{"id":1625,"date":"2021-06-23T11:12:17","date_gmt":"2021-06-23T15:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/?p=1625"},"modified":"2021-06-23T11:12:17","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T15:12:17","slug":"the-bible-idol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/the-bible-idol\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bible Idol"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure when I stopped worrying about what the Bible says.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong. I love that book. It is filled with the stories of my spiritual journey. It has provided the construct for my theological questioning. This book challenges me to look deeper and think harder. To question myself and to question Godde. So I am not dismissing it. Nor am I saying that I accept the New Testament but not the Old. If I did, I would miss too much wisdom, too much poetry, too many stories that speak to the deepest parts of me.<\/p>\n

What I mean when I say I stopped worrying about what the Bible says is I\u2019m not sure how young I was when I stopped thinking of it as a dictation of rules and behavior. Unlike some, I never had the misfortune of thinking it contained the secrets that would keep my out of hell. My relationship with Godde negated the idea of hell.<\/p>\n

Godde is too big for the Bible and I don\u2019t think the writers\u2019 intention was to capture Godde in its contents. Rather, it is the story of a people grappling with their relationship<\/em> with Godde, one that assumed ongoing revelation \u2013 personal, communal, and political.<\/p>\n

In seminary I learned to wrestle with the languages of the Bible (Greek and Hebrew), to parse meanings of words, to contextualize the stories, to do literary criticism \u2013 basically to engage with the text in intimate and creative ways. Thanks be to Godde. And for myself, after years in ministry, I love this text that is both flawed and profound, beautiful and horribly misused.<\/p>\n

Do you want me to make an intellectual and spiritual argument for, oh say, the rights of women or LGBTQ rights using the Bible? I can. \u00a0And another can use the text to refute my arguments. I think if I hear one more time that you can prove anything with the Bible I might scream. It demeans the Bible to use it as a proof text to reinforce what one already believes.<\/p>\n

I am left with the question of how to minister with people who have been beaten up with the Bible being the whip that scars the soul insisting on the brutality of self-hatred. How do I minister with those who need a new way of seeing for their wounds to begin to heal?<\/p>\n

Fundamentalists, it seems to me, have turned the Bible into an idol, replacing direct relationship with the Divine with the rigidity of rules over compassion for the human condition. The psychology of using a peoples\u2019 fear to control their behavior is deeply disturbing. I am often asked by my fundamentalist friends if I am not afraid of going to hell. And then I\u2019m asked why would people be good if there were no hell.<\/p>\n

1 \u2013 I am not afraid of going to hell. I am afraid of hurting people with religion. I am afraid
\nof religion used to manipulate people in their deepest vulnerabilities. \u00a0I am afraid of
\nthe permission to hate in the name of Godde.<\/p>\n

2 \u2013 I believe, as Ann Frank said, that people are basically good. That we are communal
\nfolks who want and need to live together in society. I believe the Bible is filled with
\nstories of people trying to figure out how to live together.<\/p>\n

3 \u2013 I am grateful for a book that has stories of Jesus in it. A revelation about how
\nwe might all embody the love of Godde, and in doing that, change the world.<\/p>\n

My invitation today is to let Godde out of the Bible box and the Bible out of the Godde box. Don\u2019t be afraid. The peace of Christ be with you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not sure when I stopped worrying about what the Bible says. Don\u2019t get me wrong. I love that book. It is filled with the stories of my spiritual journey. It has provided the construct for my theological questioning. This book challenges me to look deeper and think harder. To question myself and to question … Continue reading The Bible Idol<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,7,5,13,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1625"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1628,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions\/1628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}