My Story with the Bible
I have always loved the Bible. I grew up in a church tradition that elevated the Bible to Divine status. I joke that I grew up knowing the Father, Son and Holy Scriptures. It was the inspired word of God for us. “Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so” revealed a “sola scriptura” doctrine that was primary in the places I was raised. “The Bible says it, we believe it, that settles it,” might as well have been a t-shirt.
I was content with the view of the Bible until I had an encounter with the Holy Spirit when I was 15 and it changed my relationship with the Bible. No longer was the Bible just how I knew that God loved me. The Bible became the avenue by which I came to know God. And because of what the Spirit had done in me, my hunger to read and understand and memorize this book became an all-consuming fire. I became the kid and college student who did not leave the house without my physical Bible. Not the bible gateway app, friends. We didn’t have iPhones. But instead, my actual bible. I wrote it in, marked up the margins with sermon notes. I learned to hear from and receive direction from the Holy Spirit through the scriptures. I rarely went a day without reading the Bible. I wanted to know God, I wanted to hear from God. This was the way to do, I learned.
It wasn’t until my 20s that I ever questioned the Bible. As I went through my own faith deconstruction, I say that the Bible was written by men and for men. As a feminist, and as someone healing from spiritual abuse, and a big God wound, I couldn’t read the Bible at all. The male-centric language, the colonizing language, the child-abusing God, I found it everywhere, and I couldn’t, so I didn’t.
Matt Chandler, John Piper, John Macarthur, my former congregation, and others quoted the Bible to me like this:
1 Corinthians 14:33
33 God isn’t a God of disorder but of peace. Like in all the churches of God’s people, 34 the women should be quiet during the meeting. They are not allowed to talk. Instead, they need to get under control, just as the Law says.35 If they want to learn something, they should ask their husbands at home. It is disgraceful for a woman to talk during the meeting.
As God has healed me and as I have spent my adult life studying the Bible and theology, I am in a season of learning to love the Bible again. To hold this book, central to our faith as Christians, in its proper place, to wrestle with it, study it, dig into it, and mine wisdom for living. To cooperate with the Holy Spirit for an interpretation and devotional quality that is life-giving to all humans.
I know you have a story, too. You have a story about your relationship with the Bible. You were taught something. You have deconstructed something. That’s probably why you are here.
I am going to spend the next few weeks reflecting on what the Bible is and isn’t with the hopes that you will find some healing, some revelation, or maybe just some solidarity with others.
Anyone else ever struggled with the Bible?