The Bible Was Never Meant to Be Read Flat | Better Ways to Read the Bible | Chad Belew

that maybe some of you have heard.

If you grew up in church, maybe you've heard this statement,

the Bible says it.

I believe it.

That settles it.

Anybody heard this?

The Bible says it.

I believe it. That settles it.

In fact, that phrase kind of defined a whole era of faith

for a lot of us.

It sounds confident.

It sounds faithful.

But it doesn't actually invite curiosity or conversation.

It shuts those both down completely.

And that's what happens when we read scripture through

what Zach calls in this book, the literalism lens.

Before we unpack what the literalism lens is,

let's have some fun.

So I get some of the wild literal readings of the Bible

that we could get into.

So years ago, so long ago it seems now,

I was a youth pastor.

Yeah, some of you remember that.

Students in our youth group thought that they were funny

as students too.

And when they would see me without a hat,

it's been this way for years.

I'll give you a caveat real quick.

This is kind of funny.

You guys see the top of my head, right?

Like, I just got it shaved or trimmed, but you see.

I was at a party, a birthday party recently,

and I was sitting in this room and just talking to this guy,

and he brought it up probably because I'd taken my hat off.

And he was telling me about how he'd flown to Turkey.

And when he went to Turkey, he got hair implants.

They're doing this whole thing where they take care

from the back of your head and they put it in the front.

And he started showing me pictures, and it was gross.

But he had gotten his hairline fixed and created different parts.

He was like, "I just couldn't."

He's like, "Have you ever thought about getting hair implants?"

And I said, "I'm 43 years old and I've been bald for like 20 years."

If I came back in with hair, it would be like LeBron James.

His hairline moved and everybody was like, "Wait a minute.

It's been too long, guys."

Anyway, so it's been this way for a while.

So when I was a youth pastor, students thought it was funny,

and they would send me this picture really most of the time

and the video clip, but this picture from SpongeBob.

(Laughter)

I don't know if you guys, if you've watched SpongeBob,

you might know exactly what clip this is.

But this king had a paper sack on his head

and SpongeBob's asking why, and he takes his paper sack off his head

and this is the moment that SpongeBob is staring at it

and just goes, "Bald, bald, bald."

And then it clips to all these other little weird-looking things,

all yelling, "Bald, bald."

So my youth thought it was really funny to send me this.

Let me put this back on so I don't blind you.

So naturally, when I would get this,

I would read a certain story out of Scripture.

I would go to 2 Kings, 2 Kings 2 or 23,

and I would start with this story.

From there, Elisha went up to Bethel as he was walking along the road.

Some boys came out of the town and jeered at him.

"Get out of here, baldy," they said.

"Get out of here, baldy."

He turned around, looked at them,

called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord,

and two bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of the boys.

(Laughter)

Yeah.

And then I would start counting.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

That's in Scripture.

(Laughter)

Like, are we supposed to believe that...

Thanks.

Appreciate it.

We're supposed to believe that God is waiting to unleash bears

on teenagers with bad attitudes.

Some parents are like, "Hmm."

But if we're taking that story literally,

like this is what we're thinking, right?

Or if you go to, like, even the New Testament, Jesus in Mark 9,

he says, "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off."

Right?

Just get rid of that thing.

If it's causing you to sin, get rid of it.

If that's literal, then at least half of us in here wouldn't make it

through this week with one piece of us still intact, right?

And then there's the verse in Mark 16 that says,

"Believers will pick up snakes and drink poison."

And there were churches in the Appalachian Mountain area

that began to do this.

They would grab snakes and they would...

They said that they were fine.

The Scripture said that if they got bit by the snake,

it didn't matter.

The Holy Spirit would protect them.

And then you had a bunch of people ending up in the ER.

(Laughter)

In fact, when we moved into this building,

we moved a bunch of our equipment and boxes and stuff,

and there used to be a box back here.

This red rolling box, a tour box.

And on the top of it, it said snakes.

And I remember walking back there one time,

I forget who was with me, but they were like,

"What is this?"

I said, "Oh, that's where we keep the snakes

for Sunday morning worship."

(Laughter)

And they were like, "What?"

But it's like sound snakes.

Anyway.

I mean, I grew up Pentecostal.

We never played with snakes, but...

But if we read the Bible flatly,

we'd have prophets summoning bears,

people cutting off limbs,

pastors handing out venom at communion.

So maybe the problem isn't the Bible itself.

