I have written about the Bible before now and created some interesting conversation. (Put ‘Bible’ into ‘Category’ and you’ll get a selection.) What becomes clear is that lots of people (Christians included) have little or no idea how to read the Bible. That is not to say that they are illiterate; it is simply that the Bible is a big, strange and complicated book and many people are not enabled to approach it.
Frankly, I wouldn’t attempt to read other forms of ancient literature without some guidance and I would be very cautious about coming to firm judgements when I knew myself to be on shaky ground in terms of my own knowledge. Yet, again and again, we find people trying to read the Bible as if it was a monolithic genre of literature, monovalent in its meaning, monovocal in its story and monochrome in its theology.
Two things bring me back to this: (a) reading Walter Brueggemann on reading the complex Old Testament in the way it is intended to be read and (b) the reports last night that “coded references to biblical passages are inscribed on gunsights widely used by the US and British military in Iraq and Afghanistan”.
Apparently, Trijicon, the US-based manufacturer, was founded by a devout Christian, and claims that it is run according to “biblical standards”. So, they have marked the inside of Advanced Combat Optical Gunsights with references to inter alia “2COR4:6” and “JN8:12”. Not surprisingly, some people are not happy about this – including me.
Apart from the obvious objections to such a practice (which I am sure others will address), the intriguing question for me is why the manufacturers chose the references they did and didn’t select others. Forexample, the sixth Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Or something juicy about genocide from the Conquest narratives?
The point is (and this is where Brueggemann comes back in) that we are selective in quoting the bits that we like or that back up the ideologies we have already adopted for other reasons – reasons that we think are derived from the same Scriptures, but might not be.
Brueggemann suggests that we should read the Bible with humility as well as excitement, sensitivity as well as boldness. The God of the Bible will not be pinned down by our ideologies and also refuses to be forced into a sanitised straightjacket of simplistic monovocal orthodoxy. The Bible has to be read with an openness to the shockingness of some of its stories and not made into a book that ‘makes me comfortable and happy’. And the ‘hard bits’ should not be ducked.
We are not told, but I wonder if Trijicon includes among its references such verses as John 5:39 or Matthew 23:27-32 or Psalm 137 or Luke 23:34?
Worse still, this makes the Christian faith, the Christian Church and the Bible itself an easy target for ignorant atheists who find in it their own ammunition for simplistic targeting of a book they haven’t read and can’t be bothered to try to understand.
January 20, 2010 at 8:27 am
[…] Bible in Their Sights I’m grateful (sort of) to Andrew Jones and Bishop Nick Baines for drawing my attention to this rather depressing bit of news. Coded references to biblical […]
January 20, 2010 at 8:38 am
Which Breugemann book are you reading?
January 20, 2010 at 8:42 am
None. But the Brueggemann books I am reading (or have read since coming here last week) are: Cadences of Home, The Land, Texts That Linger, The Threat of Life, The Militant Word.
January 20, 2010 at 11:24 am
Hi Nick,
You said “The God of the Bible will not be pinned down by our ideologies and also refuses to be forced into a sanitised straightjacket of simplistic monovocal orthodoxy.”
It reminded me of a quote by the R.Catholic Theologian, Kavanagh. He said that “We have taken the Lion of Judah and put him in a cage.” (Quote of top of head so probably not his exact words).
With that said perhaps a verse such as John 14:23 would be applicable. Of course that opens a whole bag of worms on the ‘Was Jesus a Pacifist?’ question.
January 20, 2010 at 11:57 am
Thanks Nick for all your blogs which really get me thinking. And some of the responses you receive make me think even harder!
Anne.
January 20, 2010 at 9:19 pm
“The point is (and this is where Brueggemann comes back in) that we are selective in quoting the bits that we like or that back up the ideologies we have already adopted for other reasons – reasons that we think are derived from the same Scriptures, but might not be.”–Bishop Baines
Well said, bishop! (Though I thought I’d never hear a self-identified Evangelical admit as much!)
Kurt Hill
Brooklyn USA
January 20, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Kurt, I thought it was a statement of the blindingly obvious! Oh well…
January 20, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Anne, thank you for reading them! I put the stuff out there; but it amazes me that so many people bother to read what I write.
January 21, 2010 at 7:54 am
A point made by Brueggemann again and again, I think, is that not only should the Bible not be taken captive by our ideologies, but it should be the other way round. Properly read, with a dangerous degree of self-exposure, the Bible makes us look differently at the world around about us. To coin one of his phrases, it pushes a ‘wedge of newness’ under the door of our current experience, and shows us better alternatives through that open door.
All of which makes it particularly depressing taht anyone should feel they are rendering service to God or man by inscribing bits of the Bible on gunsights. Oh well, what would I know…?
January 21, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Worse still, this makes the Christian faith, the Christian Church and the Bible itself an easy target for ignorant atheists who find in it their own ammunition for simplistic targeting of a book they haven’t read and can’t be bothered to try to understand.
Absolutely.
But at the same time, there are things that I do or say that some atheists see very little value in. Should I refrain from commenting here, or from going to church, or from praying, because some of my dearest friends might think it strange? Surely not. But I do need to keep in mind how I come across to others. I do have some responsibility to speak and act in ways that present religion (oh, alright, Christianity then) in a positive light, and to listen and attempt to respond to the criticisms I might find inside and outside my immediate religious community.
But the “the Bible has all the answers, as long as you read it the same way I do and skim over the inconvenient bits” approach does more than put off atheists, ignorant or not. It denies the ineffability of God and gives people the illusion that God’s will can be discerned directly and clearly from a single text. Often (at least in my observation) this leads to a transactional understanding of our work and purpose in this world, a sort of “If I follow these 613 rules (or whichever have been chosen by the person doing the reading and interpretation) and get everyone else to as well then Everything Will Be Okay” attitude. I think that monochrome, tit-for-tat approach to grace and salvation, rather than the impression it might give non-believers, is what makes Bibliolatry so dangerous.
I am still not sure where the Bible fits into my own life, and that’s okay… I will take my time to learn. I know that I felt a lot better about it after I realised that if God is ineffable then it’s entirely reasonable to expect the Word to be, as well.