Interpreting the Bible in Times Such as These — Letters From Outside the Camp by Brian McLaren

[00:00:00]Hi everyone. I'm Brian McLaren and I'm so grateful for this question.

[00:00:07]Um the question is, look, the Bible is being used to justify so many horrible, offensive, sometimes disgusting, repellent, harmful things.

[00:00:22]That it just feels like even to bring up the Bible um means playing into a a game that we don't even want to play.

[00:00:32]And I I want to first say in response to this question, I I feel that, you know.

[00:00:38]That I know the question was how can we interpret the Bible, but even behind it is to me some frustration that it just feels hard to even bring up the Bible at all. I think about Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was in this situation, you know, and almost a hundred years ago in Germany, the the church had capitulated to Hitler. I mean, just imagine this. He was watching as he would go to denominational meetings and and the church was capitulating. His Lutheran church, the Catholic church was capitulating to Hitler.

[00:01:14]Uh Uh by the way, a lot of people don't know this, but the Nazi party in Germany had was working through German immigrants in the United States States to promote pro-Hitler Christian movements among Catholics and Lutherans and others here. I mean, this was going on around the world and and so it it in one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's little known statements, he said the time might be coming where we just have to shut up and be quiet. Like, we won't even be able to mention the name God or we're going to have to live it out, but the language will all have been so tainted and spoiled and destroyed.

[00:01:57]Um so that's the first thing that comes to my mind is that the frustration we feel is real and we shouldn't just go on with business as usual just quoting the Bible as usual when people are using it in such destructive and harmful ways.

[00:02:12]Second thing that uh comes to my mind is that we also have to be careful with silence because if we abdecate and just let it continue that the only people using the Bible are using it in harmful ways, then in a certain sense our silence now is playing into their game as well.

[00:02:33]Uh this is why you know, for example, Dr. King said it's not the criticisms of our enemies but the silence of our friends that often is the most heartbreaking to us.

[00:02:45]Um and then the third thing that comes to mind is this. Something that one of my mentors said for me said to me um I had written some things that some critics had gotten a hold of and they were distorting them and you know, and using them online in an awful lot of ways and I I had to figure out what to do and I remember he said to me, remember this Brian every criticism is an attempt to clarify your message.

[00:03:18]Uh he said every false every misrepresentation of your views is an opportunity to courageously and graciously re-clarify your message.

[00:03:31]And so it seems to me that if we were to take that again, that's not to say there aren't times to be quiet, you know uh but if we were to understand our situation and take that wisdom to heart and we felt it was necessary and important to speak then we can use the abuse of the Bible as an opportunity to try to clarify the Bible's actual message. Um for those who are going to tune in to learning how to see this year or tune in to the online event that we're that I'll be part of with Randy and Edith Woodley, that's exactly what we're trying to do.

[00:04:09]We're seeing people use the Bible as an agent of empire.

[00:04:14]They're using the Bible to to justify dominance, to justify authoritarianism, to justify tyranny, to justify anti-democracy.

[00:04:24]And um and instead of being silent, we're we're saying this is an opportunity for us to show how the Bible is actually against all those things that they're saying that it's for. Now, does that mean that immediately people will listen and the tides will turn?

[00:04:38]Yeah, that's uh not very likely.

[00:04:41]But maybe the last thing I'll just say, this is a time for us to look back in history.

[00:04:46]When for uh many, many decades religious leaders in the United States used the Bible to justify slavery. And their argument was so smooth, so quick, so easy. They They would just say, "Well, the Bible never uh the Bible never condemns slavery.

[00:05:10]There's not one verse in the Bible that says slavery is a sin. In the Ten Commandments, you never read thou shalt not enslave thy neighbor, right?" Um they could say Abraham had slaves. Moses didn't eliminate slavery, he regulated slavery. So that shows, people would say, that it's God's will for slavery to be part of this world.

[00:05:32]Uh uh and the people who heard others using the Bible like that had to find a way to speak up. And they had a message, too.

[00:05:40]And eventually they started saying first of all, they started saying, "You know, there's an arc to the the And very often we're given a standard here, but then when we reach that standard, God says it's time to start raising the standard.

[00:05:53]And uh so they started saying, well, uh Jesus said, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. How many of you would like to be enslaved as as our black brothers and sisters and Native American brothers and sisters were being enslaved in the South.

[00:06:09]Um and so they started using the Bible to get an argument with the ways the Bible was being used. I think there's a place for that. I think it could be done graciously. It has to be done courageously because people will get angry.

[00:06:23]It and it has to be done repeatedly. And we can remember that wisdom from my mentor.

[00:06:30]Uh every criticism and every misrepresentation is an opportunity to re-clarify your message.