Maybe it's how we've been taught to read it.

And that's what we're talking about and the whole reason

that we're in this series that we call better ways to read the Bible

through this book that Zach is helping us point things out.

Last week we talked about how all of us come to Scripture

wearing lenses, our experiences, our culture, our upbringing.

They all color how we see the text.

The problem isn't that we have those lenses.

The problem is pretending that we don't.

Zach compares it to being at the eye doctor, the one.

Is one better or two?

One or two?

I don't know.

Neither of them.

I actually, I don't know where I put them.

I had my glasses.

They don't even work.

Everything's blurry.

I think I messed up on the one and twos.

But the goal isn't to find no lenses at all

for us to read Scripture through.

It's to find the ones that help us see Jesus most clearly.

He points out in this book that the way Zach has broken it down

is there's four lenses that he points out that inflict harm.

And then there's others that actually promote healing as we come to Scripture.

The four harmful lenses we're going to explore are the literalism lens.

That's today's focus.

We'll look at that.

The apocalypse lens.

The moralism lens and the hierarchy lens.

So we'll go through those over the next few weeks.

And then later we'll come into the healing ones.

The Jesus lens, the context lens, the flourishing lens, and the fruitfulness lens.

And these are going to be ways that we can come to Scripture

and read it in a way that's a little more healing and has a healing impact on us.

But each one shows or shapes just how we read the Bible.

And it shows us how we see God, how we see people,

how we see ourselves, and how eventually we react to relationships and other people.

How loving we are or unloving we are.

David Simmons says it like this.

"Biblical literalism has never been about being faithful to the Bible,

but about weaponizing selective parts of it to give a personally preferred interpretation

the weight of God's full authority."

literalism tries to make the Bible something it was never meant to be.

It flattens poetry, metaphor, and story into one dimensional commands.

It's like trying to read a love poem as a legal document.

You might know every word, but you'll miss the heart behind it.

It says if it didn't happen exactly this way then it can't be true.

But the Bible is full of truths that are told through story.

Parables, metaphors, symbols, imagery.

When we get into the Jesus lens we're going to see that this is how Jesus taught.

literalism doesn't make us more faithful.

It often makes us less loving.

When we read the Bible flatly we forget it's a library.

It's a collection written by dozens of authors across thousands of years in different languages,

cultures, and world views.

We start asking the Bible to be something that it's not.

We start asking questions, trying to get answers, and it doesn't have them.

How old is the earth?

Where was Eden, when I was in Baghdad, on the south side of Baghdad in Iraq, everybody thought

that the Garden of Eden was like 25 miles south of our base.

That's where it actually was.

It was in Iraq.

It was 25 miles south of our base.

I never got to go there.

I was like it's 25 minutes.

Let's go.

But we never got to go.

I don't know.

Maybe it is.

The belief that that's where the Garden of Eden was.

If you think that the Garden of Eden is a very specific place on this place we call earth.

Or did Jonah really live in a whale for three days?

These are modern questions that ancient texts didn't give us the answers to even though we tried to get them.

Genesis isn't trying to tell us how the world was made.

It's telling us who made it and why.

A scholar, Pete N. says, the question Genesis is prepared to answer is whether Yahweh, the God of Israel, is worthy of worship.

That's the question it's trying to answer not.

Was the earth actually created in 24 literal days?

Because in science says, no, this place is so much older than that.

There's a lot that has happened.

And then we have to decide, do we believe just exactly literally what the Bible says?

Or where's science?

Where do we go with this?

As Pete says, Genesis is not a science book.

It is not trying to give us scientific answers.

It's trying to ask the question and preparing us for the answer of is Yahweh, the God of Israel worthy of worship.

And literalism misses that completely.

Part of how this idea, this literal reading of scripture, every single word is literal.

It must be followed exactly.

It's a modern Christian idea.

The way that it came into modern Christianity was through this doctrine of inerrancy.

Inerrancy is this belief that the Bible is completely without error.

In everything that it teaches, not only in spiritual or moral matters, but in history and science and every factual detail.

It cannot have an error.

And so in 1978, this group of shocking, primarily white theologians drafted what's called the Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy.

So 1978 is when this became like a solid thing that we began to wrap Christianity around in our country.

It was designed to protect the truth of scripture, but it also built a fence around how people were allowed to read it.

If you don't affirm their exact version of inerrancy, you were labeled unfaithful or even heretical.

And the message was clear, true Christians read the Bible literally, word for word, error-free, unquestioned.

