How do we read Scripture?

In the 1800s, supposed Christians in the American South used Scripture to assert their racial superiority. Today, some fundamentalist Christians use two lines from the Bible to justify hatred of the LGBTQ community. Neither is a legitimate use of Scripture. There are many bad ways of reading and interpreting the Bible. People have used Scripture to legitimize sexism, racism, slavery, economic injustice, and all kinds of trauma. In the hands of a zealot, the Bible ceases to be life-giving and quickly becomes death-dealing. The Crusades and the Inquisition are prime examples. Therefore, we desperately need a deep, authentic way of approaching the Bible. In this brief essay, I want to offer some guidelines for reading and interpreting the Bible, which I follow in these Mystical Word reflections.

We do not read the Bible literally.  We do not take one passage, say from the 0ld Testament regarding a man lying with a man, and make it into the core of our faith.  Everything in the Bible is judged by a standard: Jesus who is the definitive revelation of God.  If there is something that contradicts Jesus that is also in Scripture, which do we choose?  For instance, Jesus shows us God is humble, nonviolent, and, ultimately, revealed as self-emptying love on the cross.  A God who commands military conquest, who demands the slaughter of a people or nonbelievers, is not the God whom Jesus reveals.  We are followers of Jesus.  We go with him.

Here are some more points: 1) the Bible is the Word of God in human words, 2) there is a tradition of reading and interpreting Scripture, the Bible is in fact a part of tradition, 3) spiritual interpretation is just as important as the plain sense of a passage, 4) we all bring presuppositions to the Bible, and 5) there is no single meaning to a passage.  The Bible did not drop directly from heaven.  It is a mix of divine revelation and human communication.  God comes to us in human experience and history.  And, naturally, our experience is messy.  So, people can misinterpret divine revelation in narrow, exclusive, and sometimes violent terms.  There is no way of reading and understanding the Bible without bringing our own presuppositions.  There’s no pure reading of the Bible.  There is no one single meaning to any passage in the Bible, no matter how obvious or plain the sense appears to us.

We think we know truth, but this is what is wrong with us.  We do not know.  All the mystics and Scripture itself testifies to our massive capacity for deluding ourselves.  Therefore, our church requires a contemplative reading of Scripture.  This is a way of interpreting the Bible that can let go of biases, ego-filters, and cultural presuppositions.  Beyond this, though, a contemplative reading accepts the Holy Mystery revealed and yet infinitely beyond the Scriptures.  Without this approach, the Bible can be misused all-too-easily.  The ego will always interpret scripture to fit its own way of thinking, which always includes massive blind spots regarding the poor and those not in power.

We can adopt the way of Jesus as our way of interpreting the Bible.  Jesus had his own way of interpreting Scripture.  It seems to me that would be the best way for his followers to interpret the Bible, too.  Interpreting Scripture the way Jesus did means to, first, approach scripture with faith.  We trust that God communicates to us through it and that God is always one with us—all of us—no matter what.  Even more, Jesus does not quote scripture too much.  When he does cite scripture, it is not always an exact quote.  Sometimes, Jesus even disagrees with Scripture, as in his attitude toward the sabbath.  Jesus does not use every book of the Bible.  He never refers to Numbers, Joshua, or Judges.  In fact, Jesus selectively quotes!  Here’s a case in point: Love your neighbor as yourself” is from Leviticus 19.  Jesus never uses anything else from Leviticus 19, which is a series of “thou shalt not’s.”  Why would he choose the only positive injunction in the whole chapter? 

Basically, Jesus ignores any Scripture that does not reflect his own understanding of God as incomprehensible mystery and unlimited mercy.   Jesus never talks about Bible passages presenting God as  punitive, imperialistic, exclusionary, or vengeful.  It seems that he would have us ignore those passages, too.  As long as we are consciously connected to the God of mystery and mercy, Jesus gives us permission to come up with our own spiritual understanding of a passage.  This is a life-giving way of reading the Bible!