Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Reclaiming The Bible
Marcus Borg always seems to say what I feel but I rarely have the ability to express it. I've been meeting with a small group of friends every saturday night and several of us have been reading his books. This video captures his central theme of taking the Bible seriously without taking it literally. This one concept helped me come to love the Bible and Jesus more than I ever had before. I hope a few of those friends will provide comments here about how this view of scripture may be challenging and expanding your perspective.
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8 comments:
Mike,
Thanks for the Borg link. I posted it on my blog as well. Very interesting. I'm somewhere between -- I think -- Borg's soft literalist and his position. Closer to his than before, but still somewhere in between.
But Borg is persuasive!
Hmmm, I think "pastor bob" and I should get together for tea! He pretty much wrote what I was thinking.
On the one hand, I think I have a less literal view of the Bible than the "soft literal" view, but I also find myself unable to look at the Bible as just historical myth. But I don't think those positions have to be either/or. I have learned a lot by adding the "more than literal" view to my present understanding of scripture. So I guess I would say I'm still "in process" about the whole thing.
Thanks for the comment Jen. I can relate to your view. Myth is a divisive word because it has too much baggage since our Western culture ONLY uses it to refer to "somone else's religion". I try to avoid that word because of that baggage. However it shouldn't be seen that way. I think Borg would also warn you about putting the word "JUST" in front of the word myth.
Viewing a story as metaphor is a HIGHER view of a story. On the flip side, I could say that fundamentalists reduce the story to being JUST history or JUST fact? Do you see the problem that happens when you add the word "just"?
In my view, the real historic people, places, and events behind the Bible's stories were so dramatic and life altering that the events DESERVED to be forever captured in a huge mythological story that could stand the test of time and compare with (or even blow away) the other stories of thier time. All great stories deserve to be mythologized. It is a higher calling for a story. What story would want to ONLY be on CSPAN or end up in a text book? A really good story ends up on the big screen with huge grand opening! History gets the last page in the newspaper but Myths are worth rolling out the red carpet.
I relish the fact that my faith is grounded on wonderful truth-filled mythical stories (just like many other religions). We should be proud of that and be willing to talk about it instead of trying to make excuses for how our myths are (wink wink) REAL and every other religion's myths are (wink wink) fake.
I think truth does transcend fact. The writers of the bible did have to compete with other writings of their days. I get that. My problem is my heart wants to hold on to the belief that the bible is factual. Believing there is an afterlife is something I don't want to throw out. That is the one thing in the bible that I have a hard time mythologizing in my head. My head says, look at all the facts. The bible can't be taken literally. The world view of the ancients is not my world view. We have science to explain the universe. The ancients (hebrews, greeks, romans) made up myths to explain the universe. For years a lot of what I forced myself to believe made no sense. Now things are making sense, but my beliefs are in peril. I am with Jen, in that I am still in process. That isn't a bad thing, just sometimes frustrating. Lori
Lori (and steve),
It has been helpful to have your insights and fellowship as you've been reading Borg's books.
A big issue at the heart of this debate is getting our modern brains wrapped around the idea that is it "normal" for people to tell REAL facts through metaphorical techniques. It isn't a big conspiracy theory (like the divinci code). It should be easy to grasp but I too have problems. We easily accept that movies and now even our NEWS is often presented with entertainment in mind but we hold the Bible to a differnt standard.
The lightbulb came on for me when I realized that news is news even if the presenter uses a creative technique to deliver the point. Often news contains opinions that shape the delivery. The opinion may even be the primary reason they wrote the story.
For example, Jon Stewart delivers "news" through entertainment and the news is REALLY TRUE even if his facts are often not. What he is really delivering is an opinion and the news is just an undercurrent. If somebody tried to watch his shows 500 years from now they wouldn't get it unless they understood the context.
I think the Bible's authors are blending news with opinion in their stories. Both the news and the opinions are valuabe to us. So I do think there is history behind the myths. I think Borg does too. He has built his career around digging for exactly what that history looks like. I really like how he still views the STORIES as the source of his faith and the history is at some level irrelevant.
OK I take back the word JUST. Defintely demeans whatever comes next. But I'm not sure what to do with calling a metaphorical view "higher." Isn't that implying that there is a "lower" view. Is in not possible to have both/and?
Jen,
I completely agree that there is a "both/and". This is what Borg calls a Historical/Metaphorical view. He spent his whole career looking for the historical and the more he realized what did and didn't happen the more he realized that the degree of history in the story didn't change the story's meaning.
He frequently says "believe what you want about if the tomb was empty, the important point is to know why they told the story". The answer is of course, because Jesus had become a powerful catalyst for transforming their lives and that transformation point deserved a wonderful story either as history, myth, or some combination.
WOW, I just realized what you said!
"If somebody tried to watch his shows 500 years from now they wouldn't get it unless they understood the context." Imagine Mark or Luke's gospel in this same light. Mark says, "what if someone tries to read this 500 years from now. They won't get it unless they understand the context." brilliant!
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