What You Can Believe About The Bible
Sunday, April 14, 2024
Dr. Robin McGonigle
April 15, 2024
Robin McGonigle
Riverside Christian Church
April 14, 2024
Riverside Christian Church
April 14, 2024
“What You Can Believe About the Bible”
II Timothy 3:14 – 4:5
II Timothy 3:14 – 4:5
Helen Keller, referring to the Bible in her autobiography, wrote, “There is much to the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end.”
In the 1925 trial in Dayton, Tennessee, sometimes called “the monkey trial,” Clarence Darrow served as attorney for defendant John Scopes, who was charged with violating the state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools. Darrow made the unorthodox decision to call the state’s attorney, William Jennings Bryan, to the stand. Bryan readily agreed, and the exchange between the two was extraordinary.
At one point Darrow asked his star witness the approximate date he believed the Great Flood occurred. Bryan hesitated. Some Christians were claiming it was 2400 B.C.E. Darrow asked Bryan if he knew how that date had been arrived at.
“I never made a calculation,” Bryan responded. “A calculation from what?” Darrow asked. “I could not say.” “From the generations of man?” “I would not want to say,” answered Bryan. “What do you think?” Darrow then asked. “I do not think about things I don’t think about,” Bryan responded. “Do you think about things you do think about?” asked Darrow. “Well, sometimes…” Bryan answered as laughter broke out in the courtroom.
“I never made a calculation,” Bryan responded. “A calculation from what?” Darrow asked. “I could not say.” “From the generations of man?” “I would not want to say,” answered Bryan. “What do you think?” Darrow then asked. “I do not think about things I don’t think about,” Bryan responded. “Do you think about things you do think about?” asked Darrow. “Well, sometimes…” Bryan answered as laughter broke out in the courtroom.
Have you ever had a discussion like this with a Bible-thumper kind of Christian? Has a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon come to your door and you’ve found yourself caught up short in discussing the Bible with them? Do you know why you believe what you believe? Do you have a love/hate relationship with the Bible? Are you frustrated, puzzled, or questioning what to believe about the Bible? Our scripture reading for today tells us about the scripture and how to
read it.
read it.
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have known sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but, having their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own
desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, be sober in everything, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.
desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, be sober in everything, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.
II Tim. 3:14-4:5
Peter Gomes, the Preacher to Harvard University observes “intelligent people seem to know less and less about the Bible, and religious people revere it and will defend it to the death but seldom read it with any industry or imagination.”
One of the problems is that the Bible portrays the God of antiquity as acting in ways that violate both our knowledge and our sensibilities today. If an all-knowing God had really made many of the assumptions that the Bible makes, then this God would be revealed as hopelessly ignorant. Sickness, for example, does not result from sin being punished. Epilepsy and mental illness also are no longer understood to result from demon possession, even though Jesus was
portrayed in the Bible as believing they did. If we are honest, we are required to confront the fact that the Bible has a limited grasp on truth as we know it. No doctor would treat an epileptic child today by ordering the demon out of him or her in the name of God. Yet, that is what is written in the Bible.
portrayed in the Bible as believing they did. If we are honest, we are required to confront the fact that the Bible has a limited grasp on truth as we know it. No doctor would treat an epileptic child today by ordering the demon out of him or her in the name of God. Yet, that is what is written in the Bible.
Another problem we have is that the Bible is much easier to revere than to read it. We take oaths on the Bible, we thank the Gideons for putting Bibles in hotel rooms, we present Bibles as gifts to our friends and relatives, we’ve offered to “swear on a stack of Bibles”, and we discuss what we learned about the Bible. Some have even said that the Bible is a cultural icon. It even has a talismanic quality, with magical, even oracular powers attributed to it. “It’s in the Bible” is the ultimate way to win an argument! No one wants to argue with you if you say that. But how do we take the Bible seriously without taking it literally?
Perhaps that is why fundamentalist and evangelical churches have experienced such phenomenal growth in recent years – the particular emphasis they put on the Bible. What these traditions have in common is the assurance that they know what the Bible says, and are capable of telling the inquirer in such a way as to satisfy every need.
So, what do those of us who are moderates do with the Bible? If we don’t believe in the infallible, unchangeable nature of the Bible, what can we believe about it? Today, we begin a journey together loosely based on Jan Linn’s book “How to be an Open-Minded Christian Without Losing Your Faith”. Jan is a Disciples minister and a popular author. In this book, he helps us see that there are truths we can believe in without claiming to know all the truth there is. There are at least three things Jan Linn suggests we can believe about the Bible (and these are listed in your bulletin):
1. The Bible is the gift of God for the people of God.
2. Authority is an inside job.
3. Inspiration is the breath of God then and now.
The Bible is the gift of God for the people of God. Jan Linn says that we can believe that the Bible is the gift of God for the people of God because Christianity was not founded on the Bible. Christianity came before the New Testament was even written. It was born in and grew from the personal testimonies of those who witnessed the life & work of Jesus. The Bible is a sacred text written by human beings in all their limitations. It contains the word of God without claiming that it is the only word of God. What makes the Bible interesting and compelling is the company of human beings who through its pages play their parts in the drama of the human and the divine. In the sense that Bible stories tell our story, the human story in relationship to the divine, they are true.They are not true because they are in the Bible; they are in the Bible because they are true to the experience of men and women.
Authority is an inside job. Christians need to take the Bible seriously but not literally. Linn suggests that we think about the Biblical story as a 5 act play starting with (1) creation; (2) the coming of sin into the world; (3) stories of Israel; (4) stories of Jesus; (5) stories of people who love & serve the Lord. The last act includes stories of people who were the first Christian converts all the way to Christians today. Our lives and our church’s story are a chapter in the final act. That means that any new insight into the stories the Bible tells are always possible and are not to be seen with suspicion. It’s not just any story, or even our story. It is God’s story we are to tell, and the Bible is the standard by which we can judge the faithfulness of our telling it in our own time and place.
Inspiration is the breath of God then and now. This means that the inspiration of the Bible is not only about something that once happened; it is about something that continues to happen. We don’t have to believe it happened to someone else. We experience the Bible for ourselves in our own lives. Inspiration can be translated as “God’s breath”. The same thing is said about the creation of human beings: “God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” It can be said of human beings that we are the inspiration of God. We make God known, even as we are fallible and imperfect, because God has breathed life into us.
To believe in the inspiration of scripture means, then, that God has breathed life into the words human beings wrote. They don’t have to be perfect or infallible to make the word of God known, even as human beings do not have to be perfect in order to be vessels for making God known in the world. Think of the Bible not so much as the inspired word of God, but an inspired word from God. And so it is not the Bible, but the God of the Bible, in whom we find something worthy of our loyalty, our ultimate concern, and our trust.
Resources Utilized:
Gomes, Peter J. “The Good Book; Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart”.
New York: William Morrow & Company. 1996.
Linn, Jan G. “How to Be an Open-minded Christian without Losing Your
Faith”. St.Louis: Chalice Press. 2002.
Spong, John Shelby. “Why Christianity Must Change or Die”. San
Francisco: Harper. 1998.