Making Sense of Violence and Terror in Boston

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 25 April 2013 2 Comments
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Question

I would like to know if you believe the Bible is a book that should be used to guide one's life. I do not agree or disagree; I just want to know what you think personally. I am an Agnostic and I recently saw a video of you being interviewed.

 

Answer

Dear Rick,

I am not sure what you mean by your question. The Bible is a library of books written over a period of time between about 1000 BCE and 135 CE by a wide variety of authors, living in a wide variety of different circumstances. These authors also reflect a wide variation in what I would call spiritual sensitivity. For example, I would not choose to pattern my life after that of Elijah, who slew 400 priests of Baal with his sword after a showdown on Mount Carmel, or that of Samson, who slew hundreds of Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.

I would, however, be willing to install as life values such biblical admonitions as:

Jesus’ call to “love your enemies;” Hosea’s definition of God as “love;” Amos’ definition of God as “justice,” and Malachi’s definition of God as “universal.” I would also want to listen to Jonah’s story against prejudice and Jesus’ definition of who is my neighbor. So I would be more discerning and less blanketed in my response to you than your question seems to allow. Perhaps as a self-confirmed agnostic, you have simply not encountered the Bible on anything other than the shallowest of levels.

I see three great principles that underlie the entire biblical story. The first is that all life and all people are holy. This is the great insight of the Hebrew Scriptures and is the essential meaning of the story of the creation. That is also why I refer to God as “father.” It is a sexist reference, but when this nomenclature was adopted “Father” meant the source of all life. The second great biblical principle is that all life and all people are loved. That is the essence of the Jesus story, which comes through the gospels and that is what we Christians are trying to communicate when we refer to Jesus as “the son.” The third is that the purpose of life is to discover the courage to be all that each of us can be within the unique circumstances of our humanity. That is what it means to me to believe in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is always defined in the Bible as “The Lord and Giver of Life.”

There are many parts of the Bible that reflect primitive, tribal and destructive emotions toward those who are regarded as enemies. I am not impressed with the God who hates Egyptians as portrayed in the book of Exodus, the God who stops the sun in the sky in order to have more daylight to kill more Amorites as described in the book of Joshua, or the God who orders genocide against the Amalekites as recorded in the book of Samuel.

The great tragedy of the church has been that by clinging to biblical literalism to the point of profound ignorance, we have made it possible for people like you to frame the question you have posed, which assumes that there is a single biblical point of view. There isn’t.

Thanks for asking.

John Shelby Spong

 

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