"The Trap of Biblical Literalism"

My title here comes from a post on Liberal Jesus, where some of the thoughts I've had about the Bible were expressed quite beautifully. Matthew writes about his personal journey away from Biblical literalism in a heartfelt, poignant manner that makes me glad to have read it.

Literalism is bad because it requires an all or nothing approach to the Bible. Either ALL of the Bible is literally true, or NONE of it is. The logic, as it was expressed to me just the other day, is that "If the Bible isn't literally true, then we have no proof of anything, and we have no reason to believe anything." While it was this past week that I most recently heard this reasoning, I've heard it many times previously as well.

The biggest logical problem with this statement is the implication that we have "proof" of the Bible's truth, if the entire Bible is literally true. By that reasoning, anything that claims to be true must be true; it's basically the definitive example of circular reasoning.

My biggest problem with the above statement, however, is where it's asserted that without complete literal inerrancy, "we have no reason to believe anything." That makes faith seem so small, so fragile, and it makes me wonder how terrified these people must be of losing their faith. If the slightest bit of rational thought enters into their religion, it will relentlessly destroy everything that they believe in, and so it cannot be allowed. I once saw a church that had a marquee that read, "Open mind, open heart, open soul." A religious woman with me commented, "But isn't having an open mind a bad thing?"

I feel sorry for people who live in that kind of terror, all the while wrapped in a cocoon of denial that they tell themselves is safe and warm. There is nothing to fear from rational thought; there is nothing to fear from education. What should be feared is the stagnant darkness that literalism brings about, the faithful terror of not allowing oneself to think. Matthew, in his post, sums up the other option wonderfully:

You can see the contradictions in the text now, but they don't scare you. They simply point to he beautiful frailty of the real people behind the Bible, a frailty that you see all around you every day. As you change the way you interpret the Bible, you change your theology. You begin ignoring those parts of the Bible that endorse prejudice, or misogyny, or genocide. You allow other voices, like science and your own experience, to inform your understanding of God.

No longer is it necessary to pour over the New Testament, looking for a verse that implies that women should not be treated as the Deuteronomy demands. You can simply accept that Deuteronomy was written at a different time, for a different people. While it may be an important text, it is not a set of cosmic rules handed down from God to tell you how to live. If a Psalm implies the existence of a God that you would consider immoral and horrific, you don't have to tear it apart with rationalizations until you can live with what it's saying. You can know instead that the ancient Hebrew who wrote that Psalm understood God differently, and you can use the Psalm to gain a greater understanding of how the ancients texts were informed by that worldview.

It's liberating, and it's a step forward. Instead of connecting to God primarily through a book and using your mind and soul as mere tools that you may make use of, the book itself becomes a tool as you begin to connect to God primarily through your self.

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