And if the verse is simply Paul being out of Paul’s mind, then how is that God’s word?
Notice this verse from 1 Corinthians: “To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord) . . .”3 Here we have Paul writing to a group of Christians, and he wants to make it clear that the next thing he is going to say comes from him, “not the Lord.”
So when a writer of the Bible makes it clear that what he is writing comes straight from him, how is that still the word of God?
Now I think the Bible is the most amazing, beautiful, deep, inspired, engaging collection of writings ever. How is it that this ancient book continues to affect me in ways no other book does?
But sometimes when I hear people quote the Bible, I just want to throw up.
Can I just say that?
Can I get that off my chest?
Sometimes when people are backing up their points and the Bible is used to prove that they are right, everything within me says, “There is no way that’s what God meant by that verse.”
Several hundred years ago people used Bible verses to defend their right to own slaves.
Recently a woman told me that she has the absolute Word of God (the Bible) and that the “opinions of man” don’t mean a thing to her. But this same woman would also tell you that she has a personal relationship with God through Jesus. In fact, she spends a great deal of time telling people they need a personal relationship with God through Jesus. What is interesting to me is that the phrase “personal relationship” isn’t found anywhere in the Bible. Someone made up this phrase and then said you could have one with God. Apparently the “opinions of man” do mean something to her.
I was reading last year in one of the national news magazines about a gathering of the leaders of a massive Christian denomination (literally millions of members worldwide). The reason their annual gathering was in the news was that they had voted to reaffirm their view of the importance of the verse that says a wife’s role is to submit to her husband.
This is a big deal to them.
This is what made news.
This is what they are known for.
What about the verse before that verse?
What about the verse after it?
What about the verse that talks about women having authority over their husbands?4
What about all of the marriages in which this verse has been used to oppress and mistreat women?
It is possible to make the Bible say whatever we want it to, isn’t it?
How is it that the Bible can be so many different things to so many different people?
Nazis, cult leaders, televangelists who promise that God will bless you if you just get out your checkbook, racists, people who oppress minorities and the poor and anyone not like them—they all can find verses in the Bible to back up their agendas.
We have all heard the Bible used in certain ways and found ourselves asking, “Oh God, you couldn’t have meant that, could you?”
Somebody recently told me, “As long as you teach the Bible, I have no problem with you.”
Think about that for a moment.
What that person was really saying is, “As long as you teach my version of the Bible, I’ll have no problem with you.” And the more people insist that they are just taking the Bible for what it says, the more skeptical I get.
Which for me raises one huge question: Is the Bible the best God can do?
With God being so massive and awe-inspiring and full of truth, why is his book capable of so much confusion?
Why did God do it this way?
Where does one go in trying to make sense of what the Bible even is, let alone what it says?
For me, clarity has begun to emerge when I’ve begun to understand what Jesus believed about the scriptures.
Let’s start with a straightforward verse from the book of Leviticus: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”5
Could there be a more basic verse? “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Who could possibly have any sort of problem with this verse?
And how could someone mess this up?
What could be complicated about loving your neighbor?
Even people who don’t believe in God and don’t read the Bible would say that loving your neighbor is a good thing to do.
A couple of questions this verse raises: How do we live this verse out? What does it mean to love? What isn’t love? Who decides what is love and what isn’t love?
And what about your neighbor? Who is your neighbor? Is your neighbor only the person next door, or is it anyone you have contact with? Or is it every single human being on the face of the planet?
And what happens if one person’s definition of love and another person’s definition differ? Who is right? Who is wrong? Who decides who is right and who is wrong? Who decides if whoever decided made the right decision?
So even a verse as basic as this raises more questions than it answers.
In order to live it out and not just talk about it, someone somewhere has to make decisions about this verse. Someone has to decide what it actually looks like to put flesh and blood on this command.
And that’s because the Bible is open-ended.
It has to be interpreted. And if it isn’t interpreted, then it can’t be put into action. So if we are serious about following God, then we have to interpret the Bible. It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says. We must first make decisions about what it means at this time, in this place, for these people.
Here’s another example from the Torah (the Jewish name for the first five books of the Bible): “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”6 The next verses command the people to do no work on this Sabbath day; they then explain the command by saying that God rested on the seventh day after creating the world in the first six days.
You can already see the questions this verse raises: Who defines work? Who defines rest? What if work to one person is rest to another? What if rest to one person is work to another? And what does it mean to make a day holy? How do you know if you’ve kept something holy? How would you know if you hadn’t?
Once again, the Bible is open-ended. It has to be interpreted.
Somebody has to decide what it means to love your neighbor, and somebody has to decide what it means to observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Rabbis
Now the ancient rabbis understood that the Bible is open-ended and has to be interpreted. And they understood that their role in the community was to study and meditate and discuss and pray and then make those decisions. Rabbis are like interpreters, helping people understand what God is saying to them through the text and what it means to live out the text.
Take for example the Sabbath command in Exodus. A rabbi would essentially put actions in two categories: things the rabbi permitted on the Sabbath and things the rabbi forbade on the Sabbath. The rabbi was driven by a desire to get as close as possible to what God originally intended in the command at hand. One rabbi might say that you could walk so far on the Sabbath, but if you went farther, that would be work and you would be violating