Episode 247: Jared Byas - What It Means to Take the Bible Literally
What do people mean when they say they take the Bible literally? In this episode of The Bible for Normal People, Jared breaks down how words in this common phrase are overworked and underpaid, how it functions as a cultural password, and how we can approach the text with intellectual honesty by reading the Bible literally. Join Jared as he explores the following questions:
What does it mean that some words are overworked and underpaid?
How does the phrase “I read the Bible literally” function as a password for the culture of fundamentalist evangelicalism?
What are some of the underlying assumptions people make when they say they read the Bible literally?
What assumptions get packed into the words “The Bible”?
What assumptions get packed into the word “literally”?
How can reading the Bible literarily, rather than literally, give us a healthier or even more honest connection with the text?
What kind of practical tips does Jared have for moving away from “taking the Bible literally”?
Tweetables
Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
In my tradition growing up, when someone said they take the Bible literally, they assumed that the Bible is one thing and speaks unanimously on every subject. — @jbyas
The phrase "I read the Bible literally" assumes there is one consistent message, and that we are to read it in one way. — @jbyas
When people say they read the Bible literally, they often mean that they believe one purpose of the Bible is to provide us a historically and scientifically accurate account of the world and its history. — @jbyas
I don't believe the Bible gives us rules for how God wants us to live today. Nor is the Bible a promissory note from God to us about what we can expect from God in some contractual way. — @jbyas
When people say they read the Bible literally, they often mean that they read the Bible assuming that passages should not be taken as metaphor or parable for something else, except when it's obvious to that person or their tradition. — @jbyas
For me, reading the Bible on its own terms is not about taking the Bible literally, but taking the Bible literarily. — @jbyas
When I say I take the Bible literarily, I mean that I try to read it the way it was intended to be read. Of course, I don't always do that, but that's what I strive for—instead of imposing my own standards of reading and calling that taking the Bible literally. — @jbyas
“Reading the Bible literally” often means the most faithful way to read the Bible is to privilege the most supernatural reading. — @jbyas
When someone says they read the Bible literally, part of their meaning is likely that they believe the Bible's language and meaning is usually quite clear to us as English speaking Westerners. — @jbyas
Saying “I read the Bible literally” has lost meaning. It's a litmus test to determine who is in the fundamentalist evangelical subculture and who is out. — @jbyas
Because I have a more nuanced view of the Bible, I try very hard not to demonize or judge those who read it differently. I understand how we can have tens of thousands of different denominations who read it differently. — @jbyas
Instead of assuming the Bible is one thing, I read the Bible as a diverse set of voices using a diverse number of literary devices to share diverse experiences of God. — @jbyas
Mentioned in This Episode
May Class: The History of Biblical Interpretation taught by Pete Enns
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Pete
You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns.
Jared
And I'm Jared Byas.
Intro
[Intro music begins]
Pete
Hey folks, it’s me Pete, and this is the last call to sign up for our May class, “The History of Biblical Interpretation” taught by yours truly. And it’s happening May 31st from 8-9:30pm ET, and we’ll be live for one night only. Now it’s pay what you can, as all our classes are, but that’s only until the class ends and it costs $25 to download. Now if you want access to this class AND all our past and future classes, you can get that for $12/month through our community called The Society of Normal People. Now for more information and to sign up for the class, go to www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/interpretation.
Jared
Today on this episode of the Bible for Normal People, we’re going to put this phrase “I take the Bible literally” under the microscope. And what we’ll discover is this phrase has been overworked and underpaid. It means so much and because of that, it means so little. In fact, I would argue that in some circles, it has become a way to articulate an entire set of beliefs while only using five little words. But that can be confusing if someone doesn’t come from that particular circle, because there are just so many different things this phrase can mean. Of course, I’m using this phrase “I take the Bible literally” or “I read the Bible literally” as a window into those two questions that we ask here at The Bible for Normal People: what is the Bible? and What do we do with it? So let’s dive in.
