Marilyn McEntyre is a fellow at the Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts at Westmont College who writes in the June, 2009 edition of Sojourners Magazine" an article she titles, "How to Read the Bible (Hint: The Gray Area is Holy Ground). Her discussion focuses not so much on the content of the biblical narratives, poems, speeches, songs, letters and visions, but on our approach to them. "How we read," she suggests, is immensely consequential."
McEntyre asserts that three basic questions are "useful" in approaching scripture, as well as other things written and read: (1) What does this text invite you to do? (2) What does this text require of you? (3) What will this text not let you do?
This is a wonderfully rich little article that I would encourage you all to read in its entirety. You can read it online at:
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0906&article=how-to-read-the-bible
If "double-clicking" this link doesn't work for you, you can copy and paste it into your browser.
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3 comments:
The following is not my original writing - it's from a weekly email sent to me by Rev. Marsha Thomas, in which her quote of the week is from Rainer Maria Rilke:
From: "Rev. Marsha Thomas, Holistic Life Coach"
Quote of the Week...
"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day."
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
Debbie Haugen arranged for Rev. Thomas to lead one of the sessions at the Women's workshop in March of this year (I think it was in March).
Anyway, this quote helps me accept the ambiguity and lack of black and white answers to my questions about my faith. My challenge is to keep asking those questions, despite the lack of clarity and increasing gray area I find myself in/on. If I can remember that the gray area is Holy Ground, it makes my discomfort easier to accept.
C. Tani
In the full article I really liked, "AMAZEMENT is an appropriate first response to an encounter with the Christ of the gospels: To be amazed is to find oneself in a maze, knowing there is a way, but unable to foresee the whole path. It is also to recognize that you have come upon something incompatible with rational expectations..." That helps me sum up my feelings of all this "new discovery" about the bible. It is comforting to know that in my confusion and efforts to understand the bible others are there with me looking for the cheese at the end of that maze. The lifelong journey through the maze and the knowledge that today I have an understanding that will change with me as I get further into the maze is also comforting. The maze can be simple at times and lead to dead ends at other times. I laugh knowing God is above that maze watching me make my way through. He knows where the cheese is. My human, easy way out side says there has got to be a ladder around here somewhere. My spiritual side says to take my time and don't cheat. All in good time will I reach the hunk of cheddar. Eric
Ms. McEntyre makes a statement about literalists who “…often take refuge in the comforts of their learning…” Fear is a huge driver and therefore the literalists’ chosen path seems natural and understandable. Of course they are wrong…. :>)
Another component is perhaps tribalism and the desire to fit into a group. Tribalism has enabled humans to survive and is one of the things that differentiate us from, say, rabbits. Like the ones that keep eating our flowers. Anyway, extending that thought, it is in a way tribalism that separates us into Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, etc., let alone literalists and non-literalists.
Any thought of talking to the Literalists must then take this fear into account and provide comfort and safety. It is not easy for someone to accept that everything they have come to know and believe is wrong. Unless it is us who are wrong? Think about how strongly Copernicus’ theory was attacked as a result of the implications of his discovery that earth was not the center of the universe.
I also looked up that Emily Dickenson poem and am not quite sure why Ms. McEntryre only included a bit as it is quite short.
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind --
Stephen
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