Truth be told

This week I came across an interview with Princess Di’s former butler, Paul Burrell. He seemed quite adamantly passionate about telling the truth about the life of the late Princess Di. One of the things he seemed particularly concerned about was, if he didn’t tell the story then it would be told by someone else who wouldn’t get the facts right, therefore would not display the truth of the life of Diana (according to his understanding of what is true). Well, it’s all relative to experience isn’t it?Whenever I come to writing these reflections, it’s always in response to some reading or an experience I had during the week. In this case, I stumbled across this interview during the same week I had begun reading another book that had been sitting on my book shelf, ‘The Heart of Christianity’ by Marcus J. Borg. It didn’t take long for Borg’s book to be regarded as ‘controversial’ as Borg sought to get to the matters at the heart of Christianity. Depending on your approach, that is a very dangerous place to go, yet I like many others, attempt to go there now.

What is the bible? Is it the unique revelation of God, the literal word of God, the spoken truth of God without question or deviation? If so, who tells us such things that we should believe it? If you asked people if the bible was the literal word of God 50 years ago, the majority of Christians would have responded ‘yes’. If you asked Christians today to answer truthfully what they thought, the majority would now say ‘no’. So what’s changed? We live in an age of information, a time where the modern meets post-modern, everyone is scientifically and historically liberated by new scholarship and so on. In this light we view and understand the bible differently. We discover new things about the origins of its authors, why they wrote what they wrote, who they were writing to and their historical context. What I find interesting is, as soon as I begin to explore this new biblical understanding, a faithful Christian will leap to the defence of the bible. My first response to that is, I don’t think the bible needs any defence, and second, what are people threatened by?

Borg would suggest that there are 2 expressions of the Christian faith today. There’s the earlier paradigm who accept the ‘traditional’ beliefs, then there’s the emerging paradigm, wanting to question and understand why we believe what we do. To a large degree the emerging people are in exile from the church for all kinds of reasons because they feel they’ve been asked to check their intellect at the door.

The bible is viewed by many as speaking the ‘truth’ about the nature of God, yet we all approach this in different ways. So where does the bible come from? I’ll say this straight up just for clarification, the bible did not drop from the sky, leather bound and conveniently organized into books with chapters and verses, translated in the old King James English. There are a number of authors, writing over a span of several centuries, to very different cultural contexts, in different languages. So how then are we to interpret the bible? If it’s not the scripture we’ve been led to believe in, where every word is to be literally interpreted for Christian living today, then what can we trust, what can we believe in?This can really blow a lot of people out of the water, is anything in the bible true? Well what is truth? I believe the kingdoms in the Old Testament really existed, as did their kings. The prophets who told of the coming of Christ, really lived, Jesus really did walk this earth and he really was killed by way of Roman crucifixion for being a political agitator. These can be proven historical facts. I also believe in the resurrection as witnessed and testified to by many, now there’s a matter of faith.

The bible is not a proof text! It was never meant to be. It is a living breathing testimony of how people through the ages have experienced the living God. It is relevant to us not as a legalistic document for Christian living today, but as a conversation tool with the people of faith both past and present.I wonder what the reaction of ‘biblical authors’ would have been if told their writings would one day be seen as scripture? The Apostle Paul for instance was only writing letters to churches because of the issues they faced as followers of a ‘new way’. I wonder if he would have written differently, knowing it would be published in a book for millions around the world to read? The author of John’s Gospel writes that Jesus did many other things that if written down, there would not be room in the whole world to contain the writings (Jn 21:25). Well I wonder if he would have said that if he had heard of CD ROMs and Hard drives. I’d love to be able to write back to John and say, ‘did you know we now call your story a Gospel? Furthermore, there were other things written about Jesus and we call them the 3 synoptic Gospels, they sit right alongside yours in something we call the bible.’ There was far more written about Jesus than even we are aware of. In the 1940s the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered. In these scrolls are writings of other prophets from the time of the prophets, more creation stories, an extra Psalm, at least 50 more Gospels, and more. So what makes our 66 books in the bible ‘scripture’ yet these are not? Because a bunch of men in the 3rd century CE during the time of Constantine decided what’s in and what’s out? These extra writings are referred to as the Apocryphal writings. What we have available to us in ‘the bible’ is the directors cut. So can the experience of God, God’s story expressed through God’s people, be limited to the directors cut? Hey, the truth has to be told by someone, but the truth according to who? Friends, over time we have put our faith in the wrong things. We are told to put our faith in the bible and we use it as a proof text, when we should first put our faith in God. Yes the truth and revelation of God can be told and expressed in many ways.

The word of God is embodied though the expression of the faith and life of the people of God, not just contained in the text. Let the truth be told, God cannot be contained or boxed in a neat package, our God is a living God whose word and revelation is being expressed though God’s people.

Shalom Mark