One of the the things I’ve been working through is asking what story am I living out?
In my humble opinion, I think that the Bible is best understood as a narrative that the Divine’s people are to live out. We look to the Bible not as a map, instead as a compass which points us in the proper direction.
I don’t think the Bible is best understood as a blueprint or a basic instruction before leaving earth, those concepts are problematic. The authors and subjects in these ancient texts are perfectly fine with slavery. Their understanding of women’s role in society is severely lacking; unless you agree women should be treated as property. Then of course the ancients had not concept of a scientific understanding of the world… their best understanding the world was to deify nature. Attempting to live out the worldview of those in the Bible is always a backwards move.
Instead we should read the Bible looking to see how the Divine is moving its authors and subjects in their culture. In this mode, we can find that their worldview is one that Divine is calling them out of. In this, we see that the Divine is working, creating a people that can be used to live out a new way to live in the world. It is in a side-by-side comparison of The Divine’s people and their culture that we understand the work that this Divine One is working to do.
Our job is to make the same comparison today, in our culture, that the Divine’s people made to there’s. At the heart of this movement are the ancient prophets, the voices calling out to the people a new way. We follow their model, allowing their example to be our compass. It is in living our their story, we are true to the text.
The problem is that reading the text like this is hard, it is simpler to take a flat reading of the text. It is harder to interpret and then contextualize. It takes work and reflection. It deals in nuance and details. Yet the hard way is the way that we begin to see the beauty of the text.
For more, keep reading.