The Bible

I really appreciate the bible.
I get the impression that my appreciation of the bible will grow for the rest of my life. 
Questions that have plagued my mind in the early days of bible appreciation are these: How should I view the bible?  From what angle should approach it when I read it? What purpose should I look for the bible to fill when I read it?  

My grandma taught me to never stack any thing on top of the bible because that shows that I have higher priorities than the bible.

Various preachers have preached that a literal interpretation of the bible is the only way to read it correctly.

Most Christians agree that every word of the bible is spoken from the very tongue of God and that each little detail of it needs to be blindly heeded without question.

I have wasted far too much mental energy unraveling the problems that were created by these lies and have been recently asking God to break down the walls that they have erected between He and I, and I have a fun little nugget that has come from these bible related ponderings. Here it is:

The bible makes for a very bad moral guide.

Two specific (and many smaller) occurrences have led me to this belief. I'll tell you about the two:

The first has happened over years of growing up under the influence of a talented creative fundamentalist Adventist. This guy preached and read and studied and I spent a huge chunk of my formative years with his family all the while learning good life values and high quality character traits.  The guy always had a very literal interpretive lens through which he read the bible and spent most of his time in quite the fundamentalist mindset and at the time, I never noticed it and didn't have a problem with it. Recently, I learned that instead of the strong spiritual family that I had always believed existed, this guy had been undermining his family with religious dogma for years. His kids have all but disowned him and he is on the brink of divorce. The rock solid morals of the ten commandments and "train up your child" that he lived by weren't enough. He even spent copious amounts of time reading Ellen White writings and even though Ellen White was blessed with unsurpassed insight into the heart of God, (yes, that is sarcasm) it wasn't enough. 

Another interaction that's brought me to this idea is a conversation with a friend about an act that is widely accepted in the secular world but taboo in the Christian world. My friend told me that he believed it was okay to do this act because the bible didn't specifically speak against it. I intentionally won't mention the  act because it is irrelevant, but it brought me to realize that there is absolutely no way that the bible can speak to every issue our current culture deals with, which creates so many problems if you are expecting it to.

There are so many unchristlike issues that can be supported from literal interpretations of biblical morals. Off the top of my head: terrorism, polygamy, oppression of women, superiority, racism, ethnic cleansing, capital punishment, retaliation. . .  Did you know that Paul actually speaks of punishing non believers when they refuse to convert??

I realize that dethroning the bible as the irrefutable moral rudder is unpalatable to most Christians, but I think we can all agree on my conclusion:  the bible reveals and leads us to the Holy Spirit who is an excellent moral guide. 

There are Christians out there who would argue that holding the Holy Spirit as our only moral guide, is way too dangerous. What if the Holy Spirit says two different things to different people? What if someone hears satan and they think it is the Holy Spirit? You can't tell an unbeliever that the voice in your head is your moral guide. It is way too dangerous.  If Christians teach that the Holy Spirit is the only moral guide, it removes the power from their hands and places it only Gods hands and most Christians could not handle that kind of powerlessness.

To this I would say: yes, it is very dangerous.

I am following a rebel who lived to turn the world upside down. I never would expect this life to be clean or easy or simple.

If you want a clean and simple moral guide, I think the bible will serve that purpose, but it will screw you up in the end. The thing the bible does much better than being a moral guide is to reveal glimpses of the only one who is worthy of trusting to fill that purpose.  It takes quite a bit of commitment and time to learn to listen and know the Holy Spirit, but I really do believe the Holy Spirit is the only one who can speak to the complex issues we face in our culture: violence, inequality, slavery.

I still can not bring my self to stack even a pen on top of my bible.