Biblical Authority Part IV

The Final in the Series: A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever

In this final essay in this series, I want to thank those of you who have reached out in response - a few of you have left comments here on Substack, several others directly. It appears that I am not alone. Neither are you.

It’s my hope that you’ve been able to see that I consider the Bible to be a beautiful, sacred and even central part of my world. Try as I might, I just can’t get away from it. 

Yes, there are problem passages. Yes, the Bible has been unfairly used to alienate, judge and condemn. Yes, there are troubling contradictions. Yes, much of the doctrine that surrounds the book is fabricated and designed to induce shame, create co-dependence, demand political conformity and maintain some despicable version of racial, social, and spiritual superiority. People should know better.

All that said, the Bible provided sustenance, purpose, comfort, hope, and fraternity to my family and ancestors - including our children, my siblings, my parents, my grandparents and their parents before them. Those little country churches in the north woods of Wisconsin and Minnesota, those wooden Stave churches in Norway, the thousand-year-old Borre Church we found in Horton (just south of Oslo, where Carolyn’s great-grandfather was baptized in 1853), the Free Churches I attended as a little boy in Wheaton (IL) and a teenager Fullerton (CA), all of them were built by families who sacrificed to create a place of joyful community. There they would gather because they believed in God and each other. They welcomed their newborns, married off their sons and daughters, bid farewell to grandma and grandpa - sending them off to the next life. When tragedy struck, they gathered again - to care, to grieve, to support, to heal. And when they did gather, they read from The Book.

I lament the abuse of this book. It’s happening today. (See Part I, II, and III.) I want to be clear. I do not affirm or defend any of that. It’s regrettable. And fixable.

So I end where I started. The Evangelical Doctrinal Statement needs a rewrite. Maybe you agree.

With that, I offer the remaining portion of the chapter from My Creed simply entitled, “The Bible.”

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There is a reason why this book has survived the millennia - not just survived but thrived. That reason goes well beyond the spectacular miracles recorded in the text. It is much more than our fascination with fire falling from the sky to overpower false gods; or heroes surviving the intense flames of the fiery furnace – and the pagan King’s efforts to eliminate civil disobedience; or life in the pit face to face with hungry lions; or the walls of the city falling on divine command into rubble. It’s more than all of that. Out of this collection of harrowing stories emerge powerful truths about how we got here, what really matters, and where we are going.

These are the stories we share in common.

And out of this book of miracles and human striving, we encounter deep questions about God and the human condition. About life and love and how to control the human impulse toward self-destruction, the subjugation of the other, and the obliteration of the planet.

Some, upon the acknowledgment of myth, simply walk away without looking back. “Religion poisons everything,” said the late Christopher Hitchens. While there is, to be sure, toxicity in religion - as there is in science and technology and consumerism and philosophy and psychology and virtually every human endeavor - it is up to you and me to avoid contamination, to look for antibodies and cures and to seek wholeness over spiritual malaise. Will we embrace the beauty and wonder of myth, or treat it as some sort of wasteful distraction?

Should you discount the Sacred Texts as inconsequential, here is some of what you will miss.

Ancient wisdom. Rich poetry. Heroic action. The cumulative collective conscious and unconscious longings for divinity and cosmic intimacy; for community and wholeness; forgiveness, mercy, grace; peace over dissonance; kindness over cruelty; generosity over miserliness; concern for the marginalized; praise for the gift of life; wonder over the grandeur of nature; gratitude for coincidence that resolves impossible challenges; serendipity that delivers love; the miracle of childbirth and the legacy of ancestry.

Admittedly, you can find all of this elsewhere. But all this, and more, can be found right there in the Sacred Book.

King James

At my first awareness, the Book of my Tribe was delivered by my grandparents in the formal language of King James, wrapped leather-bound complete with Schofield’s reference notes and dating on each page compliments of Professor Ussher; my name engraved in gold right there on the lower right-hand corner of the blue cover.

They encouraged me to memorize and later to teach. “To do justice and love mercy.” I learned that I am “fearfully and wonderfully made,” made in the “image of God.” “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” “Be strong, and of a good courage.” “Love is patient, love is kind, it does not boast. It believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”

Noah prepared in advance for the flood. Abraham pulled up stakes and moved into an unknown world full of promise. Moses, the great liberator, stood strong against the exploitation of his people and led them to freedom. David, a man of profound human frailty, loved deeply. Job explored the darkness of despair and loss. Jesus broke through the barrier of race and gender and religious intolerance. He inspired his friends to change the world - and they did. To this very day.

Evangelicals have been accused (rightly) of bibliolatry – a worship of the Book over the supposed God who gave it to them. A dogged, unyielding defense of the Bible can become an intellectual, even spiritual trap. An obsession over the text misses the point of the text. The prophets declared a God who preferred heart over sacrifice. Paul chose grace over law. Jesus had little time for religious leaders for whom the text made hierarchy and conformity run roughshod over everyone else.

I don’t worship the Book. I worship the mysterious, wondrous, knowable yet unknowable God that plays hide and seek between the lines.

It’s all there – full of contradiction and myth and legend and story. 

We can either employ the text to advance our privilege, build our walls, condemn the other to perdition, smugly congratulate ourselves for our sole possession of The Truth – or we can humbly embrace the Sacred Text as a rich source of wisdom and insight that energizes a generous embrace of a wide-world of diversity and wonder.

Which will it be?

I’ll take the latter.

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Last in the Series Biblical Authority

The preceding is from my book My Creed: An Unauthorized Rewrite of the Generally Accepted Evangelical Doctrinal Statement: Reflections on Authentic Belief by Kenneth Kemp (2020) Kindle and hard copy available on Amazon