I would say that the shooting in Orlando has left me speechless, except here I am writing about it. Well, not the shooting itself, but more the aftermath. Yes, there has been an outpouring of love and support for the LGBTQ community. Yes, I am heartened by the little bits of action toward some kind of sensible gun control (which, sensible or not, constitutional or not, we’ve got to find ways to stop shooting each other). But I am particularly dismayed and disgusted by the mouths of purported Christians that have been shooting madly like deranged sons of Sam instead of children of God.
While I am one of those liberals who think we do indeed need gun control, as a liberal Christian I am thinking we really need some bible-control about now. I don’t want to, and I don’t need to either, repeat the atrocious and hurtful things right-wing Christian nutjobs flung into the universe following the Pulse shootings.While I know that these vile-hearted extremists neither speak for nor determine the stance of Christianity as a whole, when mainstream Christianity tolerates bigoted and injurious conversation regarding sexuality that allows the extremists to claim legitimacy. When those who read the bible literally claim literalism as the only permissible and authorized method of interpretation, then every deadly and vicious and hateful thing written in the bible is given divine imperative. And if they can believe that God hates homosexuals or women or foreigners, then they have permission to hate, too.
To enact bible-control is to disempower the use of the bible to injure and demean people. The first of John Wesley’s General Rules is “do no harm.” But great and sometime irreparable harm is done when the bible is literally read to say that God wants to kill homosexuals, to subjugate women, or to claim exclusive access to God’s will and favor. A good first step toward bible-control would be the retirement of the word “abomination.” The United Methodist Church is prepared to do much great harm by continuing to read the bible literally and maintain its discriminatory stance proscribing homosexual candidates for ministry, ecclesiastically outlawing marriage equality, and persecuting as well prosecuting those clergy who defy these wrong-spirited invectives. By giving in to this idea that the only appropriate reading of the bible is the literal one, the United Methodist Church and and others become complicit in every act of hate and fear toward the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and followers of religions other than Christianity.
In this day of uncontrolled violence, it has become of ultimate importance that those of us who believe that fallible humans wrote the bible claim our authority as theologians and interpreters. A metaphorical and/or historical-critical view of the bible is not an alternative reading. It is not fundamentalism’s diminutive sibling or step-child. We claim a harder-won holiness, one wrested from the imperfect words of finite people. To proclaim that God speaks through our evolving understanding of the world, of our history, of our bible and even our understanding of God liberates us from the chains of literalism. It is not only OK to say that the words of the bible reflect ancient worldviews and prejudices, it is imperative that we do so. Bible-control is putting down the ammunition of fear and hate and choosing instead a humbler but more compassionate use of the bible to heal, include, and shelter those who have been injured by our religion.
expressionist coffee 