What Does the Bible Say About ...?

In their neat little book, The Bible Tells Me So: Uses and Abuses of Holy Scripture, Jim Hill and Rand Cheadle try to argue that ideologues and provocateurs of every ilk have always used the Bible as a "proof-text" for their political, moral, or philosophical positions. They cite literally dozens of themes, ranging from slavery to pacifism to demonstrate that people on every side of every issue have appropriated and accommodated the Bible to "authorize" and explain their point of view.

Of course, they are correct. But they leave the most basic question unanswered:

"What does the Bible really say about issue X, or Y, or Z?

For almost all the issues, the answer is, "not much." In order to get a sense of how a biblical writer might respond to, say, an inquiry about a woman's proper role in family, church, and society, you'd have to cobble together a wide range of opinions, stories, anecdotes and admonitions, and depending on whether you were already an ardent feminist or a stolid traditionalist, you'd be thrilled or appalled by what you found.

But the way we generally tend to do it is just the opposite. We are already the ardent feminist or the stolid traditionalist (take any issue and think up people on opposite ends for complementary metaphors), and we appropriate what we like and dismiss, or worse, explain away what we don't like.

For example, there is no denying that during the millennium and a half that material was being collected, edited, and canonized into what we now call the Bible, the world in which all that collecting, editing and canonizing was being done was a patriarchal word. It is ludicrous to deny that, but many do. It is similarly absurd to say that God simply had these or other intentions for these old texts, so it only goes to follow that some rotten so-and-so or some group of rotten so-and-so's got hold of the texts the way God intended them to be and out and out changed them for the sole purpose of perpetuating a misogynous patriarchy, or any other thing that we now find offensive or difficult.

It comes down, at least for me, to whom you choose to listen when you read the Bible. If the Bible says one thing one place about issue x, y, or z, to whom do you choose to listen? Who is most authoritative? The oldest text? Moses? The prophets? Paul? Jesus?

For me, the answer is Jesus. Yes, I know that there is controversy and discussion about what Jesus really said, or maybe said, or maybe didn't say, and I think that conversation is crucial. All that being said, believing that there are few if any uniform "positions" about virtually everything except loving God and caring for the broken, lost, and poor, focusing on what the Bible says Jesus says has been the most helpful thing for me, at least as far as personal ethics and behavior are concerned.