iscribblesometimes asked a question:

The last post you made is really good, I think that sort of attitude is really important in Christianity. But how do I keep that attitude, and understand that the bible has been interpreted in many ways, while not becoming doubtful of the bible and it’s truth? How do I keep an open mind and still remember that God is unchanging? (I’m not sure if you take asks so don’t feel pressured to answer, just thought I would say what I’ve been thinking for a while that your post reminded me of.)

Hey dear friend, I believe you’re referring to this post.

For reference, I wrote this:

“Because the Bible says so.” Okay, but whose interpretation? Yours? Mine? From the era of the Crusades? When they were burning people at the stake? When it was used to support slavery? What if we have different conclusions? What if we’re both wrong? 

So first off: I got quite a lot of backlash on that post, and I had to take a break from my inbox and from looking at comments and reblogs. I don’t say that out of self-pity (there’s a lot more important stuff happening across the world), but rather to point out that I must’ve hit a nerve. Someone commented something like, “I thought you were one of the good guys.” I mean, I laughed, but I was also a little bummed out by all the judgmental assumptions. Like, can we not ask these questions at all?

I wrote the post originally because a few people confronted me saying things like, “I unfollowed you because I don’t agree with you theologically” (which is fine, everyone has a right to unfollow) or “Your interpretation is off” or “You’re becoming a liberal” (as if liberal is a bad word).

So I asked the questions out of sincere curiosity. How do we get out of this conundrum of your interpretation versus my interpretation? If you say my view is wrong, isn’t that just your opinion of my opinion? Aren’t we all sort of flying blind? And how exactly do we meet in a place where we can intellectually discuss our disagreements if one party already presumes the higher ground? Really, when someone says “I disagree with your theology,” what they’re saying is, I disagree with your interpretation of theology based on my interpretation of theology. So where did that interpretation come from? Trace it back and it’s always from someone else. A person. With a tiny brain like yours and mine. Augustine or Calvin or Nietzsche or Osteen. Some church leader a thousand years ago, or some book written last year, or some preacher guessing at the Bible the best he or she knows how.

Of course, I don’t mean to say the whole thing is unfathomable. Much of the Bible is very plainly spoken and can be taken prima facie, at face value. I also remember in seminary learning that the best way to interpret the Bible is by using the Bible. That sounds like self-defeating circular logic, but it does make sense: for any kind of text in history, whether a play or novel or comic book or mythology, it require an internal consistency with a baseline, on its own terms. The Bible does have these rules, called hermeneutics, and each book within it follows the rules of its own genre, whether poetry, eyewitness account, journal entry, or practical wisdom. So the Bible can be understood, as long as the authorial intent, the time period, and the genre are taken into context.

Yet—even on its own terms, even within context, even knowing all the rules, the content of the Bible can become difficult to comprehend. The Apostle Peter himself writes of Paul’s letters, [Paul’s] letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16). If Peter says this of Paul, we shouldn’t be surprised at all that Scripture can get murky and muddled.

And it’s that second thing that Peter writes, about people distorting the Bible, that always gets me. I’m not always sure how to discover which interpretation is the right one, and some of that is because of my bias that is staining the lens with which I read Scripture. Each of us have so much self-interest that we can use the Bible (and other stuff) to justify any position we want, even under the guise of “the common good” or “your benefit.”

On top of that, multiple competing viewpoints appear to have sound logic backing them. There are a ton of different ways to interpret the Bible, and each interpretation can look as good as the last one. Who’s to say who’s right? Is Moby Dick really about revenge? Did F. Scott Fitzgerald really mean all the symbolism? Is The Planet of the Apes about racism, class warfare, the folly of playing God, all of them, or none of them? How can I trust my senses? Or yours?

So I have two starting points that might help.

Continue reading “Isn’t Everyone’s View of the Bible Just Their Own Opinion? Whose Interpretation Is Right?” →

rattlemymilkbonez asked a question:

How does one deal with pride and self-loathing? I’d say my mood is pretty healthy most of the time, but when someone else points out when I do the wrong thing, I start hurting and feeling angry with myself because I hate making mistakes more than anything. Which seems silly, I guess, since we all fall short of the glory of God.

Hey dear friend, I really wrestle with this, too. I’ve learned over and over that no one naturally does well with accountability and self-confrontation. It’s our natural instinct to preserve an idea about ourselves, to scratch for every justification to believe we are right and good. The only other direction besides pride is, as you said, self-loathing, or self-condemnation and despair, and we seem to fluctuate between these two extremes: pride or despair.

In my hospital chaplaincy education, we actually have an assigned group of five people, and we get together several times a week to talk about how we’re doing and to work on “growing edges.” These are very, very tough conversations. We call each other out. We hold each other accountable. We might say, “So last week I noticed you did this thing that really bothered me. Can you say more about that?”

We have a policy to be curious and not judgmental—but there are always at least one or two people in the group that absolutely cannot handle this process. They flip out or melt down, or in one case, give everyone the middle finger and quit. Even the “well-adjusted” chaplains squirm in their seats and try to deflect and rationalize instead of self-examine.

It’s really, really difficult to confront the truth about yourself because we all have some ugliness inside, and it’s unbearably painful to see the selfishness and emptiness which we so desperately cover. It’s hard to give so much trust to another person who can dig into your heart with a scalpel and reveal that there are real problems inside.

But we also need this. We do need to give our trust to at least one or two people to say, “Please tell me graciously and patiently what I need to work on sometimes.” We need to give permission for people to call us out, or we will never grow, and instead isolate ourselves in an ivory tower of self-reflexive lies.

(And no, that doesn’t mean some random online blogger gets to self-elect to do this to you. I believe that God has placed specific people around you, near you, that are trustworthy and have the right blend of tenderness and tough precision. I can almost guarantee that he or she won’t be some troll or gate-keeper or shrill doctrinal parole officer.)

You see, everyone wants this for everyone else but themselves. That’s why when you listen to a sermon or a TED Talk, you think, “If only my mom could hear this” or “I wish my boyfriend was here.” We’re always thinking of the specks in other peoples’ eyes instead of the plank in our own. We lack so much self-awareness that we also lack the awareness of our own lack of self-awareness.

Continue reading “The Difficult Messy Work of Accountability, Humility, and Confronting Pride” →