I discovered the Bible didn’t have the answers

Actual image of the Bible being written

The Bible is a collection of 66 books containing songs and stories and poetry and histories and genealogies and letters. These were all written by men who were trying to figure out what God was like, and they were later picked from a larger collection of writings by a different group of men who decided that these particular 66 books best represented their particular version of God.

This is not the description I’d have offered you a decade or so ago. Back then, I might have said something about the Bible being “God’s Word,” divinely inspired and error-free. I’d probably have said that the Bible spelled out how to live a godly life and should therefore be read regularly (first thing every morning, my Grandma always said, to demonstrate how high God was on your priority list) and followed without question. The Bible was a massive deal to the Christians in the churches I attended; we’d talk about whether or not a church was “Bible-believing,” which was a short-hand way of making sure it took the Bible seriously (also: “Taking the Bible seriously” meant “Interpreting the Bible in the same way as us”). It still surprises me to see people referring to their positions as “Biblical,” using this term as a synonym for “right” or “what God wants.” The implication is that everything in the Bible is fine and good and easy to understand; it’s quite a neat way of glossing over a truckload of problematic and contradictory commands and themes, and of ignoring the fact that the small sections you’ve chosen to represent “what God wants” are probably rather different to the next Christian’s choice.

I loved both reading and being a student, so, after converting to Christianity and finding myself a good, Bible-believing church, I quickly made friends with the Bible. I’d later pride myself on the fact that I’d read every word of it (well, every word of one particular English version of it), highlighting in yellow pencil the passages I liked most. My mum had taught me a song which named every book in order, meaning I could quickly flick to the appropriate page during Bible studies and church services. I loved the Bible so much, I went to Bible college to spend even more time hanging out with it. Ah, the Bible! I found it surprisingly easy to ignore the rapes (so many women are raped in the Bible), the genocides (so many people die grisly deaths in the Bible, too), as well as the weirdly specific scenarios God had apparently decided His followers from then on would definitely need instructions about. I focussed instead on the New Testament and Jesus, who, by all accounts, seemed like a pretty cool guy.

If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.

 Deuteronomy 25:11-12
(This is what God thought it best to be super clear about.)

I spent my first semester at Bible college studying on campus before Moses was born, fighting both “morning” sickness that lasted for most of the day (and all of the pregnancy) and Alan over whose turn it was to use our one shared laptop. I then completed my Grad Dip in Divinity one subject at a time over the next few years, finally finishing up when Hazel was just over one year old. I relished the opportunity to dig into the theology I’d learned up until then; I made the most of the college library, trying to read as many points of view as possible when researching for assignments, and requesting controversial books (which, kudos to the librarians, they always ordered in for me). I discovered new perspectives on the Bible, which both brought it all to life for me in a way I hadn’t before realised was possible, and started unravelling everything I’d taken for granted about the book/s before beginning my study.

I learned, for example, that the book of Hebrews was probably only included in the Bible because the group of dudes who chose the canon thought it was written by Paul (most scholars now agree that’s unlikely). It was strange to think that “God’s inerrant Word” could have included completely different books if the canon had been decided on later in human history, by a different bunch of dudes. What if women had been included in such groups? What books would they have voted in, and why? Also, did God know those original guys would get the author of Hebrews wrong, but was happy to allow such a blunder because He really wanted Hebrews included in the final version of His Word? Initially, I gave Him the benefit of the doubt and decided... Sure. Let’s go with that.

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her.

Deuteronomy 22:28-29

Researching for a particularly difficult assignment on the book of Jeremiah taught me that the creation of Biblical texts was far more complicated than God simply whispering into the ear of a chosen, literate man a really long time ago so that we, today, could know specifically how God wanted us to structure our church services, for example, or deal with protective wives grabbing other men’s genitals. Actually, texts could be written by one person and then reworked later by scribes, some of whom intentionally changed the original author’s meaning as they copied it, “almost invariably,” says Greenlee – in Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism – “in the direction of orthodoxy or stronger doctrinal emphasis.” In other words, something that was progressive/grey could be kindly made conservative/black and white by randos who probably still believed the Bible was perfect and divinely-inspired (“God inspired me to change the text! He just needs a little help with clarity every now and then, you guys. Not everyone can be perfect! SHEESH!”).

The author/s and/or scribes’ words were then translated into other languages by another bunch of (mostly) blokes, who also helped God out by making assumptions about the texts and rewriting them so that said texts fit said assumptions. To name just one example, the woman’s name “Junia” was changed to the man’s name “Juniam” (in a translation by Martin Luther, among others) and, later, “Julian,” because none of these translators could be convinced by the actual text in front of them that there was such a thing as a female apostle. Below are two English translations of Romans 16:7, the verse in which Junia appears. You’ll notice that the first seems fine with Junia being both female and an apostle; the second accepts Junia’s gender, but not her role:

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. (New International Version)

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me. (English Standard Version)

The church in which I started my Christian journey preferred the latter translation, deeming it to be the most accurate (“most accurate” meaning “the one that best supports our views on things like women’s roles in the church”). Reading one translation over another is like reading the Daily Telegraph instead of the Sydney Morning Herald; it’s a surprisingly different perspective on exactly the same stories.

