How is the Bible useful If I can't take it Literal?

A Sunday Sermon from a lay preacher

It is not necessary that the bible be the inerrant and absolute word of God written by prophets through His inspiration.

Is the main value of the Bible similar to how water wings are valuable to a child learning to swim? Is not a rigid restriction of the use of the Bible to literalism willing one's self to remain in the shallow end of the pool?

... splashing around fearfully in stagnant water - afraid to move into the deeper water of spiritual religion and swimming with God as Jesus swam.

Does not biblical literalism base one's own spiritual life on someone else's magic - that of another human being who is no more authorized to speak for of of God than you or me?

Without wandering into areas of dis-belief or denial of God, has not theological research into the Old and New Testaments reflected an understanding that what was written was the work of mortals endeavoring to express their understanding and perception of God? For example in most theological schools and seminaries a common understanding is that the book of Genesis in its phrased and structural form is in fact a hymn to God and not a literal recitation of the specific acts of God. That is the reason for the repetitive "and it was good" phrasing at the end of each creative act of God.

If we realize that the earliest compilations of scripture - a "bible" if you will - were compiled by human beings who had collected the spiritual writings and were not the prophets who wrote them, we can see that books left out of both the O.T. and N.T. reflect a rejection of writings not in harmony with specific partisan theological priorities.

But the quality of some of those rejected writings is tremendous and nowhere will you find any writing by any of the early fathers that defends what was included and what was excluded without a justification of the growing common orthodoxy.

After having come to love scripture under the controlling tutelage and programming of the fundamentalist church of my younger years, my on-going bible study beyond those early years began to illuminate conflicts in doctrines and other absolutes adamantly proclaimed by that specific church as innerant and divine.

The Protestant Reformation - in which protestors literally yanked the bible from out of Catholicism's controlling hands and read it for themselves - formed alternatives to catholicism founded mostly on the same evolved doctrines that first came into being under the Roman Empire-sponsered catholicism. The reformers insisted on retaining an acceptance of what the mother church had told them the bible was.

These are spiritual, intellectual and academic reasons for my not accepting the bible as an inerrant word of God that somehow survived all the tampering, manipulation and redaction of scripture and somehow came through millenia unscathed.

However, that the bible contains the mind of God as conveyed spiritually through a reading of scripture with a sincere heart and real intent is what matters to me.

That the bible contains the not-to-be-tampered-with and traditional commonly and privately accepted interpretations that brook no deviance is not something I believe.

Nor do I believe God expects me to use the bible in such a limited fashion. How then is the Bible useful? In thousands of non-literal ways such as:

A better way than literal reading ...

"This Book from the first word to the last is the authentic Word of God. All other claims are false!" Ex:34:27: And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.

Seeing this verse in this context was a pleasant surprise for me because in the past I just marched right past it. Pleasant to me because I am understanding that the LORD wants his words written to become a means of communicating the tenor of his words.

Tenor for me means that the written words of God are to be read and understood in context of the spirit of the law more than the letter of the law.

Deut:28:58: If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD;

De:28:61: Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them will the LORD bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed.

The context of Deut 28 is a promise that if Israel is obedient they shall be blessed temporally and spiritually. If disobedient they shall be cursed, smitten and destroyed. The assertion of the idea of fearing God or God's name has resulted in a myriad of literalist constructs that address redefining "fear" in a historical context that equates fear with love toward God.

Whether they admit it or not, those who make that equation depart from absolute literalist interpretation but do so wisely, recognizing that literal translation of words from one ancient language to modern English can be hazardous.

For me then the usefulness of Deut 28:58 lies in understanding the promise of temporal and spiritual blessing rather than the literalist meaning which in reality proposed a God of extortion who says "do things my way or I'll whack you!"

The Isaiah quotes from Chapters 43 - 47 appear to assert for Boanerges that God is The One. Beside God there is no other. God is the author of our existence

I personally think that Job 40 and 41 - which include a rebuking of the attempts by Job's critics' to define Job's religious fallibility - and Proverbs 8: 22-36 are a much more powerful assertion of God as the source than are the Isaiah passages.

Neither the Isaiah verses nor the Job and Proverbs verses assert that God expects a Letter-of-the-Law approach to life.

Luke 8:11 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.

To me this verse is Jesus telling me that whether one reads "word" as scripture or Jesus himself, the essence is that the seed is personal knowledge ... a seed planted by Jesus and/or available to be found for planting from scripture.

The seed/word is a personal knowledge of one's relationship to God and comprehension of how each child of God fits into the scheme of mortal existence. This could be used to define what it means to be born-again as well. Do we not speak of the same thing from two different but ultimately harmonious perceptions?

That personal inner knowledge is vulnerable to being lost - not because some "devil" comes and "steals" something that is thriving within - but because inner knowledge is something not static; something continually responding to the experiences of life.

The inner seed grows and develops according to it's nourishment; a consumption that includes some outward things (temptations to actions and ideas) that Jesus said elsewhere could defile one within.

Rev:22:18-9 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

If one uses this verse to justify an inerrant Bible with correct but inflexible religious formula, then I can only say that I do not read it and reach the same conclusion.

Relating the Revelations quote to the previous Luke quote, this "book of life' is truly a book of life that contains the "seed" which should be planted within. Tampering with the book is severely condemned and in the light of the Bible's containing - as Exodus reads above - the tenor of God's words, most certainly would we hope that over the course of the past 2000 years someone did not alter or change the text in any way.

I disagree with any implication that this Revelations quote forbids me from trying to understand Revelations according to how I understand life. If so forbidden, then most certainly we would have a scriptural source elsewhere in the Bible that explicitly and specifically defines all meanings as the official formula by which any exploration of scripture and doctrine is based.