This was originally written as Question 10 of My Story: The Questions Which Didn’t Have The Right Answer. Since it’s long, I’ll add subheadings to break it up.
First, some background to explain how I came to believe the Bible was the Word of God, how I maintained that belief and all it meant to me in a personal as well as an intellectual sense.
My first experiences of the Bible
There were no Bibles in the house I grew up in until I asked for one at the age of 8, having heard a cool story at school about someone killing a giant that was supposedly in it. (This was a nominally ‘Christian’ school in England)
My parents let me choose a Bible and bought it for me. Unfortunately I chose a King James (I think I mistakenly believed it was more ‘original’ based on the shop assistant’s comments) which was just the text plus a few color plates in places unrelated to the text. It was very hard to find the cool story – I’m not sure that I did at that time – and hard to understand any of it.
I had more Bible exposure in high school (another nominally ‘Christian’ school which left me the impression that Christianity was a miserable affair and not a religion I was interested in); we studied Mark’s gospel in particular and were examined on the content of it.
When I became a Christian in college, as mentioned above, I had little knowledge of the content of the Bible apart from the gospels and had no idea Christians believed it was the Word of God. I just assumed it was a useful book to them because it was considered reliable about the events of Jesus’ life.
Learning the ‘Christian’ approach to the Bible
I was shocked when I first heard Christians believed the Bible is The Word of God – probably because I truly had no idea until then. I heard about it at the beginning of a series of Basic Bible Teaching tapes which were recommended to me. Of course it makes sense to begin a series on ‘what the Bible teaches’ that way – after all, why would Christians care what it teaches if it isn’t the Word of God?
Although in shock, I decided to give “the Bible is the Word of God” the benefit of the doubt; I mean, if God is real, God can do anything. God can certainly make a book that is all his Word if he wants. The teacher gave reasons why Christians believe it is, which I must have accepted at the time.
The tape series laid a foundation for me of basic Biblical theology and I continued to learn about the Bible and Biblical theology through church, Bible studies and my own reading of the Bible and books about theology.
When I became aware of issues over which Bible-believing Christians disagreed, I wanted to know who was right. I read both sides of the issue and tried to figure it out. I was shocked (again!) when I ran across Calvinism in a book written by my own pastor. I hadn’t heard of this doctrine even though I’d been listening to his sermons for quite a while – I suppose it was not something he preached explicitly on Sundays.
I was relieved to find out that this was an issue over which Bible-believing Christians disagreed. My distaste for what Calvinism implies about God disposed me to lean away from it personally.
I learned how a few Bible passages were the reason why women weren’t pastors in any church I attended. I found that hard to accept but wasn’t willing to say “therefore the Bible must not be the Word of God”. I was pleased when I found some Bible-believing authors who interpreted those passages differently, in a way that permitted men and women equal roles.
Similarly, I learned how many Christians believe based on Genesis, that mainstream scientists are wrong about the age of the earth. This bothered me because I had no reason to think mistrust mainstream scientists but I didn’t want to reject the Bible being the Word of God over this. So I was relieved to find a Bible-believing Christian ministry which purports to reconcile the Bible text with mainstream science.
I gave the Bible the benefit of the doubt when I came across apparent ‘discrepancies’ in the text. I read Christian explanations of how to resolve the discrepancies and accepted them. The discrepancies had to resolvable because a book that was all the Word of God couldn’t contradict itself!
The personal dimension of my beliefs about the Bible
Like many other Christians, there was a very personal dimension to my beliefs about the Bible. The Bible was the book in whose pages I learned to know God better, not only from the content on the page but also because when I read it, God would mystically communicate with me. I believed he did this by taking my thoughts where he wanted them to go – which might or might not be in a direction directly related to the text I was reading that day.
I knew Christians who would let the Bible fall open and read it and believed that what they read was a message from God; I didn’t go that far. I think the ‘mystical thought-guidance’ belief was one I picked up from other Christians, who often shared “how God had ‘spoken’ to them as they were reading the Bible”. In theory the same thought-guidance could happen during private prayer; yet in the circles I moved in the Bible was believed to facilitate it. And so we were encouraged to read it to hear from God in that mystical sense as well as to get to know God better because we were learning what the Bible says about him.
