A Revelatory Text

Yesterday I shared a little of my story of coming to trust in God's care and acceptance of me just as I am. It wasn't an easy journey getting to that point and there are still moments when I forget that important lesson and fall back into fear and worries about what other people think.

Still, one of the most powerful realizations I have had in my reflections and studies around this question has been the fact that, at least for most Catholics and other Christians, there are really only two remaining stereotypes that need to be overcome in order for the message of God's love for all of us to come through: first, the mistaken notion that the Bible somehow condemns loving same-sex relationships and second, the misguided attempts on the part of some churches to shoehorn human diversity into rigid, preset categories.

For today's entry I'd like to address the first of these two stereotypes, namely the interpretation of the Bible. Since advances in our understanding of ancient texts allowed careful, scholarly study of the Bible to emerge several hundred years ago, Biblical scholars have gradually helped us to learn to read the Bible in ways that still treat it as a sacred text but no longer indulge in unthinking literalism. Studying the ancient languages and cultures that produced biblical texts, scripture scholars have helped us to understand, for example, what it might have been like to have lived at the time of the Exodus or what the community that produced the Gospel of John would have prioritized or valued.

In essence, the lesson that biblical criticism (scholarly study of the Bible) has taught us is that the Bible, while a sacred book to be revered and treasured, must always be read carefully and responsibly. For that reason, simply picking up the Bible, opening it up to a passage and then saying "The Bible says this" is not only intellectually irresponsible but also potentially extremely dangerous and destructive--one needs only think about how the Jewish people were slandered for centuries, with catastrophic consequences, because of misreadings of the New Testament.

For that reason, the Bible must always be treated with both reverence and respect and also responsible, careful study and consideration. In a sense, the good news contained in scripture always needs to be re-translated for each new generation--sometimes literally with more updated language but also in the sense of helping to make the essence of the Bible's message of freedom and joy and peace known in ways that make sense and that resonate in human hearts in each new era.

One recent Catholic propopsal concerning how to do this comes from the IHM Sister and Professor of Biblical Studies, Sandra Schneiders. In her book The Revelatory Text, Schneiders demonstrates ways in which the Bible has been abused in the past against women and suggests some solutions for how to allow it to reveal God's love again in our own time.

To me, what Schneiders proposes is the essence of what reading the Bible is all about--clearing away the dust of older, uniformed perspectives and allowing the Good News to ring out again. For LGBT people of faith, one of our greatest hopes is that more and more people will learn to read the Bible in this way and leave behind old prejudices that have nothing to do with what the Bible really says. For individual study, here is one web document that outlines the basic points: What The Bible Says.

May our hope that the message of Good News be spread to all people not be confounded but fulfilled in abundance!

With wishes of peace and blessings for a very Happy Thanksgiving,
P. Chuck