"Sins of Scripture"

The Rev. Suzanne Meyer

Jack Bryant is a friend and colleague of mine. Some of you have met him. He was an attorney for 20 years before he became a minister, which may explain his strange sense of humor. A friend of his, from back in the days when he was a lawyer, ran into him one afternoon and invited Jack to join him for lunch one Tuesday to talk about old times. Jack thanked the fellow, but declined the invitation saying, "I'd love to have lunch with you, but my book club meets on Tuesdays at noon and I can't miss it."

The old friend said, "A book club, huh? So what is it that your book club is reading that you just can't miss?"

Jack answered, "Oh, we are reading a book with a lot of political intrigue, philosophy, romance, sex, violence, betrayal, murder, and mayhem. One of those big epics . . ."

"Sounds like a great read," said the other man. "A lot of sex and violence, you say?"

"Oh, yeah," says Jack.

"Must be a best seller, then."

"The Number One best seller."

"Kinda like that Da Vinci Code book, huh?"

"They say that Dan Brown got his ideas for Da Vinci Code from the book we are reading."

"You don't say. Is it fiction or nonfiction?"

"Opinions vary—some say it is history, others call it myth. Some people even think it's a dangerous book. They had to ban it from the public schools."

"Wow, I guess I ought to pick up a copy then! What's the title?"

"They call it the Holy Bible," says Jack with a smile and a wink.

When you think of a book filled with sex and violence, murder and mayhem, political intrigue and betrayal, you probably don't think of the Bible. When you think of a best seller, you probably don't think of the Bible. When you think of a dangerous book, I doubt that the Bible is on your list. And yet the Bible is all of these things, plus the fact that it is a complicated, contradictory, frequently baffling collection of ancient myths, poems, short stories, legends, histories, letters, and laws, all of which were recorded at a time and in a place, in a language very different from ours.

It is a book, rather it is a highly diverse collection of books, a whole library, if you will, that is at one level quite familiar to us, and at another level, quite mysterious. It is familiar because an organization known as The Gideons sees to it that a Bible is placed in virtually every hotel room, hospital room, court room, and jail cell. There is hardly a language on earth into which the Bible has not been translated and made available.

The Bible has even come to the big screen! Movies based on it include: The Ten Commandments, Barabbas, The Robe, Samson and Delilah, David and Bathsheba, and of course The Passion of The Christ. On the Broadway stage you might have seen: Jesus Christ, Superstar, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, and Godspell.

Stories and phrases from the Bible have worked their way into our language and our imaginations. We speak of disasters of Biblical proportion. We say, "He walks on water." "She thinks that she is the Queen of Sheba." "He must have the patience of Job." Or, "It's as old as Methuselah." "It was a David and Goliath struggle." "He's a Judas." "They sure were raising Cain." We are always making references to the Bible in our day-to-day conversation whether we are conscious of the source or not.

Whether you read it for the theology or not, the Bible contains wonderful collections of parables, lessons, poems, characters, and situations that continue to give us great insight into human nature, and into our very human quest to make sense out of the world in which we live, to give it meaning. All that is reason enough to become familiar with the Bible.

And yet, as common as it is, as available as it is, as familiar as it seems to us, this is a book that is still mysterious to most, confusing to many, comforting to others, authoritative to some, and yes, dangerous. As most of you are aware, there is a heated battle waging within the larger Christian community right now over issues that potentially impact us all; issues such as abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, the death penalty, euthanasia, child abuse, the environment, and evolution. Underlying many current controversies within Christian denominations is a radical disagreement about the nature, authority, and use of the Bible. Christians may all claim to share the same Bible and read the same texts, but it is obvious that they don't read and interpret the texts in the same way.

One more interesting thing about the Bible is that it has always been subject to interpretation. Throughout history the faithful have themselves seen fit to emphasize certain parts of the Bible at the expense of others and to interpret the more ambiguous passages in radically different ways. Even those who claim to read the Bible literally are very careful to pick and choose which parts they stress. Passages that seem to mean one thing when lifted out of context, seem to mean something entirely different when read within the whole context of the chapter or book from which they were taken. Clearly the meanings found in the Bible have always been subject to debate, and even dispute, by the faithful themselves.

The Bible is the most influential body of literature in the Western World, no doubt about it. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all share in many of the stories and characters that make up what we generally call the Old Testament, which Jews call the Tannach. The Bible is also, without a doubt, one of the most dangerous influences in the West as well-influential and dangerous, two more reasons why it behooves us as a people of faith to know something about scripture.

While in the history of the Western World, the Bible has been a source of inspiration and moral guidance for countless men and women, it is also true that the Bible has left a trail of pain and suffering. It is undeniable that the Bible is not always used for good. Sometimes the Bible can seem overtly evil. To put it bluntly, some of its texts are terrible, evil, even sinful.

