Yesterday I was blogging in praise of the religious imagination and daring of the author of this part of Isaiah. Today’s extract reveals the dangers of the religious imagination. The first error here and in many parts of the Hebrew bible is to make God directly responsible for historical events. If Israel is in exile, that is God’s punishment; if Israel is set free from exile, that is God’s pardon; if the nation which conquered her, is conquered, that is God’s revenge on that nation. If God is defined by a one-sided view of human history, a very strange God will result.

Torah Scroll

The other error is that if almost all history is “caused” by God, insufficient attention is given to the human and environmental causes. The blessing of a good harvest, yes, can be ascribed to God, but the human skill, labour,and understanding of the land, should be seen as its immediate cause. But people can’t control the weather, some may argue. No, but human beings can predict weather patterns and adapt intelligently to them. Moreover, human inability to control the weather is no good reason for thinking that God does. Unfotunate Australians cannot control the weather that brings terrible bush fires but the weather is caused by global warming not by God.

What I am doing here is “arguing with scripture”, listening to it, but talking back. If we are to think of scripture as God’s Word we need to think of it as also truly human, just as we think of Jesus as Son of God and truly human. For Christians, God’s ultimate Word is Jesus Christ. Scriptures are God’s word inasmuch as they bear witness to him. But even then they are human words and require to be understood as such, if they are to be understood at all. This means we must treat scripture as we would treat any ancient writing, asking when it was written, by whom and with what purpose; checking whether it has come down us intact or if there are confusions due to the copying process. Scholars will help us by gaining extensive knowledge of the language and culture in which was written. The part played by ancient and modern editors of the texts will be examined and exposed. Only then can we treat it as a “word of God”, and that phrase itself should not mean we have to accept its message with dumb obedience. No, we can express surprise, argue with its logic, complain about its complexity, refuse to believe what seems to be nonsense. It is a word of God directed via human beings to human beings; and God expects his adult children to behave in an adult fashion before they act upon it, for after all, they live in the world and he doesn’t.

Bible

But can’t we just use the bible devotionally, to inspire our lives without all this fuss? Well yes, we can, but even here a few scholarly notes can help us. For example, we probably do use the Lord’s prayer from Matthew Chapter 6 in our devotion. But how do we say it? I bet you say, “lead us not into temptation” and we interpret “temptation” as the impulse to do something wrong. But if we look clearly at the original Greek we find that the word in question is “peirasmos” which means “testing” or “trial”. Jesus taught us to pray that we should not be tested beyond our strength, as indeed he did for himself when in Gethsemane he prayed, “Let this cup pass.” Now that’s very different, as nearly all modern translations of the prayer demonstrate. What’s more it’s not by any means a comfortable prayer. Would God ever bring us into harsh testing? And if he might, who are we to pray against it? Very soon as you see, we’re no longer “being devotional” in a conventional sense, but asking questions and arguing, because we take God more seriously than the Bible.

God wants us to become just, peaceful and loving people. If scripture doesn’t help you in that transformation, then bin it, for the moment.