The Bible is not enough.
There, I said it. Just in case anyone was wondering just how far I’ve fallen from the evangelical-christian tree, this will prove my heresy: The Bible is not enough.
Back in my super-christian days, I wholeheartedly believed that the Bible was sufficient for all things. Probably not perfectly inerrant, but inspired by God and useful for all sorts of stuff. When I started questioning my faith, my friends and family kept telling me to turn back to scripture, to dig deeper into the Bible, to believe and trust that I would find all the answers to my questions there. I would get so frustrated with books and pastors who would try to prove the truth of the Bible by pointing back to other parts of the Bible. “It is self-proving” they said. And, being “self-proving” is one of the more reliable methods of testing ancient documents. Ok. But, my frustrated self screamed inside, “GIVE ME SOMETHING OTHER THAN MORE BIBLE VERSES!!!!! I want external evidence!!!”
In my christian circles, though, there was this fear… this fear of bringing in other historical proofs. A fear that letting in too many outside sources would lead you away from the church and into dangerous territory. Consequently, no one really gave a satisfactory answer as to why there wasn’t more written about Jesus. Or why we are so quick to dismiss other writings from that time. People made comments about the historian Josephus mentioning Jesus, but then we are also told that there were probably lots of other people named Jesus as well. (And, if Jesus was important enough to establish an entire religion around, is one brief mention of his name really that significant??)
In evangelicalism, in particular, there is a fear of questions. You’re not supposed to second-guess anything in scripture and, if you do, you risk being labeled “progressive” or a “heretic” or side-eyed in your bible study group. The elephant in the Sunday School room becomes, “well, what if I don’t believe that the Bible is true?” GASP. Even then, people will tell you to keep reading, to keep praying for the eyes of your heart to be opened. And, so you do. You pray and pray and read and read and study and study …. then one day, in the midst of deep, intense study, what if God whispers into your heart, “is all of this true?”
The thing is that when Christians tell you to pray and read the Bible, they do so expecting and anticipating a certain outcome. We can become so convinced that we know who God is and what it is doing, that we take away all the mystery – “read the bible, and we know what God will make you realize. He’ll show you that we are right.” THAT is how we approach scripture. (And, shamefully, I even wrote a blog post about how to read your Bible “correctly”. Ugh. I am so sorry.) But, what do you do when God shows you something different? When GOD invites you to question everything?
When I began really questioning my faith, not one single person* told me it was a sign of spiritual maturity. Not one single person celebrated my doubts. Not one single person told me that I was on the path of personal growth and a deeper relationship with God. Not one single person told me about the beautiful history and legacy of spiritual men and women who faced their doubts and fears and encountered a more profound experience with God than ever before. Instead, there was concern and guilt and push-back and shame. Especially when they realized that I was going deep with my questions and not being satisfied with the standard answers. (*I am forever grateful to my friend Robert, who, after my questions finally got the best of me and I fell headlong into deconstruction, did not pity me but congratulated me on beginning the journey of a lifetime and pointed me in helpful directions. Were it not for his encouragement and guidance, I’m not sure where I’d be today. Part of why I still write in this space is so that I can be a “Robert” for others – to reassure you that your questions are not to be feared and what you view as “losing your faith” might be the most spiritually mature thing you’ve ever done in your life.)
When I stopped reading the Jesus Storybook Bible to my kids and began reading from the Bible instead, that was actually one of the first signs that my faith was taking a dive. If I stayed in proverbs and psalms and the gospels, things were kind of ok, but I couldn’t allow myself to venture beyond that without feeling like I was reading them a bunch of fairytales. Eventually, I stopped reading them the Bible altogether because I couldn’t tell if I was describing Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or Jesus.
In Fall 2019 when I entered deconstruction full force, I stopped reading the Bible because I just couldn’t stomach it at the time. Since then, I haven’t picked it up because I still am not sure how to think about it. Sometimes just the thought of what I believed makes me angry and confused, other times I feel like I lost a best friend. I’m sure I will go back to it some day, once I have a more healthy view of it again, but for now I am totally ok with not reading it. (If you are in the midst of deconstructing your faith, please know that it’s ok to take a break from scripture! You have permission to not read it! I promise you that God has lots and lots and lots of other ways to speak to you.)
