New
Eyes
“...the
basic claim of the Bible is not to be interpreted in such terms as
these: 'Yes, there is an ordinary world in which you must live your
normal life with your fellow men. But this world is wicked and you
are insignificant. While continuing to live in it and obey its rules,
you have to carefully learn a whole new body of truths which will
seem to you senseless and incomprehensible, and you must add this
superstructure of strange ideas on to what you see and know by your
natural reason. You must now live in two worlds at the same time, one
visible and the other invisible; one comprehensible and the other
incomprehensible; one familiar and the other frightening and strange;
one where you can be yourself and another where you must strive to be
unnaturally good; one which you instinctively take to be real, but
which you must repudiate, the other which is truly real, though to
you it seems totally superfluous.' This divisive and destructive
pattern of life and thought is not the Bible message at all.”
Thomas
Merton (Opening the Bible)
According
to Merton, the Bible should not be construed as dictation from a
remote God, but as a chronicle of how humanity has struggled to
understand God's ways. I happen to agree with this assessment. The
Bible contains a collection of rich and instructive stories about how
human beings have striven to deal with the vagaries of life in an
ethical way; what happens when they do, and what happens when they
don't.
Jesus
brought a message that turned a world of exclusivity regulated by
laws of dietary restriction and prescribed cleanliness on its head.
Take today's lectionary readings from Mark (5:21-43) for example. The
stories of the synagogue leader's dying daughter and the woman with a
hemorrhage are lumped together because they are a commentary on
several restrictions.
The
girl was dead at twelve and the woman had been bleeding for twelve
years. Both would have been considered 'unclean' according to Jewish
law, because of their ailments and simply because they were women.
Instead of obeying the law (the inerrant commandments of the
unnameable God) that made them 'untouchable', Jesus did the exact
opposite. The woman who had touched him (a no-no) and been healed of her
bleeding, was told to 'go in peace and be freed from your suffering'.
The dead girl was taken by the hand (also a no-no) and told, 'Little
girl, get up'. According to the dictates of the law, to even concern
himself with “womens' issues”, let alone touch a female, would
have been heresy. Jesus modeled compassion rather than obedience.
Instead
of being the supernatural and superhuman inerrant word of God, the
Bible should be read as a book of loving examples—a suggestion for
a way of life that works toward peace and reconciliation. It should
unite us, not divide us. It is simply wrong to interpret scripture as
a means to separate the 'haves' from the 'have-nots', the 'saved'
from the 'un-saved'. That was not Jesus' message yesterday, and it is
not his message today.
In
the spirit,
Jane
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