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Ask the Thoughtful Pastor: do you believe anything in the Bible is true?

Ask the Thoughtful Pastor: do you believe anything in the Bible is true?

Last updated on: July 5, 2017 at 2:14 pm by Christy Thomas

Ask the Thoughtful Pastor: do you believe anything in the Bible is true? 2017-07-05T14:14:55-05:00 Christy Thomas

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I believe Bible is true. But that doesn’t mean it is historical in the sense that it records verifiable historical events nor does the truth of the Holy Scriptures make those words reliable scientific textbooks.

Ms. Thomas,

Is there any part of the Bible that you DO think is literal? So far you’ve stated that the information in Revelations is not to be taken literally and today the stories of Noah’s building the ark and Jonah are not true. I believe in the New Testament it states that all scripture is inspired by God – 2nd Timothy 3:16. Is this also not real?

How do you decide which part to believe and which part is just fantasy? If a “pastor” – whose supposed mission is to point people to God- doesn’t believe what you’re teaching from, how do you expect anyone else to?

If you can’t support the very source of Christianity, perhaps you would be better to find another line of work.

I fell in love with the Bible when I was 20 years old and spent the last 48 years working to understand it. Out of respect for their God-breathed status, I spent years mastering biblical Hebrew and Greek, earning two advanced degrees in addition to the grounding in Anthropology from Rice University.

Yes, the Bible is true, but the more I know the truth, the less I know

I have learned this: the more I know, the less I know. My confident assurance when I was 20 that I had the all answers about God has slowly matured to healthy self-questioning about our abilities to fully understand a series of writings written in an entirely different time with radically different understandings of how the world works.

The Bible overflows with wondrous words, with stories of an uncivilized group of unruly, uneducated former slaves fighting for their freedom and seeking to create a society based on religious beliefs radically different from those around them.

Their stories offer glimpses of how those wandering tribes, later settled people, sought to make sense of their world. Readers may observe how they justified violence, cruelty to outsiders, unbelievable mistreatment of women.

The beauty of the Psalms teaches us how to pray, to offer thanksgiving, to find sorrow over our sins.

The prophetic writings, both in the Hebrew and Greek portions, call us out for favoring the rich while further oppressing the poor. Those writings, along with the Gospels, display for us the heart of God for the excluded, for the foreigner, for the sick and infirm. They show us what real forgiveness looks like, why grace is so difficult, and the power of real, self-sacrificing love to heal the world.

The Epistles display just how complicated it is to live fully as Jesus-followers and prepare us for the challenges ahead.

The Wisdom writings offer solid grounding for making good moral decisions.

The Bible is true but it is not necessarily historically accurate

I believe Bible is true. But that doesn’t mean it is historical in the sense that it records verifiable historical events nor does the truth of the Holy Scriptures make those words reliable scientific textbooks.

When we impose a 21st century, white, US-centric, primarily male-generated mindset upon the Holy Scriptures, we do violence to the texts. Such an imposition shows a distinct lack of respect for the Bible.

The current emphasis on “inerrancy” or a “literal” interpretation of those holy words would leave the original writers scratching their heads in dismay.

The world was not created in six days, 6000 years ago, but it was created good by a good God.

Whales don’t swallow people, but many of us know the dark night of the soul and the profound heart change of heart that accompanies those painful times.

The story of Noah, one of the most troubling depictions of God in the entire Bible, shows how sin always destroys. We may learn from it that decisions to abandon goodness and light will inevitably and indelibly taint our souls and bring the world down. But it is not a nice children’s story.

All of us get to choose how we will handle the Bible. We can ignore it, cherry-pick it, manipulate it to hurt others or to justify our prejudices, or let it be what it is with an acute awareness that we see through a mirror dimly.

Translator bias is all over the Bible

What many read and say is “inspired” and “inerrant” has massive distance from the original writings, none of which exist today. We have only copies of copies.

Every punctuation mark and paragraph break are editorial choices, added later. Chapter and verse numbers, also added much later, interrupt the flow of thought, making it difficult to capture the original intent.

Chapter headings, inserted in many translations, are nowhere to be found in the authenticated manuscripts. The uninspired translators added them.

If you think that my passionate pursuit to read, to study, to understand the Scriptures as the writers intended and as the original hearers would have understood them is problematic and disqualifying to the pastorate, so be it.

But I suggest that an insistence that the Bible be distorted to read as though it were written to 21st-century readers does not honor those sacred words. Instead, it proclaims that we are too lazy to do the hard work necessary to handle rightly the word of God.

Photo credit: Aaron Burden.

Note: I found it interesting that this questioner addressed me as “Ms. Thomas.” I never demand the use of my earned credentials, i.e.., “The Rev. Dr. . . . ” and actually prefer to be addressed by my first name. However, in this case, the lack of the title may indicate little or no respect for both my ordination and the years of scholarship preceding it. That, of course, is the writer’s privilege and is certainly consistent with the writer’s contention that I should leave my profession.

A version of this column is slated to run in the Denton Record-Chronicle. The Thoughtful Pastor, AKA Christy Thomas, welcomes all questions for the column and would especially like questions your children/grandchildren/students ask. Although the questioner will not be identified, I do need a name and verifiable contact information in case the newspaper editor has need of it. You may use this link to email questions.

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