When I speak of the "sins of scripture," or the "terrible texts" of the Bible, I speak of the ways in which the Bible has been used to justify the persecution of Jews, the abuse of women, gay men and lesbians, dark-skinned peoples, the disabled, the poor, and children. The Bible has been cited numerous times to promote wars, witch hunts, inquisitions, executions, slavery, and genocides.

How can one book be so dangerous? According to retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, it is not the book itself that is the danger, but how human beings have regarded it. He explains that the genesis of the problem of understanding the Bible is the way in which people regard the words of the Bible as the "Word of God." There are several nuances to the phrase. It may mean that one believes the Bible to be the Word of God, or that it contains, or reveals, the Word of God. Whichever phrase one chooses to use, it is clear that, if taken literally, it describes every verse of the Bible as the final source of authority for the Christian. It is this assumption that the Bible is in any sense the "Word of God" that has given rise to what can be called the sins of scripture, those terrible texts that have been quoted throughout history to justify behavior that is universally recognized as evil. Some of the terrible texts were terrible when they were spoken. Others, in their historical context, were good, but if followed today are evil.

For example, if the text "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28) is taken as the Word of God today, it would result in a global disaster of overpopulation. In Spong's section on women, we are reminded that if the texts from Genesis 2:18-23 and I Corinthians 11:8-9 were accepted as the Word of God, we would be promoting patriarchy and sexism. With regard to the Bible on homosexuality, if we used the texts from Genesis 19:4-5, Leviticus 18:22, 20:13, and Romans 1:22-27 to justify our homophobia, we "destroy the very essence of what Christians say they believe about a God—the God who is love" (Spong, The Sins of Scripture, p. 126). Three terrible texts from the Bible regarding children are Proverbs 13:24, 22:15 and 23:13-14. They advocate the use of physical abuse by parents as discipline for disobedient children. Anti-Semitism is supported by terrible texts from Matthew 27:23-25, John 8:39,41,44, and Romans 11:7-8. And religious certainty is sought and proclaimed by the terrible texts of Jude 1:3,4, John 14:6 and Matthew 12:30 (John Shelby Spong, The Sins of Scripture, Harper, San Francisco, 2005).

Based on these and other terrible texts of the Bible, and the reality that these scriptures have been used for centuries to justify and defend horrific acts of violence and cruelty, it is easy for many religious liberals, as well as secular people, to suggest that the Bible ought to be discredited, banned, or even destroyed. Why keep such a dangerous book around? Why expose ourselves and our children to these texts of terror? Can't we just make the Bible go away? In twenty five years of church work, I have had more than one conversation with a parent who came to see me angry and upset because his or her child was learning Bible stories in our Sunday School. "I brought my child here to this church because I did not want him to be exposed to the Bible, and here I discover that you Unitarians teach those horrible myths as well!"

The assumptions that those angry parents are making are two fold: one, that a parent can make sure that their child is not exposed to the terrible texts of the Bible; and two, that to teach the stories of the Bible is to always teach them as literal truths imposing upon the scriptures the various doctrines and dogma as that have been applied to these stories.

Just as there are fundamentalists of the Right Wing who believe that the Bible is the literal word of God and must be read and obeyed uncritically, there are fundamentalists of the Left Wing who think that the Bible is dangerous nonsense and should be ignored, if not banned. Neither side has it right in my opinion.

As I have said, you can't avoid the Bible and you shouldn't attempt to keep it away from your children. It is without a doubt the most important literary influence in the Western World. To remain willfully ignorant of the Bible is to remain ignorant of the source of much of Western Culture. Bibles are everywhere, in hotel rooms, libraries, and book stores. You can't avoid the Bible, but you can avoid learning something about it. Ignorance of the Bible does not diminish the power and the influence of the terrible texts, it only increases them. The less we know about the Bible, the easier it is for us to be hurt by it, or rather hurt by those who would use the Bible to justify their very human prejudices and fears. The defense against bad religion is not no religion at all, but rather healthy religion. The defense against ignorance, prejudice, and fear is the light of knowledge and understanding. The best defense against the sins of scripture is scripture itself—intelligently read and understood.

Is it ever possible to study, understand and appreciate the Bible without thinking of it as literally true, or without those doctrinal or creedal overlays that various religions have imposed on the text? Is it possible to read the Bible with critical reason and an unbiased understanding of the religious and historical context in which it was written? Yes, of course it is. And that's why we should read it and study it. There is much good to be found in the Bible, much beauty, insight, and wisdom, as well as a strong emphasis on justice and compassion. We risk losing all that goodness when we attempt to avoid the scriptures in order to avoid encountering those terrible texts.

