Truth or Interpretation?
When I was an undergraduate student at a liberal arts Christian university, I took my first Bible class. I went to the campus bookstore to buy my books and I realized that “The Holy Bible” was listed as one of the textbooks. I didn’t need to buy a Bible- I had been carrying one to church with me on Sundays since I was a little girl. My first Bible had a pink leather cover, pages lined with silver, and my name engraved in the bottom right corner of the cover. I even had a fancy cloth carrying case with handles designed especially for Bible-toting convenience. When I attended that first college Bible class, I glanced over at a girl sitting a few rows over and a couple rows up. She had bought the paperback Bible from the shelf at the campus bookstore, and she had scrawled her name in large, artistic block letters on the edges of the pages along with other flowers and curly ink pen designs. Woah, I remember thinking. The only time I’ve ever written in my Bible was when I underlined something for emphasis, added a star next to a great verse, or maybe noted the date above a time I felt God speak to me in a particular area. It was the first time I had ever seen anyone treat the Bible as a textbook, or as anything but the sacred word of God.
That year, for Christmas, I asked for “An Idiot’s Guide to the Bible.” My introductory Bible class had revealed to me how little I knew beyond the Sunday School stories, the entrance and exit of Christ, and the letters of Paul. I bought a page-a-day One Year Bible calendar and read through the whole book my sophomore year of college, wide-eyed in the middle of Genesis, eager in Exodus, and trying to stay awake in Leviticus. By the time I got to the Old Testament prophets and Revelation, I was showing up every day but barely tuning in. I was dutifully reading through Scripture every morning, but I was only using it to confirm everything I had always believed. I wasn’t trying to meet God there. What I read simply added a bit of detail to what I had learned in Sunday School. I was raised as a Christian evangelical, and it would be more than twenty years before I would approach the Bible in a completely different way than I did back then.
Fast forward to now and just as I am starting to feel like I don’t fit in to mainstream evangelicalism anymore, I have stumbled into progressive Christianity. Maybe it was politics, maybe it was social justice, or maybe it was being fed up with the obsession with truth in evangelical circles, but suddenly I am realizing that just because someone I looked up to somewhere along my path in life had told me to stay away from that author or that topic, doesn’t mean that the Bible is crystal clear about it. In fact, the more I study the Bible, the more I discover questions and gray areas about so much of what I have been taught. Does the Bible talk about marriage equality, reproductive rights, or complementarian versus egalitarian church leadership structures? Does the Bible say that members of the LGBTQ+ community should renounce their identities and be celibate for life? Does the Bible mention anything about trick-or-treating, Ouija boards, meditation, or Harry Potter? The more I study the Bible and read books about the Bible, the more I discover that what evangelicals call truth is simply an interpretation of the Bible that is perceived as truth. As I study the life of Jesus, I realize that He, too questioned what the religious folks called truth.
When we look at the last 2000 years of world history, it is impossible to deny the influence that culture, politics, and church agendas have had in shaping Christianity today. Yet, many evangelical Christians stand firmly on truths that go well beyond Moses, the Prophets, Paul, or Jesus. These truths can be as trivial as the way we dress to as significant as the way we vote, who is allowed to preach on Sunday, and who is allowed to get married. At one time these truths supported slavery. More than once I have heard folks say, “How can someone call themselves a Christian and believe that?” Strangely, you would think if that was Biblical truth, it would not be shifting and changing based on what church you are attending on Sunday morning. When I read the gospels, I see Jesus time and time again challenging the version of truth that was held at the time. The Pharisees believed that you must not heal on the Sabbath. Yet sick people kept appearing to Jesus on the Sabbath, so He healed them. How is that wrong? The Pharisees were so unhinged by Jesus that they conspired to destroy Him. Over different interpretations of truth.
There is a process of questioning the religious truths you have been taught all your life that is called deconstruction. Some that go through this process choose to question all of it and in the end walk away from their Christian faith altogether. Many continue on through a phase of reconstruction, in which they build meaning out of their own study, research, and connection with God. One thing I have discovered in progressive Christianity is that there is room for an understanding that one person’s truth may be different than another person’s truth. Who am I to question God’s work in the lives of others?
What I know in my own journey through all of this is that I will not walk away from Christian faith. I have seen God move in my life too many times to question His existence. Christianity may have it’s fair share of fallen church leaders, fractured denominations, and harmful religious practices, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing left. When it comes down to me and God, there is something beautiful, life-giving, and whole about what happens there. Only recently in the world of progressive Christianity have I discovered more folks out there like me that are questioning interpretations of truth, striving for social justice, and leaning in to the hard questions instead of running away from them.
Folks in the evangelical world would say that progressive Christians have been corrupted by culture. They would quote Romans 12:2 and say that Christians should be going against what is happening in the world. But let’s look at Romans 12:2 for a minute:
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing, and perfect will.
I can’t find something in that verse that says, “You have to believe everything your church says,” or even, “Make sure all your thoughts and ideas line up with mainstream evangelicalism.” What I do see is that exploring my questions can bring transformation, and coming to God can bring me closer to His perfect design for me. I have learned in all of this that there is not a single question that is too big for God. He can handle them. So I bring them all.
I have also discovered that I need to wrestle with my questions in community. Sometimes that happens in church small groups, but other times it happens in Facebook groups of other folks with similar questions that share resources, ideas, and thoughts. As I read the Bible each morning, I bring my ideas, questions, and interpretations to God. I no longer dutifully read through the Bible in one year, but now I slow down, read, study, highlight, and seek to understand until I see the full picture. I pay close attention to how Jesus disrupted the status quo, and I allow myself to see the harm that has come as a result of some interpretations of truth (even some that I previously held). Two days ago, multiple sections in the Bible led me to one word: refuge. In all of this, God has become my refuge. I pray that in whatever stage of questioning you find yourself in, He becomes your refuge too.