Jared
[Teaser clip of Jared talking plays over music] “People who say they read the Bible literally do, in fact, usually take the Bible seriously. I would only argue that they assume to take the Bible seriously means that they must read it as historically and scientifically inerrant, as contemporaneously moral, as minimally metaphorical, as maximally supernatural and as obviously clear. That is, to read the Bible seriously, is to read it with all these other assumptions.”
Intro
[Intro music ends] [Transition music signals beginning of episode]
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Jared
Let's zoom out and just talk about how words work. We talked about this a little in Episode 223, which was Misconceptions about Deconstruction and the Bible. Over the years, scholars have noticed that some words are overworked and underpaid and when both of those things happen, it can be very confusing for people who aren't on the inside. What do I mean? Two things that are relevant for our episode today. When I say that words are overworked, I mean that words can be very flexible, and can mean so many things. Have you ever thought about just how much work a word can do? We can stuff so much into them. For example, over the past few years, my sons have gotten into a game called Magic the Gathering. How the 1990 version of my parents would be so disappointed in their grandsons dabbling in the occult and Satanism. Of course, in 2023, my mom is probably sitting at home right now practicing so she can play with the grandkids when she comes to visit. Where was this version of my mom when Harry Potter came out? Alright, that's just a digression.
My point is, in Magic the Gathering, there are some cards that are so good that it breaks the normal rhythms and expectations of the game. And apparently Magic players call these cards "broken." Usually, these broken cards are made illegal only a few months after they come out, after the governing body of the game—yes, that's a real thing in Magic—catches on that players have figured out how to exploit it. That is, once a few nerdy folks have figured out how to break the game using the card, they will make that card illegal. It's a slightly technical term because it does break the game for other players, it doesn't fit into the system of rules. But over the last year, my older sons have started to use this term "broken" to refer to a couple of really good cards. So, what is seen as a negative thing in the context of the overall game becomes really good for your own game—if you have a card that's broken, that means you've got a really good card that will make it hard for other players to beat you.
Now, for my oldest two sons, they would say there are only a handful of cards that fit the description “broken.” It's not just that they're really good, it's that they're so good, they get a category all on their own. But my eight-year-old doesn't understand that nuance, and so for him "broken" has become a way to talk about any good card in Magic. I've probably heard that a card is broken a hundred times just this past month alone. And for all of them, they've started to use this word broken for anything really good. So a basketball player could be so good that he's broken. Certain characters in video games are broken. Like I said, words are like Mary Poppins’s bag, you can stuff way more in them than you think.
So when I say that some words or phrases are overworked, I mean that words have different shades of meaning depending on the context and depending on who is hearing them. So for me, an outsider to the group and the culture and the language of Magic The Gathering, being broken is not a good thing, and it means that something needs to be fixed. That's usually what we mean by broken. But for my older boys, the most inside the group culture and language of Magic: The Gathering, being broken can be a good thing when it's used more generically to refer to something that's the best of something. But it can be bad when it's used in the specific context of Magic cards. A truly broken card isn't good for the game overall. And then again, for my youngest son, being broken is always a good thing. It's just a synonym he uses now for really good.
Now a simpler example of all this, of course, is how in the 80s, the word "bad" became a way to say something was good. By the way, that's called a contranym—when a word comes to mean its opposite depending on the context. So words can be so overworked that they can even mean opposite things. Okay, so that's the larger context of how words can be overworked. Words are inherently slippery. Their meanings change over time, and they even change within certain contexts at the same time. Within the context of American Christianity, the fact that words are overworked can be a problem, it can be a real problem. It can lead to a lack of clarity which can lead to hurt, unmet expectations, and confusion.
For example, let's think about the word "welcoming." In the broader culture, being a welcoming church, we might assume, would be to say that everyone is welcome, no matter what, you're welcome. But within fundamentalist evangelicalism, it doesn't mean that. In the early 2000s, evangelical churches wanted to be welcoming to everyone, but also wanted to hold to the belief that being gay is a sin. So instead of the labels being "welcoming" and "unwelcoming," they started to introduce the word "affirming" into the mix. So, welcoming no longer meant everyone is welcome just as they are. But it came to mean "everyone is welcome, as long as we understand that sin is still sin, we believe being LGBTQ is sinful, and therefore you can come, but to be married, to be a member or to be in ministry, you'd have to stop being Queer."
