I believe Biblical literalism is such a dangerous way to handle the scriptures. It’s tantamount to playing keep-away with a brick of C4 plastic explosive that has an impact detonator attached to it. If it hits the ground, BOOM! Same with literalism. Mishandle something and you end up with a terribly warped and distorted view of God that can lead you down the road to self-destruction.

Most define literalism as a flat, word-for-word reading of the Bible with little or no interpretation. Except for a few places there is no imagery, allegory or metaphor. It says what it says and that’s it. If it says Noah built an ark then a real person named Noah built a real giant ship. That’s it. Period.

There is only one problem with this. No one really reads the Bible 100% unbiased. We all read it through our own personal lenses of our theology, experience and personality. So even someone who is genuinely trying to be a literalist cannot be that. It’s always subjective at some level. Also, the writers of the Bible never intended us to take what they wrote literally. The Bible is a cobbled together collection of stories, essays, poetry, drama and history. We have none of the original writings. None at all. Best we have are copies of copies of copies, that were all hand written.

This whole thing developed during the reformation, the Calvinists and Lutherans developed the “Sola Scriptura”, “scripture alone” doctrine as a way of validating beliefs. It was a counter to Papal authority. However neither of them intended for this to become about a literal reading of scripture. That seems to have developed from American Fundamentalism.

The real problem with literalism is that it forces one to try to reconcile seemingly disparate sections of scripture. Like how Jesus says God is love and kind and gentle, but the Old Testament stories tell of a violent God that committed genocide. Well, which is it? The literalist then must conclude that since both must be true, God has a kind, gentle loving side and also a violent, volatile, judgmental side that is known to fly off into rages and wipe out civilizations. This creates incredible anxiety in the literalist. They never know which God they are going to get. This anxiety projects itself on to all they do. Thus we have a large segment of people that believe it’s OK to execute just warfare against people we don’t like and at the same time feed the poor and be kind to homeless people. Who have no qualms about building a wall to keep people out but also claim to welcome all into their churches. We preach love and acceptance, unless you are gay, transgender, Muslim, Wiccan or any other group our group doesn’t like. But what if those Old Testament stories were just how the people who told them understood things? What if God was never really behind genocide, but the people back then simply projected their understanding of the surrounding pagan cultures onto their view of God? Then we can say that God is loving and kind, but does not have to be angry an jealous and subject to fits of rage. We can say that Jesus really is the perfect representation of the Father.

I have a lot more to say on this. But this is a blog. I need to post this or it will never be finished.