I had this little realization yesterday that I've been studying Bible in such a way in order to prove that it doesn't suck and is going to piss me off in every way. That is, I've had it in the back of my brain that I've been lied to about it all along, that it's not a perfect tool for rationalizing hateful and divisive behavior, and if we could just learn how to read it properly, we'd be cool.
It's dawning upon me that learning how to read the Bible is just confirming that it really does support the divisive shit better than the justice shit, and that was kind of Jesus' point (well, Jesus by way of the the Jesi that were the creations of the gospel writers) all along. There's this shit that was written down, and then there's people. Err on the side of people. Err on the side of love. Feed my stupid sheep.
Maybe it's that we're Christians in spite of the Bible, not because of.
And maybe it really is time to switch from hermeneutics to theology.
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5 comments:
Take it from someone who HAS read it, well over thirty times, it's cool. You have been lied to about what it says.
Primarily, that it "says" anything. And that it's an It. The Bible's a multiplicity, it's a Them. And an Us at the same time, since we inject ourselves between the lines and margins.
Forgive me if I misunderstood but it would seem you have not read it all. It might be good to wait until you have, to decide what "it" is.
Oh I've read the Bible, in English, Spanish and Greek. And again -- the Bible and the interpretations are multiplicity, there's no One Answer or One Way to Read. Even "The Bible" is plural, so why think it's a single message?
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