If there is one Christian catchphrase that annoys me more than others it is probably “biblical world view”. Just writing it sent a chill right up my spine. I hear it so often among church folk, preached from the pulpit and blogged about on Christian blogs. Every time I hear the phrase I want to stand up and shout 2 questions. The first, “do you understand what the Bible is?” The second is like it, “do you know what a world view is?” Because according to my understanding of both – they don’t fit together. Square peg, meet round hole!
I don’t look at my glasses through my glasses.
While I believe in the inspiration of the Bible it is still a collection of writings. World view is how I interpret the world, like a pair of glasses. That includes how I interpret written works, even the divinely inspired. Now that’s not to say that the core values of my culture, which include faith and religious beliefs, don’t play a role; they do. But it just doesn’t make sense in my understanding of world view to say that I have a view shaped by something that I interpret through that view. Furthermore, if there were a truly biblical world view then Christians of every culture would interpret both the Bible and the experience of faith the same way. We don’t and that’s because we filter everything, including the sacred texts we read, through our own world views.
The Bible is 66 (or more depending on your tradition) books, not 1.
Book stores are misleading places. You can go into one and find a shelf or more filled with Bibles. They have paperback, hard-cover and leather bound. They have formal translations (word for word out of the original languages) like the King James and English Standard, dynamic translations (phrase for phrase) like the New English Translation and paraphrases like The Message. Then many stores have the same options in languages other than English. But they are all lies! No, I’m not saying that the content of the Bibles is false. But this notion that the Bible is one book – that’s the lie.
If we accept tradition there are somewhere around 40 different authors writing over a period of about 1500 years. All the way from a Hebrew shepherd and revolutionary who lived somewhere around 3500 years ago and spoke a very primitive form of the Hebrew language to a Greek doctor and missionary who spoke a fairly well developed form of Greek just less than 2000 years ago. Even if you eschew tradition and accept the critical dates of modern scholars the dates range from about 1000 years before Christ to a few hundred years after and still written in different languages, different places and by vastly different authors. While I believe that the same God inspired each of these men to write, their circumstances and environments have a direct and powerful influence on their writings.
Moses, Micah and Matthew all had different world views – how can a book containing all 3 have just one?
Then there is the question of which lens you use to interpret the Bible. There are some who interpret the Bible as primarily historical, and read it from Genesis to Revelation as one grand epic. There are some who interpret the Bible as primarily allegorical and read the whole thing as if it were a sacred myth. There are some who interpret the Bible as primarily cultural, and others who interpret it with nothing other than a critical eye. Personally I try to use all methods as they are appropriate. The parts that are obviously cultural I read as culture, the parts that are clearly allegorical I read as allegories, the parts that are historical I read accordingly. And while I accept that God inspired the Bible writers – I read it with my brain turned on.
Believing that God inspired Paul and understanding Paul’s time and place are not incompatible ideas.
Of course after you have come to an idea of how you read the Bible there is the question many Christians want to avoid – how do you deal with the contradictions. Now I’m not talking about silly differences like a variance in counting or a year or two being recorded differently. I’m talking about big, bold contradictions. Like the time Jesus saved the life of an adulterous woman even though Moses wrote that God commanded she be put to death. Better still, the time that Paul wrote not to eat in the company of sinners even though Jesus did so all the time. They are there, the Bible is full of contradictions and while the apologists can spin themselves dizzy I’m prepared to admit that they exist. The question is how do we deal with them? For me it’s a pretty simple process. I try to compare what the whole of scripture says on the subject, because while one phrase here or there may be out of line the totality usually sends a consistent message.
Ultimately, for me, whatever the rest of it says, Jesus holds the trump card.
The reason for this is because while parts of the Bible are history, I don’t read it as a history book. In the same way, parts of the Bible are stories but I don’t read it as a story book. I read the Bible as a revelation of God. My purpose in reading the Bible is to understand him and if we’re being perfectly honest some parts of it reveal him much more clearly than others. Some of the Bible’s authors were messed up people living in evil times, and some of them had a pretty scary picture of God. But in Jesus I see the clearest picture.
I don’t want a world view that includes things like stealing wives from neighbouring tribes, stoning people and slaughtering entire nations. I don’t even want a world view that includes some of the stuff in the New Testament, like telling women to sit quietly in church and ask their questions when they get home. The Bible points me toward a God who I want to know, it gives me the story of Jesus who I want to be like and it promises me a Holy Spirit whose voice I want to hear. The world view I want doesn’t come from the pages of a book – but from having my heart and mind transformed by a living God. So you can keep your “biblical world view”, I want a Jesus world view.
I am a Christian, not a Scripturian.
If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him. – Jesus
Kingdom Dialogues 