Wednesday, 7/1/15
Today’s two Bible readings are confusing.
In the first reading God told Abraham that, following the
wishes of his first wife, Sarah, he should send off his other wife Hagar, along
with their firstborn Ishmael, furnishing them with only a few pieces of bread
and a goatskin of water. It doesn’t seem to us that God would be that
heartless.
Then, it is hard for us to accept the Gospel story where
Jesus sent a throng of evil spirits into a flock of sheep who promptly
committed suicide.
After Martin Luther rejected the pope’s authority, he
started people believing that the Bible was our ultimate authority as what is
and isn’t true. We agree with Luther on that. We too believe that the Bible
tells us the truth, however, we do not believe that the Bible gives us factual
accounts. At times it teaches us the truth through different literary form.
Like the childhood narratives of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel and
in Matthew’s Gospel contradict each other. Luke had his parents going back to
Nazareth after the presentation of Jesus in the temple when he was forty days
old. Matthew had his parents taking the infant to Egypt for several years
before they went to settle in Nazareth for the first time. Matthew and Luke
chose to follow different myths and parables that were going around.
In reading the Bible we must be able to distinguish factual
accounts with those in which the truth comes to us clothes in a fable, a
parable, or a myth.
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