And I think Zach actually tells us in here how many, it was like 313 signatures I think were on this Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy.

And 11 of them were non-white men.

And it just, we talked about this last week that in seminary, most of the books, 97% of the books that are typically given out and read and learned from are written by white European men.

And so there's a single lens that is thought to be the lens that you read scripture with when there's so many other things and cultures and ways to come to the scriptures.

And a lot of us in this room, a lot of you, are not white men.

And I can't say us, because sometimes I try not to be, but, but I am, alas, I am.

Inerrancy wasn't an idea that Jesus taught, or that the early church held.

They were modern attempts to make faith safe, certain, and controllable.

You either believe this, or you're not a real Christian.

A few years ago, I met with a non-profit organization here in town that helps feed kids.

They help feed food to kids.

They give kids and families that have food insecurities.

They allow churches to come in and pack these boxes and then take them to families and give them to families so that kids have things to eat.

It seemed like a perfect fit for us to partner with.

It was something we could do.

We could go in.

We could spend a day in there packing these boxes.

And then we'd have the opportunity in our neighborhood and in our community to go to families with food insecurities and hand them boxes of food.

So I went in, had a meeting in the office with the VP here in town.

And I was ready to work with him, say yes, and as I sat down at the table in his office, he slid across the table with this piece of paper.

It wasn't a background check.

It wasn't like, "Hey, here's the volunteer release form."

It was a theological statement.

And he said, "In order to be one of the churches that works with us as a partner, I need you to look at a theological statement, go through it, and you have to agree to it.

If you don't agree to it, we can't work together."

I was like, "Okay."

So Paul opened it up, and the word and erancy of Scripture showed up in that statement more than any other word.

And I read it and I was like, "So what you're saying is that I'm required to affirm the erancy and infallibility of Scripture and to sign my name on this in a very narrow, rigid definition of Scripture.

Before we can help hand out food to hungry kids."

I mean, just that part.

If you wanted to come in and pack food here, you could do that.

I was like, "Well, can I?

What about quite a few people in our church or LGBTQ?

Could they come in here and pack?"

Well, yeah, they could come pack.

It was like, I had just like, shocked, "Wait, what?"

As long as we don't take pictures, right?

And I was like, I actually was like, I said, "It doesn't sound like I'm trying to sign something about the gospel here.

It sounds like you just want me to agree on inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture in order for us to partner together."

And he goes, "I don't know about all those big words."

I said, "It's your statement."

This looks like John MacArthur wrote this statement.

And I found out he did.

And I was like, "There's no way. We cannot sign this. We cannot partner with you if this is what I have to agree with."

And that really stinks because we just want to hand out some food to some kids.

But it's your ministry and if that doesn't work, I get it.

But I cannot sign this.

And we walked away from it.

I think the most frustrating, never mind. Anyway, we won't go there.

Say the thing.

Okay, okay. At the time, one of our church members was one of their largest donors.

And they didn't have to sign a statement in order to write a check, but we had to write a statement in order to hand out food.

Anyway, so they would take your money not requiring your theology, but to give food to a child you had to align with their statement of belief.

But that's what literalism lens does.

It builds gates or Jesus built tables.

It creates theological fine print that love has to sign before it's allowed in.

And if that's what an erancy produces in practice, exclusion, gatekeeping, conditional compassion,

then maybe the problem isn't people's lack of belief in the Bible.

Maybe it's that we've believed the wrong things about the Bible.

We take off this literalism lens.

We can finally see things like Genesis 1 through 3 for what it really is.

It's not a rule book or a science report, but it's a revelation about the character of God.

In the beginning of Scripture, Adam and Eve disobey, and what does God do?

He told them, "If you eat of this tree, you will surely die."

They eat of the tree and disobey, and do they die?

Did God kill them?

No, no, he comes in, he says, "Adam, where are you?"

Adam says, "We are hiding. I'm naked."

And God goes, "Who told you you're naked?"

And then God actually creates clothing for them to cover up and help them with their shame.

He covers their shame, and then he still walks with them.

They don't die.

Richard Rohr says it this way that every time God forgives,

God is saying that relationship is more important than God's own rules.

Now, if relationship is more important than God's own rules to God,

then maybe that's also how we should operate.

Every time God forgives, he says that this relationship is what matters the most.

Literalism can't see that because it's too busy defending its system.

When literalism becomes our lens, love becomes conditional.

