That We All May Be One

Reading again the opening chapters of Genesis, I wonder how those who claim to read the Bible “literally” and to believe in the “inerrancy” of Holy Scripture do it? The fantastical ages of people like Methusaleh and the co-mingling of divine and human beings producing the giant “Nephilim” warriors. Do they simply “suspend disbelief” and assume that such things happened in those days, but no longer do? I suppose that’s one way to do it. But how much richer to see those ancient Hebrews, wrestling with their “prehistorical” past and borrowing along the way from similar Babylonian stories and myths from tortured geneologies to some primal memory of a flood which destroyed life in the (then) known world.

And even in the New Testament: how much richer to see the author of Matthew’s Gospel, even in the early chapters, beginning to describe Jesus as a “new Moses” figure by having Herod seek to destroy all the children two years old and under, forcing a “flight to Egypt” so that “out of Egypt” God might call his son (Jesus) just as once this same God called his servant Moses from that same land to become his people’s deliverer and law giver. 

I just find this way of reading, and wrestling with, the Bible so much more interesting and fascinating than seeing it as some kind of strange history book or “how to do it” manual for daily living. In fact, it challenges me to take the Bible seriously as the record of one people’s interaction with God down through the centuries. A record which can be a companion to me as I continue to relate to this one God in my life and in the world today.

This entry was posted on January 2, 2012 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Blogroll, Church Life, Ecumenical, Emergent Church, Interfaith, Religion, Scripture, The Episcopal Church, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.