when it comes to the bible, we might be asking the wrong questions

[Spoiler alert:  this post is basically a massive shout out to Rob Bell’s book, What is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems,Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything.  Just amazing.  That said…]

Photo credit: HarperCollins

How many times have I read through a Bible story—or, if I’m being honest, heard or talked about a Bible story, because how many of us actually read it as often as we think we should?—and asked the question, “Well, why did God… [fill in the blank]?”

“Why did God tell those people to kill those other people?

or

Why would God create people if God knew they would screw things up?

or

Why couldn’t God just have skipped the sacrificial system?

or

Why did Jesus have to die—couldn’t God have saved the world some other way?” (from p.293)

Yes, the answer is, many times.  All of these and more.

Perhaps some of us feel like we already have answers to these questions.  I’ve certainly tried giving a few of them before.  Sometimes they even sound legitimate.  But Bell’s response is:  it’s the wrong question.  A horrible question, in fact.  The WORST question. 

“Why is that?” we might ask (rather defensively, in my case).  Well, because the Bible was written by humans—humans who interpreted their intimate, yet evolving, relationship with the Creator of the Universe through very different lenses over a VERY long period of time.  The stories we have now were told by humans, passed down by humans, written, compiled, edited, and canonized by humans.  Jesus himself became human to teach, to clarify, to fulfill, and to save humanity. 

The biggest lesson I took from Bell’s book is that we can only get to the Divine by going through what is human. 

…

Let that rattle your cage for a minute. 

We have no choice but to understand divinity through the human lens.  This is true for us in our own bodies, and it’s true for the writers of Scripture.  While we’re trying to access what is real about God in the Bible, we also encounter what is real about humanity and, not insignificantly, how that informs what we know about God in the first place.    

Perhaps, then (according to Bell) a better question is:  Why on earth would someone write this down?

Why do we have the stories we have in the Bible?

What other pieces of information or nuance are we missing?

How do the revelations, songs, and instructions collected here reflect or challenge the predominant culture of the people writing them, or our cultures now? 

In seminary, we have called this process ‘looking at three different worlds’—

• The world of the text:  what does the story itself say, and not say?  (Here is the time to check your own assumptions about what you ‘already know,’ like that there were three wise men, for example…)
• The world behind the text:  what is the cultural, political, sociological context of what’s being written?
• The world in front of the text:  how does this speak about the human condition in a way that informs how we apply it today?

Asking these questions has opened up a whole new world of understanding for me!  (See what I did there..? ;)

Calling the “Why did God…?” question the worst question may be a bit hyperbolic.  I believe that there is a divine plan being worked out across history, that the Spirit was and is active in the communication of Scripture, and that the characters and writers had very real, very personal relationships with God.  But even their knowledge of who and what God is changed dramatically over time.  The point is:  there are many other valuable questions we can learn to ask about the Bible, even about the stories we may heard all our lives.  And wrestling with them only seems to bring what is real and true and beautiful into a deeper and deeper shalom. 

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” –Matthew 7:7