Reducing Spiritual Harm
I taught the Bible for twenty years in some pretty cool places. In my first go-around, I was a prof for four years at a small Bible institute just outside of the capital of Asunción, Paraguay. Then I taught the New Testament for thirteen years at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia, in Medellín.
I give you this context because as a former evangelical Christian and Bible professor it pains me to say this:
An inspired Bible produces harmful Christianity.
The reasons are straightforward:
When “every word is inspired by God” then every word is backed by the highest divine authority according to Christian theology.
Putting a divine label on the biblical text normalizes and sanitizes ancient violence and brutal practices. I even taught my kids to walk around the walls of Jericho!
Then you place that book in the hands of mere mortals, “sinners” according to Christian theology and expect them to use it wisely.
Then there are no guardrails or limits in place to prevent abuses.
The result is foreseeable and wholly preventable large-scale spiritual harms. Here is a catalogue of the kinds of harms I (and my students, and their churches) experienced over a twenty year overseas career.
Harmful Consequences of Divinely Inspired Bible
Stifling legalism - This occurs because people read the Bible as “the word of God,” and thus any verse can become a command to obey. The result is straightjacket Christianity where church members police each others’ thoughts and behaviors based on the prescriptions of ancient ethics.
Spiritual abuse - This occurs because pastors are given complete spiritual authority over the lives of their congregations. Empowering one person to have spiritual authority over another, much less a large group, is a recipe for disaster. The result is wide scale spiritual abuse of pastors over their congregations in the name of Jesus.
Spiritual anxiety - Spiritual anxiety comes from the impossibility of meeting the demands of a sacred text. First, there are too many commands to keep track of, and secondly, there are far too many interpretations of scripture. Christian life becomes about performance.
The Bible as a weapon - If people believe God speaks through the words of the Bible, then every word can be weaponized. People interpret the words of the Bible according to their tastes, then use that understanding to shred people, or tell them how to live, how to vote, who to love, and when.
It produces interpretive chaos - There is not one verse in the entire Bible upon which there is universal Christian agreement. Every word is a battleground, and the job of the seminary is to train people on how to interpret the words of the Bible.
It produces doctrinal divisions - There isn’t one single doctrine upon which there is universal agreement in the Christian church. This is why we have books with titles like Four Views of the Atonement. The doctrinal divisions reflect how inconsistent the Bible can be on many topics.
It produces conflict and divisions by nature - The cultures of the Bible saw the world in binary categories—good or bad, saint or sinner. This automatically divides masses of complex human beings into simple categories.
We submit to ancient ethics - The social, familial, relational, and religious ethics of the biblical writings are for that time period. For example, what Paul has to say about sexual ethics is for Paul, and for his congregations. Those ethics, and similar kind from the Bible, are not appropriate to deal with the complexities of the modern world.
We celebrate a cruel and violent God - The worship and liturgy include the destruction of pagan nations by a victorious and violent God. The church is no longer scandalized by such brutality. Even worse, it asks the members of its congregations to defend such inhumane behavior.
It produces a pre-scientific worldview - The cultures of the Bible believed in magic. Wood did turn into a snake, people did turn into salt, and donkeys could talk. But this is a pre-scientific thinking.
Over thirty years as a Christian, and twenty years in ministry, I contributed to these outcomes by teaching a certain version of the Bible. At the same time, I experienced every outcomes (as did my students). It is hard to describe the spiritual toll of seeing this kind of damage, but still trying to uphold the divinity of scripture.
This Is the “Why” of Deconstruction
The list above represents the “why” of my deconstruction. I could not square the gospel of life I was giving people with the harms that a sacred Bible and its doctrines were producing.
I was giving people Jesus, but then I was handing them a machete and saying, “Be careful, don’t hurt yourself.”
Allow me to generalize my experience.
Currently, the West is experiencing a massive exodus from traditional churches precisely because of the catalog listed above. Denominational skirmishes, moral policing, voting “according to scripture,” and the recent marriage of church and politics are but a few examples. The tragic irony is that few conservative Christian leaders see themselves as complicit in this mass rejection or move away from historic Christianity.
But here’s a test. If you regularly “preach the word,” does your teaching:
Produce spiritual confusion or anxiety in people?
Contribute to interpretive chaos or doctrinal divisions?
Harm people or groups via proof-texting?
Divide people into simple, binary categories?
Defend or sanitize the violence of God?
Require submission to ancient ethics (sexuality, reproductive rights)?
Lead to a pre-scientific view of the world?
If so, you are contributing to harmful Christianity, and are unaware of it. In addition, you are complicit in good people losing their faith. Again, it’s hard to square so much beauty and good in the gospel, with so much pain and abuse—both coming from the same source.
Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
One of the goals here on Tuesdays with Doctor G. is to highlight this issue and work to eliminate any religious trauma that is caused by the Bible.
Finally, let me say something personal. It pains me have to critically analyze a life of faith that sustained me for thirty years. I owe so many wonderful experiences here and abroad to the incredible and self-sacrificial communities I met over three decades. My “fight” is not with them. It is with the continued misuse and abuse of a sacred text (and its doctrines) that puts no filters in place to prevent foreseeable harm.
That kind of spiritual damage must be called out.