Session 4: What do you mean you take the Bible too seriously to take it literally?
/
What do you mean you take the Bible too seriously to take it literally?
Topic- Scripture
Podcast Episode 4 or Chapter 2, Bible Stories (pg. 34)
Guest: The Rev. Jenifer Gamber is on staff at the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, along with her trusted companion and canine facial moisturizer, Ruby, a West Highland Terrier. Jenifer finds her sacred ground with the Companions of the Holy Cross, a dispersed community of women committed to a life of simplicity, thanksgiving, and intercession.
The best selling and most printed book ever, powerful even in its misunderstanding and misuse; the Bible isn’t a simple subject, but that is part of what makes it holy. We continue to find ourselves in these diverse texts, and this is a grace and an agent of salvation. Much could be explored, but in this episode we focus on four important points that might reduce your anxiety about the texts.
- It is a collection of wonder, a storybook library, even with the parts that are not a storybook like we would get at the bookstore.
- The texts were intended to be read and discerned in community – words that call us out, and connect to our bodies and actions, not in isolation, but in responsibility for one another.
- The Bible is a living document, in that new eras bring new insight and understanding.
- This is a text of salvation in a multitude of ways both astonishingly simple and gut wrenchingly complex.