As You May Have Noticed, I'm Ready to Read the Bible Again

Scene from "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", but the dialog is changed to Finn and Rey saying "Can I believe everything the bible says?" and Han saying, "It's true. All of it." Image source.

Hi readers~ You may have noticed that I've started up the Matthew series again. This series of posts, where I blog through the whole book of Matthew, started way back in 2012, and my plan was to do one post per week. Since then, the series has been interrupted several times on account of me being too busy or too ex-evangelical to read the bible. But I just hate it when I say I'm going to do something and then I don't finish it (which is not necessarily a good trait to have...). That's why, when I did my Honest Lent series, I was extremely clear about how I'm NOT committing to reading the bible every day- I'll just do it when I feel like it. Otherwise, I probably would have missed a few days and then felt like the whole thing was a failure because I didn't do it to the extent that I originally said I would. (See also: "it doesn't matter what good deeds you've done, if you've sinned even once then you're a sinner" and "every sin is an infinite offense against an infinitely holy God." And that's why I'm stuck feeling bad over goals I made that turned out not to be realistic.)

So the point is, I'm going to finish this Matthew stuff. In September I published White Privilege and the Rich Young Ruler (after a year-and-a-half gap in the series) and since then I'm been doing a post every 2 weeks about Matthew.

And I feel good about these posts I've written recently. They're very feminist~ talking about white privilege and minimum-wage workers and things like that, things that nobody ever talked about in any bible studies I've attended. Not reading the bible like "oh back then people used to go stand around and wait for a landowner to hire them," like they're caricatures from a faraway time and place, but realizing that that's reality for a lot of people right now. And when we recognize that people still live in poverty similar to what Jesus describes in that parable, we can't really turn it into something that only has a spiritual meaning. It will make us also want to change the system that causes that economic injustice.

What I'm saying is, it makes the bible feel a lot more real to me. I can relate those stories to issues going on in the world today. And I feel really good writing about it (though to be honest, my posts still feel a bit like I'm hesitating because I believe my interpretation is just so unusual and everyone will think "no that's OBVIOUSLY not what it means"). I'm getting more confident- though please note that (unlike everything I learned in evangelicalism) I never want to claim "this is what the passage Really Means." I don't think there necessarily is a "Really Means." It's a story, and people relate to the story in different ways.

Which brings me to this question: What really is the point, though? I'm a feminist; I read the bible and find bits that relate to feminism and happily focus on those bits. Like, that shouldn't be a surprise. And an evangelical would read the same passage and find the bits that match up with their beliefs, and focus on those. Whatever your ideology is, you'll be able to find something in the bible that can be interpreted as agreeing with you. And I don't really believe any of those interpretations are "what the author meant"- they were writing 2000 years ago, in a different language, in a different culture. They definitely couldn't have imagined we would be here today interpreting it in this way.

The meaning isn't necessarily in the story itself, but in the creative ways that people see themselves in the story, or see the story as a lens for viewing the world. And some of those interpretations have their basis in shady or immoral motivations, or they end up inspiring people to act in ways that are harmful. That's a problem, but we can't neatly classify interpretations into "good" and "harmful." Every one of them is flawed in some way. Nobody is perfect. No analogy is perfect. And even if it is "what the author really meant", that doesn't mean it's automatically good. So we should always consider the real-world consequences of understanding a story in a particular way. (Like, don't say "my interpretation is way healthier than the evangelical interpretation, therefore my interpretation is definitely good and right and won't hurt anyone unjustly.") By their fruits you will know them.

So the story is sort of a raw material that people can use to create meaning, guided by the principles they already believe. And maybe this is what the biblical writers intended when they wrote stories rather than just giving doctrines directly. Maybe Jesus spoke in parables because he didn't believe that everyone is supposed to understand his teaching in the exact same way.

But why does it have to be the bible? There are tons of other places we can find stories and interpret them in ways consistent with our own personal ideologies. The bible's not special. I personally think the Star Wars universe is full of good stories.

Anyway, the conclusion I've reached is that my interpreting the bible in a feminist way isn't necessarily something that's useful in determining what a passage "really means" or arguing against evangelical interpretations. It won't convince evangelicals- they'll be all like "she is twisting scripture!!!" I'm not able to make an argument about "this is the right way to understand it"- instead, what I'm really saying is "here is a way to connect this passage to some important idea I already believe about the world." And if you agree with the "important idea I already believe" then great. If not, my interpretation won't mean anything to you at all. Because I'm just picking out the part that agrees with my own personal beliefs, not demonstrating why those beliefs are true in the first place. (And if you're going to be like "AHA she is PICKING AND CHOOSING the parts of the bible she likes", settle down. Every Christian does this "picking and choosing." The only difference is that some of us are self-aware and some aren't.)

So really, my goal is to show that there are valid ways to read the bible besides the way I learned in church. This is really important to me because when I was an evangelical, I always thought "this is what this passage means, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to make excuses for ignoring the CLEAR TEACHING OF SCRIPTURE." But that's not true. There are multiple ways it could be read, and I don't think it makes sense to argue which is "correct" or "what the author meant." What actually matters is the real-world effects of those beliefs. You will know them by their fruit.