A couple of thoughts, Kate.
The big problem with the Bible is that the truth of things jump off the page if one has already forged a relationship with God.
This formulation gets you into a problem. An illustration. Take any scriptural passage. Gather some fundamentalists, some progressives, some of neither, and some non Christians. Ask for interpretations. Each feels, given your argument, theirs is correct because they have a prior "relationship" with God. But there is no way to resolve this, no standard outside the disagreement.
There is, however, much in the Bible, probably the most important stuff, that is plainspoken and can only be taken literally.
And much, of course, which is plainspoken cannot be accepted as some sort of universal principles. But the moment one begins to distinguish between what is acceptable and what is not acceptable, one is using a present standard, not scripture.
The general way off this hook is to consider tradition as the source of the standard. But that has its own problems. |
