I’m new to this forum so this may well have been done before, if so just ignore.
I am very committed to my Christian faith. I have total faith in the Divinity of Christ and the truth of the resurrection. What I don’t have total faith in, is the idea that the Bible is to be taken literally. The written tradition of the Jewish people was to write metaphorically. Why would the Bible be an exception? Jesus commonly used metaphor as a means of communicating a truism as was consistent with that same Jewish tradition.
There is a discussion on another thread discussing whether Methuslah actually lived 969 years or not. Maybe DNA has evolved since then, maybe it is based on lunar cycles, or maybe it is metaphorical but I can’t see that it makes a great deal of difference to my faith.
Matthew 7:21. (NIV) Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my father who is in heaven.
Now read Matthew 25:31-46. (The sheep and the goats). I suggest that God is far more interested in our hearts than he is in our theology.
It seems to me that as Christians we are sometimes guilty of becoming worshippers of the Bible. We hunt for nuances in obscure verses of the Bible hunting for hidden meanings where there aren’t any. It’s easy to be sitting around in someone’s nice warm living room debating the finer points of scripture. The harder things, like actively loving the least of God’s children is a lot less comfortable.
As a Don Francisco song said, It doesn’t matter if you know the Bible if it’s all just in your head, the thing I need to ask you is have you done the things I said.
The questions I would like answered is this.
Why is it so important to your faith that the Bible is literally true, and what evidence do you have that we are supposed to read the Bible literally.
Isn’t it Jesus who is the word of God? John 1:1-5
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