator tells me the Truth because He is my Father and so has no reason to lie to me.
As I see it, if we put too much stock in the Bible being literally true, to the point that if someone could unequivocally prove a part of it to be false we would then come to doubt God, do we really have faith in Him? Could it be instead that we have faith in our imperfect record of Him? Is our insistence that the Bible has to be literally true for us to have faith in Creator more a matter of our own ego than real, child-like faith.
I think of the movie “Big Fish” in which the main character has spent his life disbelieving his father's supposed tall tales. It's alienated him from his father, and it's not until just before the old man's death that the son comes to accept the stories not because they are true, but because his father told them. So there must be a reason why he did. Then it turns out every story the son thought was just a fantasy had a basis in truth and fact.
Here's what I think: strength of faith isn't that we accept something in the Bible as literally true just because it's in the Bible. Rather, strength of faith is found when we decide that even if we concede that certain parts of the Bible can't be reconciled with “facts”, we still accept the Truth behind it because that Truth is a Living Word Who comes from the Father.
I don't dismiss the importance of the Bible: I read it and listen to audio versions regularly. What is different is this: before, my faith flowed “from” the Bible and toward God, so to speak. It came from staunchly believing that it was literally true. Now, my faith flows from Creator into everything else in my life. I believe the core Truth of the Bible because I trust Creator, even if parts of the Bible don't seem literally true.
To me it doesn't matter if it took a literal six days to make the earth or not. Whether every word in the Bible is literally true or not no longer effects what I believe in my heart about Creator. I have experienced too much the Truth for my faith in Creator to depend on apologetics used to justify a literal Genesis account, or whether 2.5 million or 25,000 Israelites left Egypt.
The Bible says we should give up childish things as we mature into spiritual adults. Consider, perhaps, that a lot of the arguing about the literalness of the Bible is more like a couple of kids arguing about whose dad would win a fight, rather than really growing into the child-like faith we are called to have.
That's what's on my heart. Thanks for listening.
