How do you spell awkward? Bib lit?

I was involved in two discussions at school this week—one with a student, one with staff—in which I had to utter the phrase: "I am not a Christian." I think people come to believe that because I can talk about faith, and because I like to talk about religion, and because I report on religion, and because I have two degrees in religion, I must be some sort of religious person. Alas...

The student is about my age. Southern Baptist. Nice guy. Really had a life-changing experience with Jesus (or whatever). We were discussing his ministry history, and it turns out he's worked with a few folks I know, including a SBC pastor here in town at a "new" church who has turned over his staff about ten times in ten years because he's the most conflict-averse, passive agressive pastor I've ever met. At some point the student decides I'm "on the same team," I guess, and he says: "If it weren't for the veracity of Scripture and the resurrection, I wouldn't be a Christian anymore." Ignoring the whole "veracity of Scripture" thing, I said, quite nicely, I think, "You know I don't believe that stuff anymore, right?" He looked a bit shocked. The conversation came to an awkward conclusion right there.

The staff story was less problematic. Someone just assumed I'd be interested in taking the evangelical side in a discussion about the Bible. I said, "I'm not a Christian." Consternation. Concern. Awkward silence. Where do people get this idea?

For one class we were reading Randall Kenan's "The Foundations of the Earth." If you haven't read Kenan, you should, especially this story. It's a parable about sabbath-breaking and homosexuality; specifically, how the church has de-emphasized a commandment and over-emphasized a few verses from Moses. The Church does not come off well in Kenan's stories. He is an amazing African American and gay voice in American literature. Anyway, the story is full of Biblical allusions to Job (as well as direct quotes), biblical names (the pastors is Hezekiah, the arrogant king, and the gay, white character is Gabriel), visions, dreams, and oblique references to specific Bible stories (Jacob's dream, Peter's dream, David's men picking wheat on the Sabbath, etc.). I have a half dozen Christians in a class of 27. None of them, not one, could identify any of the biblical allusions.

Back in the day when I was an evangelical I lamented the fact that churches did a horrible job of teaching literature for the sake of teaching shitty philosophy (read that, apologetics). It's never been more apparent to me now that the greatest problem the Church has when it comes to instilling critical thinking and robust values in their offspring is in their inability to perceive their own holy book as literature.

Comments

[Leighton]

Once in a while I get a bug-eyed "You mean you don't think all religious people are stupid?" Tribalists are funny.

[Amanda F.]

Your last sentence is really interesting. I'm still thinking about it. How would perceiving the Bible as literature help their values? I think that I see what your saying as far as critical thinking but I'm not sure about the values part of it. On a related note, OU has a Bible as Literature course. That would probably be pretty interesting.

[Jeff]

Greg can speak for himself, but what I take away from that last sentence is that churches spend more time teaching apologetics, doctrine, and assume ideas that their pastors told them when they were in Sunday School at age 12 or have gleaned from the public "culture war" without taking the time to read for themselves and make up their own minds. As such, many in the church are woefully ignorant of their own holy book, preferring to listen to their pastor, their favorite Christo-celebrity, or crappy fiction depicting the end of the world. People forego reading the stories for the systematic explanations.

[Mike]

"... the greatest problem the Church has when it comes to instilling critical thinking and robust values in their offspring is in their inability to perceive their own holy book as literature"

That is true ... imagine how stunted our understanding of Shakespeare or Joyce or Hemingway would be if we only saw individual sentences or paragraphs pulled out of context from their respective works.

I would also suspect that if you sent contemporary American Evangelical Christians on a true apostolic mission; that is, if you required them share the essence of the Gospel with absolutely no references whatsoever to the Bible (the Apostles didn't have one) or to any kind of Western theology or Protestant doctrine (which the Apostles also did not have) -- most of them would end up as abject failures.

It's not just that we don't understand the book. We don't understand God either, and we have replaced Him with rules and lists and guidelines that bear only semblance to the life that God would have us live.