Ways to Read the Bible After You’ve Outgrown Literalism

Four Spiritually Honest Approaches to Scripture that Lead to Transformation

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You're sitting in a pew on Sunday morning.

Music has stopped. The Bible passage has been read. The preacher begins the sermon.

Not long into it, you realize something’s off. You're just not resonating. At first, it seems like you just don't believe what the preacher is saying. But then you realize there's something more going on.

This disconnect is at a deeper level.

And that's when it hits you: The way the preacher is using the Bible isn't how you use it anymore.

I suspect this is a common experience for those whose faith starts evolving. As our spiritual horizons expand, so do our approaches to Scripture. We start to see and use the Bible differently.

Today, I want to share four ways I’ve related to the Bible over the years. Maybe you’ll see yourself in one (or maybe all) of them.

The Bible as the Word of God

When most people hear this, I suspect they automatically imagine a literalist reading. To be clear, that’s not what I’m talking about. Sure, literalists do call the Bible the “Word of God”. But that doesn’t not mean you have to be a literalist to hold that view.

In fact, my own Presbyterian Church (USA) is an institutional example of that. In the early 20th century, we officially rejected fundamentalism and its literalism. Indeed, in our Confession of 1967, we state:

The Scriptures, given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless words of human beings, conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written.
-Confession of 1967, 9.29 (emphasis mine)

So when mainline denominations say the Bible is the Word of God, it’s not because we believe the Bible possesses magical qualities or serves as an oracle into the Mind of God. Rather, it’s because it points us to the Word of God enfleshed in Jesus Christ.

The Bible functions in our community as it does in other denominations: It is a primary symbol. Symbols like this have a specific cultural role. As Kathryn Tanner says in Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology, cultures form not through agreement on what its symbols mean, but through shared investment in arguing about them. So, their symbols matter so much to adherents that they are willing to wrestle (and even fight) over their meaning. The focus resulting from the arguing forms the culture.

So the function of the Bible as the Word of God—as a text that reveals the Will of God to us—is to be a focal point for community argumentation around our divine calling. It inspires people to explore spirituality together.

Remember, there's no such thing as a singular Christianity that existed in all times in all places. As noted by Tanner, there have always been a multiplicity of Christianities with their own cultures and interpretations. The primary symbols of different Christian cultures may vary, but they all generally included Sacred Text¹. And presumably in every case, the Text remained a central focal point, a symbol that invited communities to discern what the Text might mean for them.

As the Word of God, the Bible is a foundational document for Christian tradition and community. It is a shared source of history, interpretation, inspiration, and communal identity. As a primary symbol, it points us toward our Central Symbol—Jesus Christ—and invites us to argue over his meaning for our lives.

When people engage with the Bible as the Word of God, they tend to operate in a framework of biblical thinking. Questions typically revolve around “What does the Bible say?”, or “What does the Bible mean?” Because it focuses strongly on the text and its unique authority, it resonates strongly with those in the Mythic-Literal or Conventional stages of faith.

The Bible as historical documents

Seminary has a reputation of destroying faith. But, I don’t think that’s quite accurate.

It’s better to say that, for many students, seminary reveals that the Bible isn't what they were taught it was: a magic oracle. They thought the Word of God revealed the Mind of God. So, to have faith in Christ, you had to have faith in the Bible (though they wouldn’t call it having “faith in the Bible”).

When that image shatters, so does their faith.

So, if the Bible isn’t a magic book, what is it?

It’s a collection of historical documents written by different people at different times and places to address the specific issues of their day.

Once a seminarian comes to terms with that, here’s what they need to come to terms with next…

That means the texts of the Bible were not written for us today.

(Yeah, that realization will make a preacher’s job infinitely harder, won’t it?)

Once we start looking at the Bible as historical documents (just like any other historical documents), it radically changes how we understand them. Now they are testimonies to the faith of those who have gone before us. They are witnesses to how our ancient ancestors saw God working in the lives of individuals and communities. They are all interpretations, and their authors were just as prone to being wrong as we are.

Yes, I said it. In many places the Bible is simply wrong.

Not everyone is ready for this truth. Encountering it can be spiritually excruciating. It is exceptionally hard to accept if one has only ever been given two choices: either the Bible is always right, or it’s worthless. In such cases, they generally walk away.

But for those ready to explore, this way of reading can be liberating. It invites us to stop pretending the Bible is something it’s not. We discover what it means to let it speak with its own integrity.

That’s why people who take historical-critical scholarship seriously say things like, “I do not read the Bible literally, because I take the Bible seriously.”

The perfect time to introduce people to the Bible as historical documents is when they are entering the Individuative-Reflective stage of faith. It’s at this point that they are ready to apply their critical thinking skills to their beliefs and start demythologizing them. Not only do they have the capacity to work at this more complex level, but they are likely to thrive at it.

Postmodern culture is experiencing a meaning crisis.

Why have we lost sight of Meaning?
Is there any hope of getting it back?
Better yet, is the loss of Meaning really a bad thing?

If you long for a path forward, my theology book Drinking from an Empty Glass: Living Out of a Meaningless Spirituality is the book you’re looking for.