Faith becomes a checklist, and God becomes small enough to fit inside of our certainties.

Literalism leads us to fear, while love will lead us to freedom.

Literalism draws lines, and Jesus consistently crosses them.

The goal isn't to throw away the Bible.

It's to read it better.

It's to be honest with our approach to it.

It's to be honest with what the Bible was meant to be.

To let it be what it actually is, its poetry and prophecy and story and song and lament and love.

It's humans writing God's story.

The literalism lens says obey first, then you belong.

Jesus says you belong, you're loved, and that's what's going to transform you.

We take off this lens that limits love.

I think we get to choose one that helps us see more clearly.

This is what we get in this book as Zach is helping us point out.

Hey, here's the different parts of Scripture that maybe we've taken out of context.

Or maybe we've said that it's something that it's not.

Maybe there are not bears waiting in the woods to maul a bunch of children.

Maybe someone made that story up.

But what do we do with that?

If we're not reading it this way, then what do I do?

Well, that's what we're going to talk about the next few weeks.

It's the other lenses, the ways that we approach Scripture where Jesus is the way that we read Scripture.

We see what Jesus does and says we see who God is and what God does.

We don't have to draw lines.

If we draw lines and if we exclude people, then we're doing things that Jesus never did.

If you want to be honest with it, you have to step back and say, which one's right?

Or was God bipolar?

Like the Old Testament is just a different God and the New Testament with Jesus is the nice one.

I mean, you have to.

You can't have it both ways.

I mean, you can, but it's just not honest.

So last week I gave you a practice.

Who did their homework?

Yes.

One of you.

Two.

I got two.

Two.

Yes.

I think I actually said it wasn't homework, but it was.

I'm going to give you more homework.

Another one.

Another practice to open up Scripture with a fresh set of eyes.

I want you to read Genesis 1 through 3.

You may notice that there's two creation stories, one in Genesis 1, one in Genesis 2, and they don't actually line up.

And you're going to be like, whoa, we were created twice.

No, just it was written two different ways.

And in Genesis 1 through 3 with your fresh eyes, don't ask, how did this happen?

Ask, what does this reveal about who God is?

Do you see how the different, the answer, the approach to this is different?

Number two, notice where belief has become a barrier in your world.

Ask, would Jesus stop here or keep moving toward love?

I will tell you, if you start asking that question theologically and in practice, it's going to get you in trouble.

Because you're just going to keep moving toward love, and keep moving toward love.

And you're going to keep loving people and being compassionate with people.

And it's going to be people that scripture or the way that interpretation of scripture maybe tells you they're not supposed to sit at the table.

And then you look at Jesus and you go, but that's who he sat with.

How?

I know Jesus knew scripture.

He knew the law.

I was even told that Jesus was sinless, anybody else? But if you break the law, that was called a sin.

What is Jesus so?

Or maybe there's a different way to approach this.

And maybe Jesus was showing us this.

Maybe he was calling out the hypocrisy of how we were approaching scripture that talked about him.

Maybe he was saying this story points to me and you've read me all wrong.

And I'm here to show you who I really am.

Brian Zahn says that Jesus is what God has to say.

If we take Jesus and we take the written scripture, one of them is God's word to us as humanity.

The other is supposed to point to the word.

And I'll give you a hint.

The word is a person, not. Words on paper.

John says that in John 1 that the word was with God and the word was God.

Jesus is the word of God. Jesus is what God has to say to you.

We'll get into that in the Jesus lens. I'm jumping ahead.

So, as you do this practice, and as you go this week, I want you to know that you are free.

You're free to read scripture differently.

You're free to bring your questions.

Free to let go of fear based interpretations that made you feel small.

You don't have to defend the Bible to love it.

You don't have to understand every verse to encounter God through it.

Reading the Bible with curiosity and compassion and imagination, it's not rebellion.

It's actually faith at its most honest.

Because what makes your reading sacred is not how literal it is.

But how much love it produces.

So, may you see scripture not as a weapon or a test.

But as a living conversation between God and humanity.

And an invitation to wonder, to wrestle and to grow.

And may you find that as you let go of the need to be certain, you become more open to love.

And then we do what we say every week, arsenal, just go love well.

That's who we're meant to be.

So, we do that this week. Walk into freedom that God loves you, that you belong,

that every time God forgives, He says that that relationship is more important than even His own rules.

Go allow Him to love you this week and then love well.

That's who you're made to be. We'll see you next week.