Quiz Show: Bible Contradictions by NonStampCollector

Whenever possible, I read books about the Bible and gender, and it was this topic especially that showed me that the one clear answer I craved simply didn’t exist. Not only was there no One Undisputed, True answer in the Bible to my questions about gender roles, I discovered, there was no One Undisputed, True answer in the Bible to my questions about anything. I noticed that very intelligent, sincere and holy-seeming people would spend a great deal of time analysing the relevant texts in Greek, reading collections of books on the subject, and even praying a lot, and still come to completely different conclusions to another bunch of smart, godly people who’d approached exactly the same topic in exactly the same way. (Each side would then pretend the other didn’t exist and publish their findings with titles like “What the Bible really says about [insert literally any topic here].” If you would like to see me strain my eyes from rolling them, please, tell me what the Bible actually says about a particular subject. Srsly.) 

via GIPHY

Biblicists very often engage in what we might call “uneven and capriciously selective literalism.” Sometimes the Bible says what it says and must be obeyed. Other times the obvious meaning of the passage is relativised by historical and cultural considerations. And it is often not clear for any given interpreter or across different interpreters which is which, when, and why.

Christian Smith in The Bible Made Impossible

These are but a few examples of issues which, once raised, I found impossible to ignore. Over time, they compounded into large, unavoidable conclusions for me. First of all, a lot of humans – authors, scribes, canon-choosers, translators – were involved in the creation of what we now know as the Bible. It made far more sense to me to acknowledge this and accept that the Bible is both man-made and fallible – with its dodgy translations, unclear instructions, questionable morals and many contradictions – than to try (as many do) to explain that God specifically designed it to be a hot mess. Blaming the Bible (in particular, the harm that befalls many people within its pages that God is depicted as feeling overwhelmingly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about) on humans was far easier to stomach than the view that God might actually be awful. If the choice was between God writing the Bible and being an arsehole (starting wars based on vengeance, treating people with disabilities and blemishes as inferior, etc.) or men writing the Bible and repeatedly misrepresenting God as blessing their arseholery, I’d take the latter, please and thank you.

Secondly, no one can agree on everything Bible-related, which means that no one has any idea what exactly God is trying to say to us through it. (Many say they do, but ultimately can’t prove that their interpretation is superior to the next person’s differing version.) The Bible is therefore useless for conveying important information from or about God, because which perspective should we trust? How can we ever know we’re getting it right?! 

There are lovely parts of the Bible: stories of kindness, wise, cross-stitch-ready sayings, a few kickarse women and poetry that makes one reflect on big, what-is-life kinds of questions. These aren’t exclusive to the Bible, though; there are bazillions of wonderful, non-Biblical texts – novels and memoirs and songs and poems – which have no problematic stuff to either intensely ignore or explain away in book-length arguments about why the problematic stuff isn’t really as problematic as it first appears, for reasons a, b, and c. Why spend time trying to make the Bible more palatable when I could find beauty elsewhere? Rather than wrangling with books and commentaries to try to figure out how to cast in a favourable light Biblical passages outlining the Apostle Paul’s sexist views, for example, wondering how God could endorse them by allowing them to be published in His Holy Book, I was finally free to acknowledge the humanness of his letters and simply say, “You know what? I think Paul’s just wrong. I DISAGREE WITH THE APOSTLE PAUL AND WILL READ BELL HOOKS INSTEAD.” (It felt both very naughty and very liberating.)

 Thank You God by Tim Minchin

Because the Bible is both unclear and filled with problematic parts, it can be used to justify almost every view on the planet. If you want to justify keeping slaves, for example, you could build a strong argument for slavery using Biblical texts. If you want to argue for the abolition of slavery, you could also build a strong case using Biblical texts. The Bible covers a range of fairly disturbing incidents (many of which are either commanded or perpetrated by God) with very little judgment attached, so we have to decide for ourselves whether things like genocide or filicide or polygamy or slavery or patriarchy are okay. God seemed okay with them; are we?! The Bible obviously wasn’t the fundamental source of my ethics, therefore, because it was my gut that helped me answer such questions, not a bunch of proof-texts. (I began with the hunch, and then went looking for proof-texts to support it.)

I realised this: the most interesting thing about people studying the Bible was not the Bible, but the people studying it. What are people looking for when they’re reading, and why? What makes someone interpret certain passages in this way rather than that? What actually shapes a person’s gut reactions, hunches, attitudes and behaviours?

It turned out I didn’t want Bible college, I wanted people college. 

I started my psychology degree in 2016.