The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures.
Hmm. If this were literally true, we’d be an entire world full of blind people and vultures. Although my parents were great people, I think there was certainly a time when I mocked my father and didn’t obey my mother, and I was a pretty obedient kid. I’m not talking about taking my father to task, or publicly mocking him. But aren’t all of us guilty of some of this parental dishonoring at some point, probably in our teens? To be clear, I’m not suggesting it’s egregious dishonoring, or that we all continue to do it. But still…
This morning I’m thinking about Scripture, and its value to us. If I read this literally, it’s easy to dismiss it as clearly not true. I think that’s a risk of reading any Scripture literally. Was Noah really 900 years old? Did God really plant a Tree of Life? Did we all spring from Adam and Eve?
With God all things are possible, so yes, any of these things could have happened, and could be literally true. Or they could be wonderful stories from an oral tradition to help tell a greater Truth. A prime time law show I watched explained this well to me. The mother, a powerful lawyer and agnostic was talking to her teen age daughter, who had just recently found God. The mother asked if the daughter believed that God created the whole universe and all of its inhabitants in 7 days. The daughter thought a moment, and answered that it is certainly possible, with God being all powerful. But that more likely, it was a way for people of an oral tradition to explain two unfathomable questions. First, where did all of this and all of us come from? And second, how powerful is God? To tell an origin story as fantastical as the 7 day creation story answers both, and leaves the hearer with a crystal clear image of God’s greatness. The story is also so pithy that it’s easy to remember and tell their children, and their children’s children.
Another problem with literalism is that there are conflicting story. There are two origin stories in Genesis. They can’t be both literally true. There are four different accounts of Jesus and his life that include several inconsistencies. If Scripture is literally true verbatim, how can we account for these discrepancies?
Here’s the slippery slope. If we are willing to acknowledge that not every word in Scripture can be literally true, but we’re also holding on to our belief that the rest IS literally true, who died and made us arbiter of truthness of God’s word? Unless God has provided some key or summary, how do we know what bits are literally true and which are not? What if my understanding of what’s literally true is different than yours, and I claim God told me which parts to hold on to literally?
The closest I think we come to that key is Jesus’ words. If as Christians, we believe that Jesus is God-made-man, then Jesus’ words are the verbatim words of God. Of course, there is the pesky business of the human authors who wrote down Jesus’ words. They could have easily gotten something wrong.
All of this is to say that I think we lose the greater Truth of scripture, when we spend too much time pondering the truths it may or may not contain. This bit for Proverbs is less about blind people and fat vultures, and more about how when we dishonor or disregard our parents, we can become blind to the wisdom they have, and it’s not a pretty site when we’re stumbling around ignoring their wisdom. Today, I want to think about the Truths I’ve learned from scripture, as opposed to what is literally true.
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