In this way the Bible was ‘special’ to me, because it was more than just a book about God; it was part of my relationship with God. I memorized verses so I could have it with me without carrying it physically around with me; but I did also tend to carry a small Bible with me at all times ‘just in case’.
What I did with the Bible when I was manic (mentally ill)
Each time I was manic I obsessively studied the Bible; I became convinced that it had been ‘misinterpreted’ by others and I was to find ‘the hidden truth’ of it. (It’s a very typical of mania to feel that one is on a special mission – commissioned by God, of course, if you believe in God) My husband still laughs about the day I told him of my theory that the word ‘not’ in Hebrew was a mistranslation. He, although an atheist, knew enough about the Bible to quickly put paid to that idea by pointing out the ramifications of my theory for the ten commandments. I saw his point.
During my second episode I tried to prove that the Bible really taught universalism i.e. everyone would go to heaven in the end. I figured that if God wanted to he could apply Jesus’ death on the cross to everyone; why not? As I recovered, I couldn’t find this in the Bible. My poem God of my dreams portrays a God who wants to and will find a way to get everyone to heaven somehow; but my own (disappointed) conclusion was that this was not exactly what the Bible taught.
Another thing I ‘discovered’ about the Bible during my second episode was how easy it was to use the Bible to justify the ‘special mission(s)’ I believed God had given me. Hey, I was just doing what people in the Bible did! Look at Abraham – he had an idea, got up early in the morning – presumably so no-one could intervene and stop him; or maybe so he wouldn’t have time to have second thoughts – and went off to sacrifice his son. If I acted on what [I believed] God told me and everyone else (who found out) thought I was crazy, I was just being like Abraham. Even down to getting up early to do it (manic people barely sleep and they are very impulsive, rushing off to do things at the first opportunity). I was just like Abraham – or was he just like me? Maybe he was manic. Who knows.
If I faced ‘opposition’, well, that was typical of what happens in the Bible when people try to do what God tells them to do. Look at Jesus. In fact – Christians, forgive me for mentioning this – Jesus had some manic symptoms – he thought he was on a special mission from God. He may have thought – or at least suspected – he was God.
Realizations about how easy it is to manipulate/’slant’ what the Bible says
So, in my manic state it had been all too easy to identify with persecuted Bible heroes. Once I had recovered, I decided it was rather problematic that it had been so easy for me to find excuses for my manic behavior in the Bible. I wondered how big the range of behavior was that I could justify with a Bible passage. I decided it was pretty big. So basically, whatever I wanted to do, within reason, I could back up with a Bible passage – I could manipulate the Bible to my own ends.
Having seen this, how could I ever be sure again that the Bible was leading me, rather than me manipulating what it said to fit what I wanted to do anyway?
As I continued to attend church and Bible studies and read (some) Christian books I thought about whether they were letting the Bible lead or were manipulating it to fit what they wanted to do/believe anyway. My sense was that they thought they were letting the Bible lead and they were sincere – they would not intentionally have used the Bible in manipulative ways. Yet curiously, I observed an interesting and definite correlation between the behaviors and beliefs they said that the Bible taught and their own personalities.
It was actually a couple of pastors who tipped me off to this a while before I had any doubts. One told me that you could predict the personality of Christians by whether they were – for example – Calvinists. I have found this to be true: Calvinists tend to be (I know I’m generalizing) very analytical and structured. It’s important to them to have every i dotted and t crossed, as Calvinism does and they focus on the justice and righteousness of God. Christians who are less structured and more empathetic and sensitive tend to focus on God’s love in an emotional sense; they find Calvinism unbearable because of the double-predestination and so they go with a different version of Christian doctrine.
The other thing I heard from a pastor (this was in sermons and was actually a way of dismissing what liberal Christians write) was “You can tell more about the author than anything else from what he writes”. Well, that was fascinating. I applied it back to the Christian preachers and teachers I heard (including the person who said it) and observed the correlation I’ve already mentioned.
