The Bible Is Only The Literal Word of God

If it is true that the road to the future lies in the past, it is also true that when the past has been lost or neglected there is no certain future. ... When the past is lost, as it now is in our Western world, there is nothing left to focus on except the self.

— Robert Webber

This may seem like a strange place to start, but if our goal is to come out from under the limiting lies of our faith, we must recognize that most of those misunderstandings begin in how we view, understand, and interpret the Bible. In fact, the work of removing lies from our faith necessarily involves the Bible. While it is not the only source of truth, it is a source with which we should constantly interact — and let me tell you, we humans have certainly interacted with the Bible! Millions of books have been written about the Bible. Each year, the Bible is the focus of movies, Discovery and History Channel specials, miniseries, debates, conferences, classes, essays, articles, and more sermons than we could ever count.

People who trace their faith to any part of the Judeo-Christian scriptures have literally been arguing about what the scriptures were since before they were even scriptures. In acknowledgment of that reality, let me be clear as to my purpose in confronting this lie. It is not my intention or belief that the argument should cease. The argument — that is, the thoughtful debate over the scriptures and wrestling with the text — is a good and necessary part of our faith whether we identify as Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or none of the above. If anything, the conversation about the Bible should continue to expand — exploring different ideas and hearing from different voices.

It is also necessary to state, without reservation, that it is not my desire to bring low the Bible. Quite to the contrary, I believe that we should pore over the Bible and pour our lives into its story. The collected texts that comprise the Bible convey transformative truths that are applicable to every human life. What actually decreases the power and relevance of the Bible is when we insist it is only one thing — the literal dictates of God. Nevertheless, the point of this chapter will not be to offer the one "correct" view of the Bible and how it should be understood. In truth, I don't accept that there is one right way to understand the Bible. Rather, the point of exposing this lie is to remove the limitations we have placed on the Bible by declaring it to be only the literal word of God. If it were only the literal word of God, there would only be one way to understand it — literally.

My final disclaimer before we begin is to point out that this chapter will represent a 50,000-foot view of the ongoing conversation about the Bible. Were we to really delve into this topic in detail, it would consume this book and many more volumes. The good news is that there are loads of resources on this topic available to us all. There are many thoughtful scholars today, such as N.T. Wright, Ellen Davis, and Peter Enns, writing much more extensively on what the Bible is than I will accomplish in this chapter.

In spite of the summary nature of this chapter, I remember what it was like to have the curtain pulled back on the Bible. I realize that the peeling back of layers and seeming dissection of the Bible can cause anxiety and confusion. Accordingly, I invite you to hold on to these truths and trust that they will remain intact throughout our exploration.

1. The Bible is a gift of God through which God speaks to us.

2. The Bible is full of truth and informs our lives.

3. The Bible is of central importance to our faith.

It is my hope that these truths will provide comfort and peace for our journey. I hope that you will trust that it is not my intention to denigrate the Bible in any way. My hope is that we will loosen our grasp on the Bible and thereby allow it to flourish in our lives and in our world. I have learned the hard way that a tight grip on the Bible — seeing it only as the literal dictates of God — is actually a primary source of its denigration.

Quare Lateres?

One of my first jobs after my wife, Stacy, and I were married was working for my brother-in-law in the home-building business. When I went to work for my brother-in-law, my thought was that we would spend a lot of time wearing ties, sitting in a nice office, looking at blueprints — like Mr. Brady on The Brady Bunch.

I was so wrong.

My brother-in-law had just started out on his own as a custom homebuilder, and I was his first employee. I quickly learned that meant we were going to be doing a lot of the work ourselves — no office, no blueprints, no ties. We were hands-on. And when I say "we," I mean my brother-in-law — he was the skilled one; I was a construction idiot. My job consisted of loading tools, unloading tools, sweeping, cleaning, asking questions, and apologizing for whatever I messed up that day.

One day early in my tenure, my brother-in-law put me with the painters on a remodeling project he had been working. My assignment was to help the painters prepare the interior of the home for painting. That meant we were to move the homeowners' possessions and furniture out of harm's way and tape things off with plastic. I soon found myself in the living room of the home with one of the painters, trying to empty a closet of its contents so that the interior of the closet could be sprayed with paint. The closet was packed full of stuff and — like most closets — had a top shelf where long-forgotten things had been stacked for years.

I am a tall guy. I was able to reach the top shelf and take things down without any problem. The painter I was assisting was much shorter but was not going to be outworked by the construction idiot. As we emptied the closet and only the items on the top shelf remained, he would stand on his tiptoes or jump and reach until he could barely nudge something off the shelf so it would fall and he could catch it. We took a few turns like this. I would reach in and grab something off the top shelf. While I was storing that item safely away from the painting area, he would tiptoe, stretch, and jump to knock something off the top shelf and then catch it as it fell. That was his way of getting things down, and I was not going to question him.

After a few turns, I turned around to see him jumping to nudge a stack of items — trying to get them to fall into his arms. As they fell, the item on the top of the stack caught my eye right before it caught him in the head. I...