How I Read the Bible

This is a cross-post from my regular blog: Nathan replied, "The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have made the enemies of the LORD show utter contempt, the son born to you will die." (NIV) I titled this post "How IRead the Bible" and not "How to Read the Bible," because I feel a need to approach this subject with some humility. The Bible is a special book. I have said that I read the Bible like some people read cheap romance novels, but that's only partially true. What I really mean is that I read it like a book, not a monologue. I keep an eye out for things like foreshadowing, irony, and symbolism. And though it's usually thought to be only a contemporary and postmodern approach, I also sometimes question the reliability of the narrator! Or, at least, the assumed narrator. Here's an example from the David and Bathsheba story. David and Bathsheba have an affair, Bathsheba gets pregnant, and David has Uriah terminated with extreme prejudice. God sends Nathan to deliver judgment and sentence: "the son born to you will die." The baby gets sick, during which time David mourns, or at least gives the appearance of mourning. When the child dies, David gets up, washes his face, and stops mourning. When people question his behavior he says, "hey, when the kid was sick, there was reason to be sad. Now he's dead and I can't do anything about it. Time to get on with life." Then he goes and "comforts" Bathsheba, who apparently doesn't have such a stoic disposition. Every time I've heard this preached, the preacher praises David's attitude. He (it's almost always a he) says that we should have David's outlook on life and death. After all, when we die, we go to a better place. Therefore we shouldn't be sad when people, even children, die. The preacher holds up David as an ideal. Confronted with mortality, with suffering, David simply becomes philosophically detached. I have three problems with these sermons. First, I don't think God kills children. I know, you can show me a hundred different places in the Bible where God smites someone dead. Fine. Maybe I'm wrong. But I've heard the kinds of things people say to parents whose children have died: "She's in the Lord's hands now," or "God called him home," or "Jesus needed another angel in heaven." If someone ever says such a thing to me in a time of grief... heaven help me. I may serve up a can of smiting of my own. I may send another angel up to heaven myself. Others have been able to speak better about our understanding of God's will - breaking it down into ultimate and provisional or situational will. We can go back and forth on what is God's will in any given situation. It provides some interesting theological parlor conversation. I do know that when directly asked about God's smiting activity, even Jesus was reluctant to say outright, except to call all who live to repentance. I don't know why preachers presume to speak where Jesus remains silent. But I don't believe God kills children. Feel free to disagree. Second, I don't think God expects us to be stoic and philosophically detached when someone dies. Again, look at Jesus. When his friend died, he wept. Jesus, knowing that in five minutes time Lazarus would be up and walking and singing and playing checkers, knowing that he was about to bring Lazarus back from the dead, knowing whatever lies on the other side of the grave, knowing about the coming Kingdom of God, knowing all this - cries. If Jesus is our model, then I sure as heck don't expect people to be stoic and detached about the death of a loved one. Especially the death of a child. Lastly - and here's the part that brings me back to reading the Bible as a book instead of as a monologue where every story is read in a monotone with an implied "go and do likewise" - David is a liar. A poser. He's a big phony. He tries to pull off being stoic and philosophical, but let's look at how he behaves when someone he really loves dies: He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: "O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!" Oh wait! What happened to that whole "I can't bring him back by crying" schtick? Where's the stoic philosophical detachment now? Notice, while David doesn't weep for his unnamed baby, he does weep for his sons Amnon and Absalom. I'm left with the most obvious conclusion - David didn't really love Bathsheba's baby. I know that may sound harsh, and maybe I'm wrong, but in looking at David's character (and he doesn't come off well most of the time), it seems to fit. He felt that he had gotten off easy. He didn't die. He still had his kingdom. He thought even after being judged by God he had pretty much gotten away with murder. So he shrugged it off. See? This is about the trustworthiness of the (supposed) narrator. If you take David's words at face value, and if you read the Bible as a book with little or no ambiguity, you never get to the point of actually questioning what David says. But David is not trustworthy, as he shows time and time again. He doesn't mourn because the child's death doesn't mean much him. The full import of his sin doesn't hit home until he loses the other son born to him - Absalom. This story is a Shakespearian tragedy. You've got irony, foreshadowing, symbolism, misunderstood prophecies, pathos, a fall from grace - all the marks of great literature. And yet we keep reading it as if it were simply "God's Little Instruction Book." I do not remember which composer said, "people have been taught to respect classical music, when they should have been taught to love it." The same is true for the Bible. So, that's how I read the Bible. Like a cheap romance novel with sweat-stained, dog-eared pages.