...and the answer is Yes.  Remember that the Bible is like the Sunday newspaper, with lots of kinds of things.  And, remember that the Bible isn't dictation from heaven:  God did something, and when God acts, the experience is too big for mere words, and so we resort to images...the way lovers do.  If I love her, I have no interest in telling you "just the facts."  With unblushing bias, I use an extravagant image, I hum a tune, I gesticulate.  The Bible is love for God on paper, giving us far more than mere facts, dates, and places.

   And yet the Bible is full of facts and history.  So how can we tell when it's fact, and when it's metaphor?  We read, and pay attention to internal clues.  Children can do this:  when my daughters were 5 and 7, we read C.S. Lewis's Lion, Witch & the Wardrobe; they were sad when I read that Aslan, the wise lion, died.  But the next day, they immediately knew the difference when I told them "Great-grandmother Stevens died."  A first grader knows Aslan is a make-believe character - about whom very true things may be said! - but that Great-grandmother Stevens was a real person, and we'd be attending her a funeral.

   When the Bible says "David's son Solomon became king," or "Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea," clearly facts and history are intended.  But when God says "I have planted my vineyard," he isn't starting a little wine-making business on the side:  it's an image.  The Psalms declare "God is my rock!" - but only a simpleton would ask "How many tons does that rock weigh?"  Lots of material in the Bible is clearly intended not to be taken as literally "factual."  Jesus made up stories that were not "true."  Rather, his stories were true in the way only a fictional story can be true.  "A man had two sons."  Jesus was not talking about a specific man with a name and address, whose sons had provable birthdates.  But when the disciples ventured to far-off places, risking life and limb to say "Jesus was raised from the dead, and we saw him," they weren't thinking about the flowers of springtime or some vague imaginary spiritual idea.  For them, it was a fact, the fact.

   We might on some rare occasion get metaphor and fact backwards - but even if we do, no disaster will strike.  The story of Jonah has all the telltale signs of being as made up as the stories Jesus told:  Jonah (whose name means 'silly') was swallowed by a fish (of which there are none large enough in the vicinity), lived for three days in its belly, was vomited onto the shore, walked to Nineveh, converted the whole city (although by what the rest of the Bible as well as Assyrian records tell us, the Ninevites persisted in lopping off heads and worshipping their moon-god).  But if we get to heaven and God says "Jonah was very real, and survived three days in a real fish," we can say "Sorry" - and it won't matter, because whether the fish is real or made up, it is the point of the story that matters.

   And the point is:  we, like Jonah, have this naughty habit of rushing away in the opposite direction from where God wants us to be.  In fact, one of the ways we evade God is by intellectualizing the Bible:  I'll think a lot about its factual inerrancy, but then have no energy left to let the Bible change my life.  Or I'll forever harbor intellectual questions about whether the Bible history or merely metaphor, and thereby evade God's claim on my life.

James
james@mpumc.org

The complete email series on Bible Questions can be found if you click here.

Coming up: 
eBibleQuestions6 - How reliable are translations?
eBibleQuestions7 - How do we read the Bible?
eBibleQuestions8 - What about Creation and Evolution?

Sunday's sermon on 1 Thessalonians 4 may be heard on our web site.