How then do we teach the Bible in our Sunday schools and Adult Religious Education classes? John Buehrens, Unitarian minister and author of the book Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals, sums up what I think of as our Unitarian relationship to the Bible:

"Or as Emerson said, 'God speaketh, not spake.' We know that religious truth did not appear all in the past. That it did not all get sealed between the covers of the Bible. We are the spiritual beneficiaries and descendents of Renaissance humanists who insisted that the Bible is human literature about the divine, not divine literature about humans, and therefore requires the same critical approach as any other literature. We are the spiritual beneficiaries and descendents of radical reformers who insisted that the scriptures should be available to everyone, so that all might claim their powers of interpretation and understanding." (Buehrens, p. 9)

John Buehrens goes on to say:

"Massive injustice has been and continues to be done in the name of the Bible. But the problem is not simply with or within religion. The problem is that all of us allow the powers and principalities of both secular and spiritual oppression to usurp the spirit of the Bible and use it to legitimize such clear sins as economic and environmental exploitation, racism, sexism, homophobia, and more. Meanwhile the Bible is also about the beauty and goodness of creation itself; about the ancient human struggle for freedom and liberation; about frustration with violence and injustice throughout the generations; and about experiences of exultation, expectation, and inspiration that can sustain the human quest for wisdom, justice and peace. Understood properly, it is also a remarkably honest look at the true religious spirit itself being taken captive, even crucified, by hierarchies of church and state. . . ."

"Those who reject or neglect the Bible fail to recognize that to 'throw the Bible out' because others have turned it into an idol, or because you don't accept what you take to be the conventional understanding of its teachings, doesn't mean that it ever goes away. Rather it simply means that it ends up only in the hands and on the lips of others—often reactionary others—where it can and will be used against you." (John Buehrens, Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals, 2003, Beacon Press, Boston, p. 4)

What do I believe about the Bible? I don't believe that it is the irrefutable Word of God, but I do believe that it is the words of godly men, and perhaps women, who struggled in their own place, time, and culture, as we struggle now, to make sense out of our lives, and to live decently and morally in tumultuous and often confusing times. When we read about their struggles, we gain greater insight into our own spiritual and moral dilemmas, and our own quest for justice. The Bible does not have to be literally true to have value.

And while I don't believe that the Bible is true in the literal sense of that word "true," I know that the Bible discloses truths, reveals important insights about the human soul and spirit. It helps us to see and understand ourselves more clearly—as does any great work of literature, or art for that matter. I do believe that knowing the Bible has great value to us as a people of faith because the stories in the Bible form the great archetypal stories of the Western World. Knowing something about Biblical stories and symbols helps us to communicate with faithful Christians, Jews, and Muslims around issues that impact us all. Among Christians, Jews, and Muslims the stories of the Bible become a kind of lingua franca, common language, that we can use to better understand each other. But most of all, knowing something about the Bible enables us to counter some of those terrible texts.

I also know that the Bible is not a collection of books that you just pick up, open at any chapter, and casually read as you would read a contemporary book, not because it is sacred, or mysterious, or filled with secret, coded messages, but because it is an ancient text from a culture quite different from our own. There is also a very complex socio-political subtext that one must understand in order to decipher some of the meanings behind those terrible texts.

But even among the well-educated, there is often a great level of ignorance or misunderstanding about the Bible. A while ago, a very educated, cultured woman requested that I read her father's favorite scripture passage at his funeral. She cautioned me: "And I want you to be sure and read it in the original version!" I said, "You mean you want me to read it in Hebrew and Greek?" "No," she replied. "Of course not, I mean the King James Version."

I think that there are actually very well read people out there who just assume that the Bible was originally written in Elizabethan English and that those verses sometimes printed in red ink are the actual words of Jesus as written by men who wrote them down as they heard him utter them. Some seem to assume that the chapter headings, punctuation marks, and the numbers that indicate the verses were part of an original version. There are many intelligent people who do not realize that there are various translations and paraphrases of the Bible, some of which are better, or more scholarly than others, and some of which contain obvious biases and presuppositions.

The Bibles which Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews use are characterized by some important differences in addition to their commonality. In fact, there are many people who would claim to be very familiar with the Bible, but their familiarity consists of knowing a handful of common quotations lifted out of context. There are those who can proudly quote chapter and verse, but when asked who wrote that chapter, when was it written, to whom was it written, in what language was it written, and what was the social and political climate at the time it was written, will draw a blank.

To know the Bible and to fully appreciate and understand it, you have to be able to answer these kinds of questions about the text. You have to have some idea of what that text meant to the original authors and then you should ask the question: what, if anything, does that text mean to us today in our own place and time? I believe, finally, that whether you want to believe that every word of the Bible is the literal word of God, or whether you want to dismiss it all as so much folklore, you can't make an intelligent claim in favor of, or against, the scriptures from a position of ignorance. You can't accept it, or reject it, out of hand. Any body of literature that has had so much power over the Western imagination deserves to be treated with respect. Treating it with respect means reading it with our heads as well as our hearts, and using all of the intellectual tools at our disposal.

Like my friend Jack Bryant, you may want to read it with others, even make a book club about the Holy Bible, for in so doing you will discover that it can, indeed, be a pretty juicy read. Amen.