How I Changed My Mind - 5

I remarked in Part 2 that the Bible doesn't give one clear teaching on any subject, including God. It speaks with many voices over many centuries and in many different situations. But it isn't exactly a hodgepodge. Just as it portrays  development in many of its leading characters - Abraham, Joseph, and David come to mind, as well as Jesus, as we saw in Part 4 - there is a certain development in the Bible itself, along with occasional backslidings into legalism. In the New Testament, for example, later epistles such as Ephesians and Colossians emit rays of such universal light as "Christ is all, and in all," even as the Book of Revelation backslides into themes of vengeance.

Moreover, I saw in my own experience and in that of others that experiencing the realities of life changes how we interpret the Bible. Christians who have gay friends and family members, for example, tend to become more open to equal rights and respect for gay people. Their care for people they love overrides what some Bible passages present as absolute rules. But this is okay, since we have already seen that parts of the Bible itself happily override what other passages say is absolute and eternal! 

Think of it: Who said that the Bible is the final word on any matter? Where did they get that idea? It was not from the Bible itself, for the Bible as we know it did not exist until 2-3 centuries after the documents it contains were written. 

If anything, the Bible teaches by example that development and growth are human and good. And it demonstrates that there is a real danger of reverting to legalistic ways when we are deeply anxious. 

As I came to realize this, the dividing up of behaviors into "sin" and "not sin" seemed overly simplistic to me. So did the idea of dividing the human race into two groups, the righteous and the unrighteous, in heaven and hell respectively, after death. We are all people in process, and the line between good and evil or, rather, between life-giving and destructive, runs right through the heart of each of us. 

As a newly converted Evangelical Christian in college, I was taught that the verb "to sin" means "to miss the mark," or target, and that the target is perfection. But the English "to perfect" refers to a growth process, as does the Greek.  So I have begun to think of my target in life not as never committing a sin by disobeying God, but as growing continuously in love and understanding. Maturity is then not measured by obedience to an external authority, but by the depth, accuracy, and completeness of a person's understanding what makes for life and love and truth, and their making choices that further those aims. 

I am aware, of course, of verses and arguments that can be marshalled against what I have written here. For many years I used them myself. But they have lost all plausibility for me, for the reasons given so far and because of what I think of as the parable of the huts, which I will share next time.