That's a lot of nuance packed into that one word: welcoming. But what it allowed was that the opposite of welcoming was no longer unwelcoming, but affirming. That way, churches could be welcoming, but not affirming. "We welcome gay folks, but we don't affirm them." What a nuance. And that nuance has led to a lot of pain and confusion for so many of my Queer friends. They thought welcoming meant they were welcome to participate, just as they were, in membership, in ministry, and in marriage. But it turns out, mostly it meant church leaders were more than happy to use their free labor, take their money, and have them attend services. But they were not welcome to become members, lead in ministry, or get married. But for that context, that's not being unwelcoming. That's just not being affirming. What a mess.
So, we've established that words are overworked and that can lead to confusion. But the other thing I've noticed is that sometimes words are underpaid. What do I mean by that? I mean that you can use only one word, and it can represent so much. It could represent an entire culture, it can be shorthand for a lot of things. A simple example of this—for those of you who are into the Enneagram—is an Enneagram number. If someone says “I'm a seven”, you immediately could write an entire book about what that means. In fact, there actually are several books already written about what that means. All from those three words, “I’m a seven.” Those three words aren't getting paid enough to carry all that freight. It's a shorthand way to tell someone who's in the Enneagram club a lot about your personality, your fears, your hopes. It's a way to trigger all of the research and reading they've already done and bring it to the surface in a very short amount of words.
More specifically for what we're going to talk about today, which is the phrase "I take the Bible literally," words or phrases can be used as passwords into a culture. They can be subtle ways of letting others know that we're a part of the group. Or they can tip us off to the fact that people are a part of another group. If you're really into a hobby, I'm sure you could come up with your own examples of how a phrase can be used as a password into that hobby's culture. There are ways of determining those who are in from those who are out. In season two of Ted Lasso there's this episode where Beard—he's the assistant coach—takes three blue collar guys to a swanky upscale bar, where they play pool with three Oxford snobs. And the snobs immediately get the sense that these three blue collar guys don't belong, because they don't know what trigonometry is, actually. But since they're in this upscale bar, the snobs are still not quite sure, they're getting mixed messages. Beard saves the day by coming in and using a series of passwords, these signals to the snobs that they actually do belong. So he introduces himself as a former Oxford professor. That's password number one. They're still not convinced. So they asked him what college he was at in Oxford, he tells them. Password number two. Then they asked him where he lived. He tells them, password number three, and at this point, they're satisfied. These guys do belong, so it turns out.
Or another quick example in the subculture of sneakerheads, right, people who really are obsessed with sneakers and knowing everything they can about them, buying, selling, trading, understanding. There are certain things every sneakerhead must know, or they aren't "true sneaker heads," right? I'm not a true sneakerhead, even though I have loved sneakers since I was a kid. So, I'm not sure I would pass the test. But if someone asks if your Jordan ones are deadstock, they use that word, "deadstock." And you don't know what that means you're probably not getting in the club.
Now, if we think about this again in the context of American Christianity, we see this same thing happening. There are certain passwords, certain words that act as passwords into certain Christian subcultures. And this is where we get our phrase for today: "I read the Bible literally." This is a phrase that is both overworked and underpaid, that is to say, it means a lot of different things. And it's used as a sort of password for fundamentalist evangelicalism. It tells other people you belong to the club. It's a phrase that I hear so much in Christian conversations and debates about the Bible. It's a phrase that I myself would have used for the first 20 years of my life. It's a phrase that has so much stuffed into it, that it's hard to know at this point exactly what it means. It's a phrase that people say is very clear, but it feels very ambiguous to me. So for the rest of this episode, I want to unpack that phrase, and it's broken down into two parts.
In part one, I'm going to talk about all the different ways my tradition growing up used the phrase “I read the Bible literally.” I think that's important, because if you aren't part of a fundamentalist evangelical culture, it can be hard to pick up on everything that gets packed into that phrase. And it can be confusing when you might agree with one or two or three of the meanings, but when they all get lumped into one cultural assumption. And then in a very brief part two, I'm going to give a few final thoughts on how I read the Bible differently than these meanings under the umbrella of reading the Bible literally.
