A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [42]
If you are a microbiologist looking at a bacterium, you’ll see best through a microscope. If you’re a crime-scene investigator looking for fibers, you’ll more likely use a magnifying glass, and if you’re an astronomer trying to observe the Large Magellanic Cloud, a telescope will help most. If you’re a bird-watcher trying to get a sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker, you’ll need binoculars (or, if they are already extinct, sadly, a vivid imagination). If you’re looking at a photograph in a magazine, the naked eye at arm’s length will be about right.
But imagine you’re looking at an Impressionist painting, say Georges Seurat’s Bridge at Courbevoie (1867) or Paul Signac’s Clipper (1887). They are examples of pointillism; the painter uses small, discrete dots of paint that the viewer’s eye and brain must combine, creating both a higher degree of viewer involvement and a unique kind of shimmering, vibrant effect. To take them in for their desired effect, you need to stand back several feet, often across the room in a gallery. If you use a microscope, magnifying glass, or the naked eye at arm’s distance, you will be seeing the paint, but not really seeing the painting.
This, of course, raises the question: What are the appropriate tools and distances to employ when we want to appreciate and understand the Bible? What would happen if we have habitually studied at arm’s distance what should really be enjoyed from across the room, or if we have used a microscope when binoculars would have been more appropriate because of our historical and cultural distance from the people who produced the texts? It’s not just what’s on the canvas that counts, you see: there’s more going on in the eyes of beholders than we often realize, not to mention in the minds and eyes of painters. For us to be naive about the “eye of the beholder” regarding the Bible renders us vulnerable to repeating yesterday’s atrocities in the future. Slavery, anti-Semitism, colonialism, genocide, chauvinism, homophobia, environmental plunder, the Inquisition, witch burning, apartheid—aren’t those worth taking care to avoid, for God’s sake?
At this point, I need to speak directly to those for whom the Bible is a constitution and can be nothing but a constitution: I am not pressuring you to change your view right now. Yes, I would be happy if you would do so, but I understand that many people simply cannot in good conscience change their view, for reasons ranging from intellectual conviction and formation, to psychological integrity, to job security, to social loyalty to a constitutional congregation or denomination. My plea to you is that you be careful in the way you use the Bible as a constitution, because I’m sure you will want to avoid the disasters we’ve been considering. In addition, I hope you will understand that, just as you cannot in good conscience cease to see the Bible as a constitution, many of us can no longer continue to do so in good conscience; that’s why we are on a quest to find other ways to cherish, understand, and follow the Bible.10
Even for those of us on this quest, breaking out of centuries-old habits won’t be easy, first because it is hard for a mind well-trained in one way of seeing to learn a new way, and second because the religious thought police stand ready to raid places in which theological conversation strays from the familiar constitutional way of reading the Bible. After all, this approach to the Bible is institutionalized in many of our seminaries; constitutional reading is the main skill many teach. In addition, the constitutional approach is implicit in many if not most of our historic denominational