I do not accept the idea that the bible should be read literally. Nor do I accept that it is inspired by God. The Scriptures were written by humans seeking to convey their understanding in their time. We should not read scripture on the premis of a metaphysical being anthropomorphised to relate to humanity. Of course scripture is useful as a reference point to our understanding: it should not be regarded as the final or only word. The two articles below consider ideas to which I subscribe.
JIM RIGBY
It is not honest to say those who follow the law of love don't care about scripture as much as those who take the texts literally.
The whole idea of one clear interpretation of the Bible to which every opinion must kneel is a product of the power hungry framework of European colonizers, not on the inventive creative spiritual interpretations of scripture’s Middle Eastern authors.
There is certainly one reality that undergirds us all, but that reality is to be found in our actual interactions not in the clear definitions of any one philosophy. We cannot understand ourselves in the same way we understand objects because that kind of objectivity leaves out the very subjective consciousness we are trying to understand.
Sartre called our efforts to reduce ourselves to objects so that we might avoid the ambiguities of life “bad faith.” We are not computers in search of the right code, we are biological critters who mistakenly think themselves to be independent from the web of life.
Our task in religion is to re-connect with our source- be that source spiritual, biological or cosmic. My rule of thumb for religion is: if obeying scripture makes me stupid and cruel, either it is wrong, or I am reading it wrong. Either way, we must often disobey the letter of a law to seek out the spirit of goodness, truth and beauty.
I do not believe slaves should obey their masters. I do not believe the world was created in seven days. I do not believe we should stone witches, or anyone else. I DO believe we must pick and choose from scripture with love and truth as our interpretive devices or we are better off leaving the text behind as a relic of an earlier day.
If scripture is not used as roots out of which to grow, it is a dead tree anyway. Any religion must be dismissed as “bad faith” if it does not call us to radical honesty about our world, wildly creative expression of our own hearts, and to work for justice for our ENTIRE human family.
KARL POPPER
“The question about the sources of our knowledge (...) has always been asked in the spirit of: 'What are the best sources of our knowledge--the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn, in case of doubt, as the last court of appeal?' I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist--no more than ideal rulers--and that all 'sources' are liable to lead us into error at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: 'How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?'
The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimize itself by its pedigree. The nobility of the racially pure knowledge, the untainted knowledge, the knowledge which derives from the highest authority, if possible from God: these are the (often unconscious) metaphysical ideas behind the question. My modified question, 'How can we hope to detect error?' may be said to derive from the view that such pure, untainted and certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin or of purity should not be confounded with questions of validity, or of truth.”
Karl Popper, 'Conjectures and Refutations'.
I am reminded of the words attributed to Andrew Lang:
Some people use statistics as a drunken man useful lampposts - for support rather than illumination.
Replace 'people' with 'Christians' and 'statistics' with 'scripture' and you have encapsulated the mindset of fundamentalist, literalist, conservative evangelicals.
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