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Jared
What do people mean when they say they take the Bible literally? Let's break down part one itself into two parts. First, let's look at the noun. When they say they take the Bible literally, what gets packed into "the Bible?" Then we'll look at the adverb "literally." In my tradition growing up, when someone said they take the Bible literally, they assumed that the Bible is one thing and speaks unanimously on every subject. I wanted to start here because it highlights one of the real problems with saying that we read the Bible literally. And that is the Bible isn't one thing. If nothing else, that fact right there should warrant us never saying that we take the Bible literally again. The assumption behind the phrase is that there is a "The Bible" and that the whole thing should be taken literally. But in reality, it's an anthology of 66 different books if you're Protestant, 73 books if you're Catholic, 74 books if you're Coptic, 81 books if you're Ethiopian-Orthodox. You get the point. And that anthology contains different strands of traditions weaved into the narratives and texts.
When someone says they read the Bible literally, it's likely that they mean that they believe the Bible speaks with one voice. That means it has one consistent message throughout. And then unintentionally, they mean it's to be read in one way, which of course no one does. Not even the people who say they read the Bible literally. I think that's an important foundation to remember as we go through the rest of the episode. Because that root, the phrase "I read the Bible literally" assumes there is one consistent message, and that we are to read it in one way. But importantly, that's not all that the phrase assumes or means when used within fundamentalist evangelicalism, or other Christian traditions.
So let's move on from the noun, the Bible, and unpack what this phrase often means when we look at the adverb literally. In what ways is that one word, literally, overworked and underpaid? Now, bear with me, because I actually have six different meanings that are most often assumed and packed into this one word in the phrase “I read the Bible literally.”
Meaning number one: I read the Bible as historically and scientifically inerrant. When I said that I took the Bible literally, this is the most prominent thing I meant, and I still hear it coming through when others say it. Ironically, this is, of course, not what the phrase "I read the Bible literally" literally means, but it is one of these additional meanings that we've packed in. What they mean when this is said is that they believe that the point of the Bible is to give us a historically and scientifically accurate account of the world and its history. And usually, it also means that the Bible delivers on that purpose and is in fact, inerrant. Now, I'm not going to dig into this meaning for long since we've talked extensively on this podcast about why we do not believe it's fair to the Bible or to those of us reading it to take the Bible literally in this way, meaning, inerrantly.
For instance, why do we assume that a story about a talking snake is trying to tell us historically accurate information? If we picked up a story right now, and in the first two pages, there was a talking snake, I don't think we'd automatically assume that it’s trying to tell us how the world began in any scientifically accurate way. And of course, we'll get into this more in a minute. But there are plenty of places in the Bible where it's obvious that we should not read it as historically accurate. For instance, when Jesus asks "why someone looks at a speck of dust in their brother's eye, rather than the plank in their own," is Jesus telling us a historical account of someone who had a piece of wood sticking out of their eye? I don't know of any scholar or any person who thinks so.
Of course, let's not swing the pendulum too far the other way and say that none of the Bible is trying to provide historically accurate accounts of the world. For instance, many parts of Samuel and Kings seem to be trying to do just that—and not to get too into the weeds—but we would also need to ask the question: What do we mean by historically accurate? Because historically accurate in the ancient world would look very different than historically accurate today.
So, all that to say, when people say they read the Bible literally, they often mean that they believe one purpose of the Bible is to provide us a historically and scientifically accurate account of the world and its history. And they believe the Bible is inerrant on both accounts. But the Bible is trying to do too many different things, using too many different genres in an ancient way, to be able to say either of those things about the Bible. But that's not all people mean when they say they read the Bible literally.
So let's move on to meaning number two: I read the Bible as contemporaneously moral. In other words, when someone says they read the Bible literally, that's not just a code word for inerrancy. It's also a code word for believing that the other purpose of the Bible is to communicate to us today what God promises to us and expects from us. And if that's a main purpose of the Bible, we should read it actively looking for the promises, expectations, and moral imperatives of the Bible. Because they tell us what God wants from us, and what we can expect from God today.
