Through an adult lifetime of teaching the Christian scriptures in churches and institutions of higher education, I have grown increasingly discontented with the way we read the Bible in both contexts. Not that I object to reading scripture from the perspective of faith; I do it myself and it informs my life. Nor that I object to reading it with critical questions about the history and sociology reflected in it or the literary forms that shape it; I do that, too, and find it profoundly instructive.

To a degree, my objection is to the separating of the two ways of reading. Academic Biblical Studies become trivial—even sterile—when they turn their back on the deep questions raised in scripture. And religious readings of the Bible that lack critical awareness tend to reduce it to a confirmation of our existing beliefs. Each way of reading needs the other as corrective.

In a larger sense, however, my objection is that all our readings tend to shortchange the sacred texts. We simplify the text and reduce it to the parameters of our particular set of concerns, which might be those of right-wing Evangelicalism or of Marxist sociology or any of a thousand other conscious or unconscious programs. We want to “make sense” of it on our terms, to get direct and simple answers out of it.

In reality, there is nothing straightforward and simple about the scriptures. They contain great, indeed unresolvable, tensions. Take Genesis as an example: it begins with a God who is the Creator of the whole universe and concludes with a God whose particular care is focused on a single family. There is nothing in the text to suggest that the sages who created Genesis tried to soften this tension, to subordinate one side of it to the other, or to make some kind of decision between the two poles. They simply leave us with the tension, a tension that in fact pervades all of human life.

This strategy isn’t unique to the Biblical writers. All writers whose work has proved its value enough to be called “classical”—such people as Homer, Sophocles, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen—they don’t settle things for us; they awaken us to the tensions in our lives and our understanding. They give our own reflections on life more breadth and nuance that they would otherwise have. Christians are happy to accept this gift wherever we find it, but above all we count on finding it in the scriptures.

To many, this may seem an odd way to speak of the scriptures. The broad public impression of the Bible in the US today is quite different. It’s more likely to be seen as a weapon that preachers use to beat up on their congregations, one another, and the outside world. Exactly how it is used varies with the kind of preacher. The Conservative’s Bible is full of rules; it is a martinet with dangerous aspirations to theocratic tyranny. The Liberal’s Bible is full of reproof; it is a scold, a nag, a guilt-broker. (There are, thank God, many exceptions. This isn’t an accurate description of contemporary Christianity, only what I see as the broad public impression. At the same, the impression is not unrelated to reality.)

Both conservative and liberal approaches miss the real value of Scripture. Despite the common assumption, only a small percentage of the Bible is devoted to legislation. Perhaps somewhat more is devoted to prophetic reproof, though that’s not the whole of the prophetic message by any means. The central gift of scripture, however, is not rules or reproach, but the way in which the Scriptures place us in the presence of the One who shapes all reality and help us begin to think about our humanity and our world in the light of this God who is origin and sustainer of both.

For this, the tensions in the text are essential. We don’t live in a simple world. If it were simple, probably we would all “read” and interpret it much the same. That is far from being the case. For that matter, if the Bible were simple, we would probably all understand it the same. That’s just as far from being the case. What I hope to do is shift our attention from reductionist kinds of reading to a kind that allows scripture its full complexity and calls us into a truer awareness of ourselves and our world before God. I am confident that we will find this more useful in both the life of faith and the life of the mind.

In subsequent posts, I’ll explore this approach in terms of some specific texts—starting with Genesis, for what comes first inevitably affects our reading of everything else. I invite my readers to enter into conversation with me and with one another as we proceed.