Taking the Bible Literally?

Ani DiFranco’s new poem “Literal” expresses the sentiments of many people today:

when they said he could walk on water
what it sounds like to me
is he could float like a butterfly
and sting like a bee
literal people are scary,
man literal people scare me
out there trying to rid
the world of its poetry
while getting it wrong fundamentally
down at the church of
“look, it sez right here, see!”

A friend recently added a post to his blog about some of his struggles with faith. One of the respondents commented..."To me, it’s not God that’s scary. It’s not religious texts that are scary. It’s humankind’s interpretations and abuses of them that frightens me."

I agree totally. There are many people who take passages of scripture out of context. By use of selective proof-texts you can probably find a Bible passage to back up any position you wish to hold. We've seen plenty of historic examples (including the slave trade in America in the 18th and 19th centuries, Nazism during World War 2, and the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s) of people misusing scripture to support their ungodly ideologies.

As a result, there are many people who scoff at anyone who incorporate scripture as a foundation for their worldview. While their is a danger of misusing scripture to support one's beliefs and actions, there is also a real danger in "throwing the baby out with the bath water" by discounting the Bible all together.

There is Wisdom in the Bible's pages; ancient treasures, lost or ignored, from which we could greatly benefit today.

For me, it is not a question of "do I take the Bible literally?". The challenging question for me is, "Do I take the Bible seriously?"

There are obviously (and some not-so-obvious) biblical texts that use literary devices such as hyperbole, metaphor and analogy. There are also places where the author speaks literally and plainly. The tricky task is to determine which is which.

A trickier task is to take seriously the principles that are clearly taught in the Bible's pages, regardless of the literary devices employed to convey those principles. The trickiest task of all is to incorporate those truths into one's lifestyle and behavior so that we think and act like Jesus--from the way we respond to God, treat fellow human beings or care for the natural world.

So that is my life-quest: to take the teachings of the Bible seriously and learn to think and act like Jesus. After nearly five decades I'm still not very good at it, but maybe I'm at least making progress in the right direction.