That year, when my oldest started second grade, I had purchased a history curriculum called “Story of the World.” One of the first stories was about Sargon, king of Mesopotamia. As I read about him, I was struck by the story of how his mother was frightened for his life and wrapped him up and put him in a basket to be floated down the river, where he was picked up by one of the King’s servants and taken in as a prince and raised as royalty and went on to become a great ruler. Sound familiar? A handful of other stories in our history book hit similar nerves… what was going on?
When we started reading D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths to coincide with our study of the Greek and Roman Empires, I began to feel really really stupid. Like, ashamed of myself. For decades, I had been so immersed in this evangelical christian culture, afraid to read anything that contradicted my faith, that I had failed to see just how mythological and folk-tale-ish the Bible really is. 12 Olympian gods –> 12 tribes of Israel. Mother Earth giving Hera a gift of an apple tree that bore immortal apples –> Eve in the garden. The worldwide themes of gods coming to earth in the form of a poor/beggar mortal –> Jesus. Poseiden striking a rock with his trident and a well springing up –> Moses striking the rock and water coming forth. Semele begging Zeus to “show yourself in all your splendor” –> Moses in the cleft. Deucalion being told to build an ark –> Noah.
And then we started reading Chinese fairytales and similar stories kept popping up. Most recently, I am reading Native American stories to my kids and I cannot unsee all the commonalities between these myths.
Truthfully, I feel like an idiot.
I am smart, well-educated, well-read (I thought) and, yet, for so long, I failed to see that the Bible is largely another culture’s attempts to make sense of the mystery that is this life. So many of the Bible stories are not true in any literal sense but are that society’s interpretations of the themes and questions that have existed in every culture across the world. For too many years, I was so desperate to believe that Bible and it’s stories were the ultimate truth, that I closed my mind off to everything else that threatened that belief. I blocked my mind from seeing how all of these other religions and myths mixed and matched with what evangelical christianity was telling me. To even consider those things as some kind of truth went against everything in me. Sure, I could study Islam or Buddhism or the Hindu gods, but believe that they had any wisdom to offer?? Sacrilege! I cannot believe how narrow-minded I was.
When I read a creation story from a Native American tribe the other night, I was curious about the statement that the Creator would return in “12 moons” and that the process for creating a human was to cut a beaver into “12 pieces.” I immediately thought of the 12 tribes of Israel and how I had never questioned – why 12? A quick google search led me to this incredible document outlining numerology significance in the Bible and in myths and legends from all around the world. If you allow your mind to be open to this, it’s fascinating and can also be earth-shattering to your faith. (Which is a good thing!!!!)
It’s amazing (and kind of embarrassing) that I went through so many years of bible studies and sermons and christian books and commentaries, and never realized how similar all these stories are.
I say “the Bible is not enough” because it’s not. If you go through life only looking at what the Bible says, you miss out on the wonder and beauty of all of these other cultural influences (which undoubtedly influenced the authors of the Bible). You close yourself off to the amazing truths that every culture across the globe has wrestled with in this challenge of making sense of the Divine; trying to understand how this life works and how we got here, and what life means. Yes, the Bible discusses many of these universal questions and truths – which is one way that it IS true – but what we fail to see if we only read the Bible is that humanity is in this together. We are ALL ONE. We may interpret the gods/goddesses/God differently, but it is all an effort to understand the divine+earthly nature of this world. The evangelical interpretation of the Bible is very dualistic. It’s black/white. There is law and grace. Believers and non-believers. The chosen and the not-chosen. What’s funny is that Jesus is pretty much the only person in the Bible who is NOT dualistic; whose entire message was that there is NO separation. The Kingdom of God is at hand. It’s HERE. Not “out there” or “in Heaven.” It is here. He was not trying to divide people; he was trying to show that all were equal in the eyes of the Divine. That was part of the reason for the universal theme of gods coming to earth as mortals – they leave their heavenly thrones to take on the human flesh in order to make holy what we erroneously believed was profane. They show us that what we believed was a lie! The god coming in the flesh was a mirror for us to see that we are holy, too. We are an expression of the divine.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it, and thus the eyes of your heart are opened. Instead of God opening your eyes and heart to see the truth of the Bible, It opens your eyes and heart to see the truth of the Divine in the whole world.
Which, if you ask me, is a miracle indeed.