That is, when people say they read the Bible literally, they often mean that they believe the Bible will give us what God wants from us and what we can expect from God. And I say it that way on purpose, because it does cut both ways. On the one hand, in my charismatic tradition growing up, taking the Bible literally meant that we could invoke the promises that God made to the Israelites, as though they were made to us as a sort of incantation or magical spell. It was almost a way to back God into a corner. God could either fulfill the promise God made to me in the Bible, or God would be a liar. And on the other hand, in my Southern Baptist tradition growing up, taking the Bible literally meant that we had to obey the rules for living that God was giving us in the Bible. In other words, taking the Bible literally meant reading it as a moral handbook. That the Bible was the "B-I-B-L-E," the "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth." Of course, that's ironic, again, because reading the Bible literally does not imply any of those things literally. And yet, that is what it has come to mean in a lot of fundamentalist Christian traditions.
I point these things out because sometimes I don't think people are aware that they are overworking and underpaying this phrase. They're often so steeped in a subculture, they may not realize how much work they're asking one little phrase to do. And when we aren't aware of what we're doing, we might be using the phrase in a way that's causing hurt and confusion to people who don't understand the shorthand. They didn't get the password. And it can often feel like they're on the outside of the community without even knowing why.
Again, we've talked about this many times on the podcast, but I don't believe the Bible gives us rules for how God wants us to live today. Nor is the Bible a promissory note from God to us about what we can expect from God in some contractual way. So, in that case, I do not read the Bible literally.
Meaning number three: I read the Bible minimally metaphorically. That is to say, when people say they read the Bible literally, they often mean that they read the Bible assuming that passages should not be taken as metaphor or parable for something else, except when it's obvious to that person or their tradition. It's important to say that this is likely where we even get the phrase “I read the Bible literally” from. This particular meaning. It's a reaction to how scientific discoveries began impacting biblical interpretation in the modern period, especially in the early 20th century. As evolution became mainstream, archaeology came into its own as a field and as the scientific method replaced the Bible and tradition as the source for natural knowledge about the world, Christian scholars and pastors needed a way to make room for both. So it was common in theological circles in the West to try and reconcile science with religion by saying that the Bible was to be taken symbolically, metaphorically, and spiritually. Not just parts of the Bible, but the entire Bible.
So when it turns out that there is very little archaeological evidence for the conquest, as it's described in the book of Joshua, scholars in the early 20th century would commonly pivot their interpretation away from reading Joshua "literally," and would discuss Joshua as myth and try to talk about the Christian principles and values that can be gleaned from the book, and then try to show why that is the true or intended way to interpret the book.
Of course, certain Christian traditions—most notably, fundamentalist evangelicalism—did not go this route. They did not pivot away from reading Joshua as history writing, even in the face of the archaeological record. They would reinterpret the archaeological evidence to bolster their view of Joshua as inerrant history writing. So they went the other direction, or to use our phrase, they would "read the Bible literally." And so over the past 100 years, this phrase “I read the Bible literally” has come to represent a very specific reading strategy. Reading things in the Bible as myth, metaphor, or parable would be a way to give into secular culture. So we only take things as metaphor or parable when it's obvious—by which they mean obvious to me and my tradition—but of course, they don't usually add that last part.
So when we read Jesus's parables, those are quite obviously parable. So it's okay not to read those literally. To say that you read the Bible literally, doesn't mean you read all of the Bible literally. It means you read whatever you can read literally, reserving metaphor, myth, and parable to what seems obvious. Now, this becomes problematic, because there are parts of the Bible that do seem to be mythical and symbolic, but aren't as obvious as, say, Jesus's parables. As we talked about earlier, having a talking snake in a story about the first humans, that very much resembles the story of Israel—the main characters get put into a luscious land, given a commandment, they break the commandment, and then they're sent to exile, sounds very much like the story of Israel—it seems very much to point to myth. That's not because scholars buy into evolution as a better explanation of human origins. That's just literary criticism. That's what the text itself points to. But this meaning that we're talking about, of “I read the Bible literally,” can't often see past its own reactivity. They won't let the Bible be what it is because reading the Bible literally requires that they don't give into anything that "modern liberal theology" says about these passages.
