The Bible is one of the most revered texts in America. From the chanting Sunday School songs of children, the text’s prominence in our political world, and now a 5 part miniseries sweeping the nation, the legacy of the Bible consumes America.
The B-I-B-L-E
Yes, that’s the book for me
I stand alone on the Word of God
The B-I-B-L-E
However, the legacy of the Bible has not always been so grand. It has often been the basis of “superstitions” or the customs, beliefs, or irrational fears blindly accepted by the readers of the text.
We can all name a variety of these“biblical” beliefs that have fortunately been cast aside by progressive voices within the short time span of America’s existence. Exodus 22:18-20, for example, and its stunning cry “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” or Leviticus 25:44 justifying the purchase and transfer of African people to America, followed by Titus 2:9 instructing the slaves to remain good.
And in the face of such destructive convictions based on the biblical text, I remember Mark Twain’s intuitive words:
When the human race has once acquired a superstition, nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.
Twain was writing in a time wrought with the customs of hate; when people judged other people by the color of their skin and the biblical text served as the justification for society’s subjugation of humanity.
The problem is that our modern answer is usually to reply, “No, that’s not what the Bible really says or means.” We try to explain away the context: softening Paul’s insistence upon women’s silence or the proper role of slaves, dismissing the Hebrew laws as extra trappings Jesus came to end, and insisting Jesus never actually talks about homosexuality at all!
Unfortunately, all we do is pick up the biblical boundary and move it just a little further. Yesterday, it was the women decried as witches, today it is our African-American brothers and sisters once treated as subhuman, and tomorrow it will hopefully be our LGBT peers. But by continuing this cycle, we can only await the time when our next scapegoat will plunge through our biblical superstitions and be given the right of humanity.
Thus, I say it is time for the Bible to die. The Bible, perhaps the biggest superstition of them all in that the book’s authority and gravitas, encoded in the words “but the Bible says,” dictates the course of many, often in destructive ways. Now I’m all about studying the Bible and its authors’ original context, but what is our answer when the original context is wrong for our modern society? What if the Bible “really says” slavery is okay; what if the Bible “really says” witches, homosexuals, sexually promiscuous women deserve to die? What is our answer then?
“Jesus loves me, yes I know,because the Bible tells me so.”
Would we not do better to teach others how to say to the text, “No, you are wrong for me; no, your superstitions must die” in tandem with “Yes, as a text of my religious tradition you have value.”
This week marks the holiest of weeks in the Christian story. We remember the death of Christ upon a cross; a death that crucified many of the world’s beliefs and expectations of God. The day our God died. And I ask, if all men, including God, must die, why not the Bible, composed and guarded by men, each molded from the dust of earth and seed?
We must do better than explaining away the problematic elements of the biblical text, trying to justify the authors’ original context, and all the while minimizing the superstitious and destructive elements contained in the biblical text. Pastors should not justify the text, but rather teach how to use the sacred text in a relevant way, all the while acknowledging at times it may be wrong.
Let the Bible follow the way of Jesus, to death even death on a cross, and in resurrection be renewed for a new time, for a new purpose, for a new people. This is the living word of God.