Sermon Tone Analysis

Unyielding Literalism: You Reap What You Sow

So we talked last time about how Bible interpretation really can be harmful.

If you remember I mentioned how our own historical circumstances produced significant challenges to biblical authority.

But unfortunately, sometimes we have no one but ourselves to blame for making the content of Scripture seem absurd.

Recently, there has been a new flat earth movement circulating among Christians.

Yes—you heard me correctly: there’s a growing crusade of “Bible teachers” busily contending for the faith by teaching their followers (in church and online) that the Bible requires us to believe the earth is flat.

This idea is related to another “Bible fact” that is experiencing a revival: geocentrism, the idea that the earth is the center of our solar system, not the sun.

“Biblical geocentrism” is based on the interpretation of verses like........

Psalm 104:5

(the sun and other planets must revolve around the earth since the earth cannot be moved).

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

What about space travel?

Satellites sent into orbit that enable (dare I say) global communication?

Airline flight patterns that use the curvature of the earth to cheat passengers out of extra frequent flyer miles (okay, maybe that isn’t the carrier’s motivation)?

The truth is these are conspiracies are contrived by people who hate the Bible.

And are being adopted by believers who should know better.

But that is how information can be used to manipulate people … make up lies to cover up the fact that the Bible has the truth about how God created the earth.

Why would believers think this way?

It’s actually pretty simple:

hyper-literalism.

The sanctified flat-earthers have blindly presumed that the Bible’s pre-scientific cosmology—which is well known to Old Testament scholars—has to be taken as a literal reality that trumps basic science (and human experience) or else biblical inspiration and inerrancy have to be rejected.

This thinking is deeply flawed.

The Bible’s pre-scientific cosmology is what it is because God decided to prompt people who lived in a pre-scientific age to produce the books of the Bible, not because the earth is really round and flat with a solid dome over it.

The flat-earthers and geocentrists sort of skip the dome part, unless they deny the lunar landings and the existence of the international space station.

God didn’t ask the people he picked to be something they weren’t (modern scientists who understood celestial mechanics).

He prompted them via his Spirit to tell some important truths: all we know was created by God—including us—and so we are accountable to him and dependent on him for life beyond this terrestrial existence.

The biblical writers didn’t need a modern science education to communicate, through their own worldview frame of reference and symbolic metaphors well known throughout the ancient world (their cultural context), who the true Creator was and why it mattered.

That’s taking the Bible for what it is and interpreting it in light of its own context, not ours.

But too many Christians have been brainwashed into thinking that absolute, uncompromising literalism is a synonym for believing in inspiration and inerrancy.

It isn’t—and never has been throughout the entire history of believing Christianity.

Literalism as Idolatry

There are essentially two subclutures within the American church today.

It is either a staunch fundamentalism or, what we can call for convenience, popular evangelicalism that divorces itself from a traditional understanding of Scripture.

Both of those Christian sub-cultures exalt the “literal” interpretation of the Bible, especially when it comes to creation and prophecy.

Granted, the notion that the Bible teaches a flat earth isn’t common to those contexts.

But over-emphasis on biblical literalism has a cost.

Literalism can become idolatry.

Well meaning people in the church have proposed a number of ridiculous Bible teachings, among them:

• Babies are really stored in a man’s sperm (the Hebrew word for “seed” [zrʿ] refers to children and is never used of women); genetics is a lie (Gen 13:16; zrʿ = offspring)

• The Bible teaches teleportation (Acts 8:39–40)

• Flying saucers are piloted by angels (Ezek 1; Zech 5:5–8)

• Animals could talk in Eden (Gen 3)

I could extend the list, but I think you get the point.

But here’s a point that’s less obvious that you might miss: when we unquestioningly teach from the Bible that literalness is next to godliness, we teach them to think poorly.

Don’t believe me?

Let’s continue.

What Does “Literal” Mean Anyway?

Many readers have heard the old bromide in defense of literal Bible interpretation: “When the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense.”

It’s pithy.

If you don’t think too much about it, it might even sound like it makes sense.

It’s actually not helpful.

It might sound odd, but “literal interpretation” needs to be interpreted.

The meaning is far from clear.

Consider the word.......

“water”

What does it “literally” mean?

Is it a noun or a verb?

In either case, what exactly is its “plain sense”?

Here are some options.

As a noun, “water” can be:

• a chemical compound (H2O)

• a liquid beverage (“I’d like some water”)

• a natural body of water (“look at all that water”), but which kind?

- an ocean

- a sea

- a lake

- a pond

- a river

- a stream

- a creek

- an inlet

As a verb, “water” can mean:

• to irrigate (“water the fields”)

• to provide hydration (“he watered the cattle”)

• to salivate (“my mouth watered”)

• to cry (“his eyes watered”)

So which of the above is the “literal” meaning?

Which one is the “plain” meaning?

That’s the point.

They’re all plain.

What distinguishes them from one another?

Context and metaphor.

Things get even more interesting when you move into metaphorical meanings for water—and metaphorical meaning can be exactly what context requires.

“Water” can be used metaphorically for a life source, purification, transformation, motion, or danger.

The metaphors work because of the physical properties of water—and still describe real things.

Non-literal doesn’t mean “not real.”

And as the saga of sanctified geocentrism tells us, devotion to literalism won’t necessarily produce accurate—or even coherent—Bible interpretation.

Everything in the Bible Isn’t about Jesus

If you’ve been a Christian for very long or were raised in a Christian church, chances are that you’ve heard that the Bible is really all about Jesus.

That cliché has some truth to it, but it’s misleading.

The truth is that there’s a lot in the Bible that isn’t about Jesus.

Procedures for diagnosing and treating leprosy (Lev 13:1–14:57) aren’t about Jesus.

Laws forbidding people who’ve had sex or lost blood (Lev 15) from entering sacred space aren’t about Jesus.

The spiritual, social, and moral corruption in the days of the judges (Judg 17–21) wasn’t put in the Bible to tell us about Jesus.

The Tower of Babel incident (Gen 11:1–9) doesn’t point to Jesus.

When Ezra commanded Jews who’d returned from exile to divorce the Gentile women they’d married (Ezra 9–10), he wasn’t foreshadowing anything about Jesus.

The point is straightforward: No Israelite would have thought of a messianic deliverer when reading these or many other passages.

No New Testament writer alludes to them and many other portions of Scripture to explain who Jesus was or what he said.

Why Is This Idea So Prevalent?

In my experience, the prevailing motivation seems to be to encourage people to read their Bible.