For me, reading the Bible on its own terms is not about taking the Bible literally, but taking the Bible literarily. That is, I want to take the Bible literally when it seems to be trying to say something literally. Even if that means ultimately I'll disagree with it—and on this point, I might be contrary to those early 20th century modern liberal theologians. And I want to take the Bible as a symbol, metaphor, and parable, when it seems to be trying to say something symbolically, metaphorically or as a parable. And again, this pits me against some fundamentalist evangelical interpreters. For me, the phrase reading the Bible literally is a way of saying what the Bible must be to fit into a certain Christian subculture. Reading the Bible literarily is a way of saying that I want to read the Bible in whatever ways it wants me to read it. And I'll deal with the implications of that after the fact.
So, to be fair, when people say they read the Bible literally, they do not mean they read the Bible woodenly. No one reads all of the Bible literally. I mean, when Jesus tells us about the shepherd who goes after the one sheep instead of staying with the 99, people who quote, "read the Bible literally," do not read that story literally. And that's a good thing, because it shouldn't be read literally. In other words, when someone says they take the Bible literally, they don't mean that literally. What they often mean is that they read the Bible by taking the clues from their particular tradition on how to read it. If their pastor tells them to read the parable of Jesus non-literally, then they read it non literally. And then they'll say, "Well, that's obvious." But when they read Genesis 1-3 as history, even though it has a talking snake, somehow that's supposed to be obvious too. But again, I think it's better to read the Bible literarily. Not literally. What I mean again, is that we have to read it as a text with all that comes with texts like genre context, social historical location, rhetorical devices, etc. When I say I take the Bible literarily, I mean that I try to read it the way it was intended to be read, of course, I don't always do that. But that's what I strive for, instead of imposing my own standards of reading and calling that taking the Bible literally.
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Jared
This ties directly into meaning number four. I hope you followed all of that. There was a lot of literals and literarilys being thrown around. But meaning number four is: I read the Bible maximally supernatural. This is a cousin to reading the Bible minimally metaphorically, which means only when we absolutely have to in our tradition, or our leaders tell us to.
In meaning number four, reading the Bible literally often means the most faithful way to read the Bible is to privilege the most supernatural reading. When people say they take the Bible literally, they also often mean that any evidence of the supernatural is very important. So the most supernatural reading is the preferred reading. This is again, a reaction to the anti-supernatural readings of the Bible that had become more popular in the early 20th century.
So for instance, I remember as a kid believing that when God split the sea in Exodus for the Israelites to escape, it was a supernatural hand. I vividly remember thinking of it as a hand, two hands that came down and pushed apart the Red Sea to create the dry land. So then you can understand my surprise as a teenager reading Exodus 14 when I discovered that the text actually says it was a strong East wind that came and split the sea and created the dry land. And when I mentioned this to someone, I was told that explaining away the miracle by saying it was a natural cause, like a strong east wind was something liberals do to discredit the Bible, which was really awkward, because that's in the Bible.
Or for another example, explaining that maybe the author of Jonah didn't intend for us to read it as a historical account because of the way the story is structured, is often dismissed as anti-miracle as the will, the only reason someone could come to the conclusion that we aren't intended to read it as a historical account is because they don't believe in miracles, or they don't believe in God. So this fourth meaning is that the most faithful way to read the Bible is to privilege the most supernatural reading, regardless of what the clues in the text point us to.
And that leads us to a fifth meaning that people often have when they say they read the Bible literally. And that is: I read the Bible as obviously clear. When someone says they read the Bible literally, part of their meaning is likely that they believe the Bible's language and meaning is usually quite clear to us as English speaking Westerners. So if we doubt that clarity, it must be because we don't like what the Bible is saying and we want to avoid doing what it says. I got a lot of this when I was in college, and in my early 20s, when I would explain that things in the Bible are more complicated than I was taught, I would often get the response that I'm overcomplicating it on purpose, because I didn't like what it was saying, and was trying to find ways around obeying what it clearly said, I just wanted to sin. For example, when the Bible says the word marriage in English, taking the Bible literally would often mean taking that at face value, as though marriage in the ancient Near East meant the same thing as marriage today. And if you question that the word marriage means anything other than what we mean today—and by that I mean, a heterosexual couple that fell in love in the modern way, starts a family, etc—then you're overcomplicating things. Nevermind, again, the reality that marriage looked vastly different in the ancient Near East than it does today. So that's meaning number five—usually we sneak in the idea that "I read the Bible as though it is obviously clear."
