I feel like lately I have been propagating a very serious error regarding the Bible. I have written a bit about how I believe the Bible is not completely true and how we should not trust in it, but in God. I stand behind everything I’ve said so far, but I have one important caveat.
Why should I be able to take down what God has inspired? Reason and science are great achievements of mankind, but they are only that: achievements of mankind. The Bible was inspired by God! Whether God chose a people and hand-made their history step by step or took an ordinary culture and used it for extraordinary things, both amount to essentially the same thing, don’t they? I feel humbled today, thinking that I could deem to say so much about the Bible without looking at myself first.
The biggest error I’ve made lately is the cultural relativism I’ve subjected the Bible to. Who am I to throw out 39 of the books of the Bible (40 if you count Revalations) and say the remaining 26 or 27 will do? Who am I to take the Bible’s teachings and try to mold them into the cultural expectations of today? If we are going to believe in an absolute truth, why go halfway? Most importantly, who am I in this lost age of chaos to undermine the only reputable source of direction we can find?
Maybe I’ve gotten this way through familiarity. It is certainly Biblical to feel rebellious, and it is socially acceptable to question “common sense”. I feel my attitude has been misdirected. The Bible is not at fault here. People who use the Bible as a curtain to hide their own sins of pride and laziness are the ones at fault. Just as much, the people like me who trivialize the Bible’s place in our society are also to blame.
Here’s to the Bible: God’s word. Whether perfect or imperfect, literal or figurative, complete or partial, God-spoke or God-breathed, the Bible is not outdated or irrelevant or worthless. If we believe Christianity at all, we should treat this book with the respect it deserves. I’ve lately been using God’s word as a footstool, helping me reach other things, but relatively unimportant once I’ve done so. God’s book should be my ladder, which I continually climb, because it is folly to trust in my own understanding. Reason only gets me as far as I am able to use it, and to say I can discern everything is simply self flattery and self deceit.
Finally, here’s to finding the Bible’s place in our lives: somewhere between my view and a fundamentalists, I guess, but ultimately still at the top.
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