Recently, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives said that if anyone wanted to know where he stood on anything, all they needed to do was read the Bible, and that would show them his worldview.
I wish that I could do that–point to a book and say, “Here it is, my whole way of seeing the world captured right here.” But I can’t do that. Every book I have read and loved is a partial, fragmented representation.
I assume, of course, that the Speaker is talking about his view on various culture war issues, for example, that he’s against abortion, against LGBTQ+ rights, against saying “Seasons greetings,” and in favor of capitalism. And he is asserting that the Bible supports each of these views.
John Steinbeck, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, these writers I read as a 20 year old caused me to see life in a certain way and look forward. I read them not as scripture, but as authoritative somehow about what life felt like. Today, they don’t so much. There are things that they simply don’t speak to about life right now. There are similar issues for me when I turn to my reading of the Bible. I would like to say that it represents my absolute blueprint for everything I face. But after my son’s suicide six years ago, I discovered that the Bible, quite simply, did not say anything about it in direct terms, starting with guidance about whether or not suicide is a sin.
Most advocates of Reader Response theories of literature will be unanimous in their view that the text, any text anywhere, has gaps. In these gaps, the reader will fill in their own understanding, and this is why we get so many interpretations of stories that are equally compelling. They are also why we generally prefer the book to the movie, where even the best director’s gap fillers don’t measure up to our own.
This is not to fault the new Speaker for his statement mentioned above, but I must confess that my understanding of what I read in the Bible is often complicated by my reading of other books and authors–even C.S. Lewis can make things complicated for my view that I am only a biblical Christian. The minute I am reading other books, hearing from other pastors, I am beginning to fill in the gaps that scripture leaves. And many the gaps there are.
If we accept that the scriptures were written by many authors over a long period of time, we might accept that the Author behind them, the Creator, was a Creator of few words. 66 books. There seemed to be great concern over preparing certain foods, and no interest in explaining where Seth’s wife might have come from. Different authors, it seems, were influenced not only by God but also by the immediate culture around them.
But also, consider this–the brevity of the whole enterprise. A few thousand pages represent the holy text, and that is all, with a great deal of attention to certain ideas. I can’t imagine one of our politicians living so long and being so eloquent and restrained. But that is what we have, a nonpolitician explaining things.
I still don’t understand why we automatically associate the reading of the Bible with conservative political views. The Bible does not support, or even know about, capitalism. Or socialism, for that matter. Both -isms are recent constructions of an enlightened, industrialized world. The Bible was long finished thousands of years before Karl Marx or John Stuart Mill, two writers who probably had more than a passing familiarity with the Bible. By the time we get, say, 300 years out, we have St. Augustine trying to show that allegorical readings of the Old Testament are justified, especially with texts that are very hard to understand.
If we are honest, the gaps are there–and that doesn’t have to undermine anyone’s faith. We fill the gaps in with our experiences. Mention a boat and I’m likely to supply the sails. Mention baking bread, and it will take some effort to get past a loaf of garlic bread.
The same was true with slavery. The Bible was used rather thoroughly to support the debased institution of slavery in the old American South. It was used less successfully for abolition.
The Bible has very little to say about suicide. There are only a few instances of it. King Saul tries to take his own life before he is captured by his enemies. Judas is supposed to have done it. And the one jailer in the Book of Acts has his hand stayed by Paul, who reassures him that all prisoners are still accounted for, and he won’t be held responsible.
In each case, there is no commentary, no theological perspective attached. When I was a child, our priest assured us that Judas had sinned horribly by taking his own life. Suicide, he said, was forbidden.
But again, this is a cultural response to a gap. Either the gap was left there because the author and scribes assumed that there was no question. Or they didn’t see any issue with the gap.
When we read back to those pages, we see the need to fill gaps. I fill them with what better writers have called a law of love.
With suicide, we have been encouraged by so many people who do not take the traditional view of filling in the gap. They understand the brokenness that our son was facing.
I believe that they have followed a law of love, at least in this case.