And lastly—and this is important—the meaning that gets shoved into “I take the Bible literally” is this meaning number six: I read the Bible seriously, and it's an important part of my faith. This is probably the one that undergirds all the rest. People who say they read the Bible literally do in fact, usually take the Bible seriously. I would only argue that they assume to “take the Bible seriously” means that they must read it as historically and scientifically inerrant, that they must read it as contemporaneously moral, that they must read it as minimally metaphorical as maximally supernatural, and as obviously clear. That is to read the Bible seriously, is to read it with all these other assumptions.
But if there's one thing I've learned in my Christian journey over the past 20 years, it's that I can take the Bible very seriously, without taking any of those other meanings. At the Bible for Normal People, we read the Bible seriously, and it still is an important part of our faith. We read the Bible seriously, and literarily, but we do not read it literally in the other five ways that I've articulated today. With all this confusion, perhaps then we should do away with the idea altogether, and simply be more specific about our reading strategy.
I think saying “I read the Bible literally” has lost meaning. We have tried to shove too many meanings into it. At this point, I think its only real purpose is to be that password that we started with at the beginning. It's a litmus test to determine who is in the fundamentalist evangelical subculture and who is out. It's used mostly as a way to justify ourselves and to judge others. And when a phrase takes that as its primary purpose, I think it's time to do away with it.
As my faith transitioned away from fundamentalist evangelicalism over the past 20 years, the most painful part was being told by friends, colleagues, pastors, people I looked up to and respected that I had made a joke of the Bible, that I had rejected it and no longer took it seriously. It was confusing, and it was hurtful because it was precisely my obsession with the Bible, it was my painstaking study of the Bible, it was the months and years I had spent learning Greek and Hebrew, the hours of memorizing large portions, the thousands of dollars I had spent on college and seminary that had led me to this point, and then to look up and be told by my community that my seriousness took me out of bounds. It was lonely and hurtful.
All of these meanings have one thing in common, they often do not question their own context or reading strategy. They assume that they have the universal, absolute true method of Bible reading. And as such, the only way someone can read the Bible differently, is because they're ignorant or evil. They're either very dumb and can't grasp even what's obvious, or they do understand and purposely overcomplicate it so that they can sin, ignorant or evil. But because I still insist on taking the Bible seriously, I have come to a more nuanced view of the Bible. And to be clear, because I have a more nuanced view of the Bible, I try very hard not to demonize or judge those who read it differently. I understand how we can have tens of thousands of different denominations who read it differently. Given how diverse it is, that makes sense.
But I want to end with a few final thoughts of how I read the Bible now, differently than these other meanings under the umbrella of reading the Bible "literally." And as I've said, these can all fall under the umbrella that I take the Bible seriously and read it literarily, not literally. So what does it mean for me? Instead of assuming the Bible is one thing, I read the Bible as a diverse set of voices using a diverse number of literary devices to share diverse experiences of God. Instead of reading the Bible as inerrant, I read the Bible as one way among others to grapple with the truth about the relationship between God and what it means to be human. Instead of reading the Bible is contemporaneously moral, I read the Bible as an opportunity to gain wisdom. Instead of reading the Bible as minimally metaphorical or maximally supernatural, I read the Bible literarily, respecting the various ways it's trying to communicate on its own terms. And instead of reading the Bible as obviously clear, I read it as ancient, ambiguous and diverse.
Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next time.
Outro
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Jared
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Pete
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Jared
And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show.
Outro
You've just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People! Don't forget you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, Faith for Normal People, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People podcast team; Brittany Prescott, Savannah Locke, Stephanie Speight, Natalie Weyand, Stephen Henning, Tessa Stultz, Haley Warren, Nick Striegel, and Jessica Shao.
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