Taking Scripture Seriously

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A friend, after noting how seriously I take Scripture’s claim on our lives, asked me why I am not a biblical literalist.

His question reflects the fact that we live in a secular age - a time in which belief in God is understood in our culture to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace. I know many for whom the experience of God in their lives is so real that faith is instinctive, but who, nonetheless, aren’t quite sure how to think about Scripture.  They ask, often in a voice that only they can hear, “I know I am a Christian, but in what way is Scripture relevant for my life?”  Or, perhaps there’s an implicit assertion, “I know I am a Christian, but I don’t agree with what Scripture says in this case, so I’m going to use other criteria to guide my actions.”

The more seriously we take our baptism, the more difficult this question of the relevance of Scripture becomes.  A mentor once told me (a WASP) that whenever we watch another being baptized, we ought to imagine the priest saying to us, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:  you are no longer white, male, or American.”  His point was that, through our baptism, we take on a new identity.  We no longer belong to ourselves, but rather we belong to Christ.  When we take our baptism seriously, we strive to follow Christ as Lord in every aspect of our life.

And that’s where Scripture comes in.  For Scripture is the written word that bears testimony to the incarnate Word.  So if we take our baptism seriously - if Christ -  and not Self -  is the center of our life, then the urgent question is not “in what way is Scripture relevant for my life?”  Rather, the question is “in what ways is my life related to Scripture?”   In our secular age, it’s easy to get those questions backward.

That mistake seems tragic today.  I recently read a market study of those who live within a thirty-mile radius of my parish. I note that Finding Life Direction is among the most important concerns of Boomers(born 1943 - 1960) and Survivors (born 1961 - 1981) in our area.  If we get our questions about Scripture backward, we’re destined to be among those who feel lost and afraid at times, yearning for life direction.

As I explained to my friend, that’s why I take Scripture so seriously.  Yet,  I don’t equate biblical literalism, as my friend meant it, with taking Scripture seriously.  Taking Scripture seriously begins with an acknowledgement that we hear in our Bible not just one voice, but many.  Scripture is our communal story, and, as we expect in any authentic story, it is multivoiced.  Each voice is that of an actor in our drama who encountered God in a distinctive time, space, and culture, just as we do.  A major problem with biblical literalism is that it rushes to relieve the apparent tension among these diverse voices in order to reduce Scripture to a single meaning.

Those who seek direction in their life yearn for a map by which to navigate. Scripture is that map. Or, rather, it’s an atlas.  It’s not a single data point that we can claim is the only Truth we need to know, but a collection of maps, provided by those saints who walked before us, that in their unique ways chart the Way and the truth of life with God.

Yet therein lies our great challenge.  For the thing about maps is that they are not just for reading. The whole point of a map is to provide direction. Our atlas provides eternal life direction.   Yet, for it to be useful, we have to follow the paths it charts.

How does your journey compare to the Way charted?