Stop Taking the Bible Literally

Go ahead.  Make a lunch date with a good friend and for half an hour speak only what you literally mean to say.  You can't say you have a million things to do unless you can actually tally that many.  You may not refer to a suit costing and arm and a leg unless there is a surgeon at the checkout.  You can't order "the usual," unless that's the name of a sandwich on the menu.  You get the idea.
 

When you are finished, you will also get the idea that speaking that way is not only difficult, it is extremely limiting.  "I have a million things to do today," is technically a falsehood.  I doubt even if I counted my footsteps I would come up with a million.  But it is giving information that is nevertheless true and important:  I may only have three things to do today, but I'm tired and they are demanding tasks, and I feel so overwhelmed that it feels like a million things. 
 

It is not a question of truth or falsehood, it is a question of depth and insight and the larger truths that can only be conveyed through non-literal speech--metaphor, simile, hyperbole, poem, story.
 

This has a religious application.  Do not take every word of the Bible literally.  That is not defending truth.  That is defending silliness, shallowness, and something that is ultimately indefensible.  I used to treat the Bible that way in my teens and early twenties.  It was a mistake and, ever since writing Blowing the Lid Off the God-Box, I have been trying to prevent others from making the same mistake I made.  I was well-meaning, as most of the literalists I meet today are.  But we can be both faithful and well-meaning and also be wrong in harmful and damaging ways.
 

People do not speak literally, except maybe for Mr. Spock.  They never have.  They did not speak literally in the time of Abraham, in the time of David, in the time of Isaiah, or in the time of Jesus.  It has always been mixed.  The Bible isn't about people sitting around in a vacuum speaking ultimate truth for all time.  It is about real people and messy lives and ancient cultures that had their own ways of conveying more than the literal truth about what was happening to them.
 

Even Jesus gets frustrated with those who take his every word literally.  Remember Nicodemus in John 3?  Jesus offers a metaphorical description of a person's spiritual awakening--he says we must be "born again."  Nicodemus, an educated man who was part of the ruling political body of the time, says, "How can anyone be born after having grown old?  Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?"  You can just see Jesus banging his head against a wall.  He finally says to Nicodemus, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?"
 

Or then there's the time when Jesus is out on the lake with his disciples and he warns them about the "yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees." (Matt. 16:5-12)  The disciples think he's mad at them for forgetting to bring bread.  Another head-banging moment for Jesus.  He says to them, "How could you fail to perceive that I was not speaking about bread?"  Jesus wants disciples who can communicate in more than just a literal fashion.
 

Now that is not to say that we should take nothing literally.  This morning when I said I was "spinning my wheels," I did not mean the usual metaphor of doing a lot for little effect.  I meant it has been snowing all morning and my car wheels are literally spinning trying to get out of the driveway.  It would be equally silly to interpret all human speech as metaphor.  Real people do both depending on personality, context, audience, and a million other things--well, maybe not a million...
 

The Bible records all of this and relies on us to come to it with all of our faculties turned on.  It is not dumbed down for us.  God did not color-code the text to show which phrases are idiomatic expressions, which stories are fables that teach a moral rather than a literal accounting of history, which laws apply only in a given historical context and which are universal statements about God or about the human condition.  We are expected to do our homework--to bring our brains as well as our faith to the text and to recognize that, even with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, our understanding will necessarily be limited.
 

Saying we take the Bible literally is also hypocritical, except in the rarest of cases.  For example, people love to condemn homosexuality with Leviticus 20:13 which stipulates the death penalty for a man who "lies with a male as with a woman."  If you're taking it all literally, then please be sure to include Leviticus 20:10 that orders the death penalty for adulterers or Leviticus 20:9 that extends the death penalty to those who curse their father or mother.  It's all within five verses, you don't have to go too far.  Literal is literal, right?  Those would be the real "death panels."
 

I've been condemned very frequently for being a woman minister because 1 Timothy 2:12 says, "I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent."  Fine and dandy.  And do you also actively enforce 1 Timothy 2:9, "the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, perals, or expensive clothes?"  It's just three verses away--again, you don't have to look far.  I can't tell you how many well-coiffed, gold-bedecked women have told me I have no right to preach.  Oh, and I almost forgot, no linen and wool blend clothing according to Deuteronomy 22:11.
 

If you want to play literal, however, I'll have to insist that everyone adhere to Leviticus 19:34, "The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself."  If you insist that homosexuality is sin and that women can't be ministers because, "The Bible says so," then undocumented workers need to get all the benefits of citizenship.  The Bible happens to demand that, too.  Just sayin...
 

I refuse to have a sterile faith that can only speak in facts.  I tried it and it made me not only hypocritical, but caused me to miss at least half of the real truths that the Bible was trying to convey.  But once I learned that truth and facts were different things, the Bible became so much more "true" than it ever was to me before.  Literalism is a prison to which I will not return.  Get out while you can.  The Truth will set you free.