Anyway – so I observed that at least to some extent, the Bible teachers and preachers I heard (unintentionally) favored certain Bible teachings over others according to their personalities (and some of the issues they struggled with personally, perhaps, but it’s not very respectful to guess about such things when they’ve not been explicitly mentioned).
My doubts begin about the Bible being the Word of God
So far these observations didn’t necessarily prove the Bible was not the Word of God. The size and the varying genres of the Bible and the predilection of Bible teachers to pull out a verse here and there in support of their views all contributed to making it possible for Bible teachers to (unintentionally) orient their teaching in certain directions. It wasn’t proof that the Bible contradicted itself, per se.
However, as I revisited the way Calvinists and Arminians each hold up their key verses and dismiss the other side’s key verses, it did hit me one day that the most obvious explanation for this was that the Bible does teach both and it does contradict itself. I had never ‘gone there’ before because a book that contradicts itself can’t be the Word of God (unless God contradicts himself, in which case the whole business of trying to know God or figure out his will and desires would be a waste of time)
My decision not to pray for God’s guidance (mentioned way up in an early question) went along with parallel decision not to look for mystical or direct personal guidance from the Bible, for similar reasons. And also because I’d realized I could manipulate what the Bible said so easily into supporting what I wanted to do anyway.
I began to move away from my beliefs about the Bible and consider only what I knew to be true about it. It is a collection of books written by very different people over a long period of time, with none more recently written than about two millennia ago. It wouldn’t be surprising if a book like that did contradict itself in places, nor would it be surprising if it had things in it which with the greater knowledge we have now, or given the very different world in which we now live, seem incorrect.
Also, viewing the Bible this way freed me to notice certain things about it, such as – I really didn’t like the tone [the author of writings attributed to] Paul used sometimes. And [the author of] Matthew came across as rather strikingly vindictive at times – as did many passages in the Old Testament that were stated to be God’s very own words (as opposed to being God’s words on the basis that the whole Bible is God’s word).
I continued to participate in a Bible study for a while after I highly suspected it was not the Word of God, because I enjoyed being part of a small group focused on personal growth and I still believed it could be an opportunity for personal growth for me. Going through the ‘minor prophets’ did nothing to restore my faith in the Bible as God’s Word. In fact it probably pushed me away because I found myself incredulous at the huge leaps of faith required (so it seemed to me) to find a whole doctrine of the future in verse fragments in the books of the minor prophets, taken way out of their original context. To quote E. M. Forster I felt as if the “scales had fallen from my eyes” and I wondered how I had been so accepting of the way Christians today (and even the New Testament authors) made confident eschatological statements based on such scant Biblical foundation.
My current view of the Bible
At this point my personal view is that the Bible is a collection of writings which probably are somewhat true but probably are not entirely true. It has some very beautiful writing in it – it is a ‘great’ work, no doubt. It also has principles I agree with. I do appreciate the freedom I now have to say “I don’t agree with this; I don’t like the tone here”. I couldn’t say that before because it would have been disagreeing with God who I believed was by definition never wrong and it would have been saying I didn’t like God’s ‘tone’, which I believed was by definition ‘perfect in every way’.
Many Christians still think I’m a Christian and, knowing the way Bible verses comfort and encourage Christians, I might still refer to the Bible in talking with them. When I’m talking to people who aren’t Christians I might still refer to what Christians consider Biblical principles but I will say them in the way that makes most sense to me.
I don’t avoid or reject something just because the Bible says it – that would be irrational. On the other hand I don’t hold anything the Bible says to be ‘sacred’ or true or wise just because the Bible says it. I try to evaluate what is said on its own merits. If I like what Jesus said, great – I’m all for applying that to make the world a better place. But if what Jesus said, or something else in the Bible – makes no sense to me, I’m free to reject it; I no longer need to struggle to make it say something ‘reasonable’. I believe that ‘the truth sets me free’, as do Christians – but I don’t entirely agree with Bible-believing Christians any more about what ‘the truth’ is.
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