Woman beats pastor with Bible

There are more than two billion copies of Gedeon Bibles laying around in millions of hotel rooms around the world, but there is not evidence of those bibles making any significant positive impact on the lives of people. Those who fervently hold on to the Book, and quote (misquote) it, have not really read the whole Book. They quote verses that support their biases, confirm their prejudices, and validate their views, values and vicissitudes.

As the Rev. Dr. Mel White rightly observes, “even when we believe the Scriptures are infallible or without error, it’s dangerous to think that our understanding of every biblical text is also without error. We are human. We are fallible. And we can misunderstand and misinterpret these ancient words — with tragic results.”

When I write this, I am thinking of a fervent member of my former church who is a Bible-thumper. When the church hired a pastor who happened to be gay, she was “heart-broken and sick to the stomach for breaking the heart of Jesus” who is her Lord and Savior. She wrote to me: “The church is now being run by a sinful preacher who is managing a flock of lost sheep.” She is using the words in the Bible to judge a man whom she has never met, and to condemn a congregation she once belonged. She feared for the salvation of the members of that congregation because “the Bible says in many books and in several verses that their souls are in jeopardy.” The irony is that the same book says in another verse: “Do not judge!”

Another person who saw the minister in the auditorium, turned away from him and refused to shake his hand. The painful irony again, is that the words in a book were misused to judge the word-made-flesh right in front of her.

If the words in a book impel you to ignore, impugn, injure, denigrate, judge, and make you hostile to another living, breathing, human being, it is time to ignore the words of that book and embrace the word-made-flesh. A human being in front of you should supersede a holy book on the shelf.

In a contest between a holy book and a human being, the human should always win, hands down. Remember that Sabbath is for man, not man for Sabbath.

In a brilliant poem titled The Tuning Fork, mystic poet Chelan Harkin asks:

Our understandings of God

are malleable —

why not adapt them

until they resonate only

with the tuning fork

of love?

(From Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life)