Reading the Bible Badly. Karl Allen Kuhn

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СКАЧАТЬ certainly plays this role for many people of faith. In many communities, Scripture holds a significant degree of authority and power. If some perspective or behavior is deemed “biblical,” then it is seen as the will of God. These are matters of high stakes. It is important to be clear on what is of God, and what is not. It is important, Isaiah cries, to see and hear properly. So, yes, it is certainly understandable that we would resist any claim that we have been seeing and hearing God’s word and will poorly.

      Just like the Pharisees did.

      Yet take note of this. Faithful recognitions of having misunderstood or neglected the ways of God fill the pages of Scripture. Recall the plea of the psalmist: “Make me to know your paths, O Lord!” In fact, I think we would be hard-pressed to find any major biblical figure that did not need a lens adjustment at some point during his or her life (and most needed several).

      For this reason, Jesus proclaims that few things are more righteous (and desperately needed) than humility and repentance! He also makes it clear that few things are more foolish than pride and willful ignorance. Humility is about setting aside the arrogance, fear, and even hatred that is preventing us from seeing as Jesus sees. Repentance is about turning our hearts and heads in new directions, to perceive all things as persons attuned to the realm of God. According to Jesus, lens-adjusting is a necessary, even daily practice for his disciples:

      9 Pray, then, in this way:

      Our Father in heaven,

       hallowed be your name.

       10 Your kingdom come.

       Your will be done,

       on earth as it is in heaven.

       11 Give us this day our daily bread.

       12And forgive us our debts,

       as we also have forgiven our debtors.

       13 And do not bring us to the time of trial,

       but rescue us from the evil one. (Matt 6:9–13)

      Jesus makes it clear that we resist faithful lens-adjusting to our own peril: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matt 6:22–23).

      This book is about the lenses we use to read Scripture, especially those lenses that lead us to read the Bible badly. The maladjusted lenses I will discuss are common to American Christianity.

      These lenses lead American Christians . . .

       to read the Bible’s stories and instruction unaware of their historical and cultural settings, disregarding the testimony of their spiritual ancestors, and finding mostly a mirror image of their own values and selves in Scripture;

       to insist that the Bible must be the “inerrant word of God,” historically factual in every way and doctrinally infallible, overlooking so much of what makes Scripture beautiful and relevant;

       to follow a lectionary that dices and splices Scripture into bite-size morsels for Sunday worship, divorces passages from their biblical settings, strikes verses deemed offensive, and undermines the literary artistry that is the lifeblood of Scripture’s profound revelation;

       to read the Bible in fear, warping its witness to Jesus and tragically neglecting Scripture’s ever-persistent call to compassion, hospitality, and love;

       to read the Bible looking for simple rules that affirm our sense of right and wrong, while missing the point of what true righteousness is about;

       to read the Bible as agents of heterosexual male privilege, using its enculturated patriarchy as a license to deny women’s gifts and their call to leadership in the church, and to discriminate against members of LGBTQIA+ communities.

      This book is also an invitation for us, like our ancestors in the faith, to discern those elements of our spiritual upbringing, psyches, and souls that cloud our vision. It is an invitation to seek our own lens adjustments, so that we can more faithfully embody and steward God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

      Reflection or Discussion Questions

      1 How would you describe the reading glasses you use for interpreting the Bible? What experiences, beliefs, practices, and traditions shape the way you read Scripture?

      2 What do you make of Powell’s experiment with the parable of the “Prodigal” Son? How do you understand the parable? Why do you understand it in this way?

      3 Are there elements of your “hermeneutic” (your lens for reading Scripture) that sometimes prevent you from seeing the Bible clearly? If so, where did they come from? Why do you still hold on to them?

      4 Are there elements of your hermeneutic that you cannot do without, that are nonnegotiable for you?

      1. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture texts are taken from the NRSV.

      2. The Greek verb Paul uses here which the NRSV translates as “be transformed” is metamorphēo.

      3. The notion of a crucified and resurrected messiah does not appear to have existed in Israelite thought prior to the time of Jesus. The Israelite Scriptures and other Israelite traditions refer to righteous ones who suffer due to their faith in God or on behalf of Israel, such as in the Psalms, the Maccabean traditions, or the Servant Songs of Isaiah (e.g., Isa 52:13–53:12). But there are no surviving Israelite texts prior to Jesus that specifically foretell the crucifixion and resurrection of God’s anointed. For this reason Paul refers to Christ crucified as “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23).

      4. Powell, “The Forgotten Famine.” I previously cited and discussed this study in Having Words with God, 118–20.

      5. Powell, “The Forgotten Famine,” 266–67.

      6. When Powell challenged the Russian students’ focus on the famine as the primary cause of the son’s plight, they replied that during a severe famine even the rich will die from hunger. In fact, the wealthy may be at a disadvantage since they have not cultivated the skills and networks to survive such desperate times.

      7. Lest we quickly dismiss the reading of the parable favored by the Russian students as overly tendentious, Powell (“Forgotten Famine,” 279–85) notes that several features of the parable as it appears in Luke’s gospel could be marshaled to support it. He points out that the Greek terms that are commonly rendered “squandering” and “dissolute, “riotous,” “loose,” and “reckless” living in our English Bibles could just as easily be translated in a far less pejorative sense, identifying the son not as “prodigal” (i.e., “recklessly wasteful”) but more along the lines of “carefree spendthrift.” He also argues that viewing the СКАЧАТЬ