Literal Interpretation Of The Bible
You can’t say that you take the Bible seriously and then just ignore what it teaches and believe what’s popular in the culture. This is compromise with the culture and is clearly not obeying God’s command that we are to cast down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ in 2 Corinthians 10:5. It’s anything but taking the Bible seriously. It’s more like what Paul described to Timothy. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables in -2 Timothy 4, 3-4.
People claim they take the Bible seriously, but not literally. Now, are we to always interpret the Bible literally? No, we’re not. Actually, by literally we really mean naturally. We take God’s word as it is written according to the type of literature and so on. We’re only supposed to interpret God’s word literally where it’s meant to be taken literally. This is pretty straightforward. Scripture has different genres or types of literature. Each has its own rules of interpretation. It’s no different from today where you intuitively know that a science-fiction novel is to be read differently from a history textbook. Or a love letter isn’t intended to be read in the same way as a car manual. Or poetry is taken differently from historical narrative. Scripture is no different. Different genres require different ways of reading. But it’s really not complicated.
Historical books like Genesis, Exodus, 1 and 2 Samuel, or the Gospels are to be read in a literal fashion. They are history books detailing what God has done in the past, so it only makes sense to read them literally. But when it comes to the Psalms, that’s poetry, and it’s full of metaphors, similes, and other literary devices. Obviously it’s not meant to be read in the same way as history. Although even passages using similes, metaphors, and other figures of speech can still convey a literal truth. I never like the question, Do you take the Bible literally. It comes up with some frequency, and it deserves a response. But I think it’s an ambiguous and, therefore, confusing question, making it awkward to answer. learly, even those of us with a high view of Scripture don’t take everything literally. Jesus is the door, but He’s not made of wood. We are the branches, but we’re not sprouting leaves.
On the other hand, we do take serious accounts others find fanciful and far-fetched. A man made from mud loaves and fishes miraculously multiplied, vivified corpses rising from graves, etc. A short yes or no response to the Do you take the Bible literally, question, then, would not be helpful. Neither answer gives the full picture. In fact, I think it’s the wrong question since frequently something else is driving the query. The Bible is the collected writings of people who knew God over many centuries. But more than that, as Christians we understand that God has spoken through these people. Some Bible books recite what God has done in people's lives like 1 and 2 Kings. Other books, like Isaiah, show God speaking directly to us through the voice of a prophet. Isaiah doesn't just reflect on his personal experiences with God. He speaks for God, and God actually speaks through him. And the New Testament Gospel writers have Jesus speaking directly to us.
Centuries ago, Jews and Christians had to settle which writings were inspired by God and which weren't. But there were many more writings floating around than we now have in our Bible. The Jewish community met about A.D. 90 to decide which writings were authoritative. The books of Moses? The great prophets? But other books were discussed more. The collection of writings that was selected is what we now call the Old Testament. Christians had a harder time coming up with the New Testament, because early Christianity was an underground movement. Christians couldn't even hold public meetings until the 4th century. But 2nd-century bishops were already writing to individual churches saying, Read these books, don't read those books even before there was an official New Testament. So, there were already books considered authentic and books considered fraudulent. Can you explain to someone why you believe the Bible? I don’t mean explain it to your Sunday School class, your small group, or your Christian mom. I mean, could you explain to someone who is a total skeptic doesn’t believe in God, Jesus, Jonah, or the big fish why you think that everything the Bible says is true? That’s not an easy question, is it? And the trouble isn’t that Christians don’t have their reasons. We do, and many of them are very good ones.
Archaeological evidence backs up the truth claims of the Bible; it has the ring of truth to it, it’s the Word of God, you just have to believe it on faith. Of course, none of those reasons for believing the Bible are wrong or bad. It’s just that none of them are likely to hold much water with most of the people with whom we live and work and interact in our daily lives. The fact is, most of the world around us finds it very strange to hear that otherwise seemingly well-adjusted, put together people would stake their lives on and put their trust in a book like the Bible. To put it bluntly, it sounds crazy to them.
Under that kind of pressure, there’s always a temptation for Christians to retreat into a defensive, apologetic crouch when it comes to their belief in the Bible either side stepping the question entirely, or engaging the conversation with the goal of convincing unbelievers not that it’s right to believe the Bible, but that it’s simply ok to believe it, that it doesn’t make us quite as weird as maybe they thought. But here’s the thing, as Christians, we’re not in the business simply of playing defense for our crazy beliefs, just getting people to leave us alone so we can get on with practicing our religion in the privacy of our homes. Quite to the contrary, we are actually in the business and on the mission of declaring to a sinful, rebellious world that the King has offered mercy and forgiveness through his own life, death, and resurrection from the grave.
