When criticizing certain sins and excesses (particularly the ones we’re not tempted to commit ourselves), we frequently fail to ask the question, “What is the good thing that this person is seeking in the wrong way?” As a result, the listeners feel condemned, and we feel frustrated at their refusal to want what’s best for them. This article on the Golden Calf from the Chabad-Lubavitch website shows a more compassionate and effective way to frame the question:

How did G-d address the gold-sickness of His newly chosen people? He didn’t abolish gold. He didn’t even take away theirs. He told them to use their gold to build Him a Sanctuary.

Compulsive overeating is a horrible disease: it’s unhealthy, it can even kill you. But the urge to eat is not only healthy — it’s vital to life itself.

The same is true of every negative phenomenon. There is nothing intrinsically bad in G-d’s world: every evil is a perverted good, every psychosis a healthy instinct gone awry.

So before we get all riled up over that woman with the two secretaries, let us try to understand the tendency of humans to splurge, flaunt and luxuriate in their wealth. We understand why we need food; we understand why we need shelter; but why do we crave gold?

In essence, the craving for gold is a yearning for transcendence. It is man saying: I am not content to merely exist and subsist; I want to exalt in life, I want to touch its magnificence and sublimity….

The answer, however, is not to squelch these strivings, but to purge them of their negative expressions. Use your yearning for gold to make a home for G-d.

On a more contemporary note, I love the country song “Everything That Glitters” by Dan Seals, a man’s bittersweet ode to the woman who has left him to raise their daughter while she rides the rodeo. He feels she’s given up something more valuable for something of lesser worth, and yet he also sees the beauty and daring with which she pursues her dream. It’s a song about how to understand and forgive sins without excusing them, and to hope that someday the other will come to love what you love. (The lyrics convey some of this, but for the full effect, you need to hear the tender way he sings it.)

Slate columnist David Plotz has been taking a lively tour through the Old Testament at Blogging the Bible, a series that combines chapter-by-chapter plot summaries with humor and contemporary cultural references. The column’s subtitle, “What happens when an ignoramus reads the good book?”, captures the essence of the project: reading the stories with fresh eyes, unencumbered by a religious (or anti-religious) agenda or the stiff piety that shies away from the Bible’s earthiness and flat-out weirdness. As Plotz said in an interview with Christianity Today:

The danger is that if you sound too casual, then people might think you’re not taking the Bible seriously. But it would be a lie for me to write in portentous language. If I were using high liturgical language or high rabbinical language, that wouldn’t be me.

Also, the Bible is often taught like that—in a formal way with moral lessons attached—but you miss the fact that this is an incredibly bawdy, hilarious, fun—hellacious, even—text. There’s a lot of sarcasm and wordplay and glee and craziness. Sometimes, I think to myself, I can never be as crude as the stuff in Judges. Or, I can never be as sarcastic as Elijah.

So, no, I don’t think I’m being too flip. The Bible is flip all the time….

There’s a notion that the Bible is pure and holy and full of family values. Thous, thees, shalls, shants—that’s all there. But what’s also there is human behavior at its most base level. Behaviors that are weird and gleeful and strange.

The writing is like that, too. There’s no stiffness to it. It’s loose and playful. So I feel like the blog should be like that, too. Obviously, I’m making allowances for my own writing, but I think there’s license to do that. You misunderstand the book if you think the only way to write about it is in an awed, distant, timid way. It’s a book that demands appreciation for all its liveliness.

Reverend Sam at Elizaphanian has posted his responses to the Internet Monk’s Ten Questions on the Bible. I would perpetuate this meme with my own answers except that Rev. Sam has already said exactly what I would say. (OMG, I’m agreeing with someone – I must be losing my edge.) My favorite is #5: “Q: Is the Bible a human book? A: All books are human. There is a docetic suspicion lurking behind this question – an assumption that because something is human it cannot also bear the stamp of divinity.” (Docetism was the heresy that Jesus was solely divine, and his humanity only an appearance.)

FYI, the ten questions are:

1. State briefly what you believe about the Bible.
2. How is the Bible inspired?
3. So is the book of Judges inspired, or only the Gospels?
4. How is the Bible authoritative?
5. Is the Bible a human book?
6. Are there aspects of the Bible that are not divine?
7. Why do you call the Bible a conversation?
8. What do you believe about canonization?
9. Do you reject the inspiration of some books?
10. Anything else you want to say?

I’d especially love to hear Shawna, Hugo, and Eve Tushnet answer these questions, as well as anyone who wants to leave a comment below — please identify the tradition you come from, and the one you belong to now, which may not be the same thing, of course!

I’ve just discovered a post from September on the Christian blog Wonders for Oyarsa that offers a promising way to engage with the Bible’s apparent contradictions. Theological “liberals” tend to address this problem by excising the uncomfortable parts or questioning the authority of the whole book, while “conservatives” are more tempted to force everything into a neat scheme even if this means defending some Biblical characters’ morally troubling actions. Both approaches, however, wrongly reduce our relationship with God through the Bible to something we can wholly control and explain:

I am not in the business of arguing for the “errancy” of the Bible, as if the Bible should be a different book than it is. On the contrary, I believe it to be the work of God (albeit through free human agents) and that it is precisely the Bible he wants us to have. So I’m not at all in the interest of doing a Jeffersonian “pick-and-choose” scheme – discarding parts I find troubling or incredible, and keeping the parts I like.

But I do take issue with any hermeneutic that defends the inerrancy of scripture by disengaging it. I have problems when, come across with an obvious tension or contradiction, people reconcile it by making the Bible out to be saying something its not. I think it far better to then ask the question, “What is God trying to say to us through this contradiction?”, and a slavish loyalty to inerrancy as a doctrine makes that question unaskable.

Take, for instance, the notion that God “will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” My argument is that we need not suppress the idea that punishing someone for something his parents did is unjust. And lo and behold, the Bible agrees! “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’? As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.” My contention is that we shouldn’t blunt either passage by trying to make it say something less than it is, but rather be asking what God wants to teach us through this tension.

Basically, I am arguing that, though the Bible is the inspired word of God, we cannot always assume we know what God is doing with any particular passage.

Now, I like this approach the best of any I’ve seen, but I still don’t know where all this wrestling will end up. When does wrestling with contradictions become a dead end? If there’s no rule of thumb to resolve them, how do I know I will get anywhere? It’s hard enough to follow the Bible when I know what I should be doing. When I seem to have the option of both A and not-A, the potential for self-deception seems immense.

On the other hand, this morning I actually tried reading the Bible (instead of just thinking about it) to resolve my struggle over whether to leave my church, and it worked. (More about that later.) Another item for the “Jendi discovers the obvious” files.