One day a lawyer came to Jesus with this question: “Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered by asking another question: “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?” The King James uses the phrase, “How readest thou?” In other words: What is your understanding of the Scriptures? That’s a good question for Bible students to ask. You might think, “What do you mean, ‘How do you understand the Bible?’ Don’t you just open it up and read it and believe what it says?”

Actually, there are many different ways to approach Scripture. If you simply looked at all the different denominations in the Christian religion, you could quickly conclude there definitely are different ways to understand the Bible. Some methods are helpful, some not. If you believe the entire Bible is the Word of God (which we do), then you would never take a pair of scissors and slice out what you “don’t like.” Neither would you ignore some parts or just pick and choose other parts.

Recently an article was posted on Huffington Post by David Lose [1] who writes on religious topics and has written the book Making Sense of Scripture. His article is called “4 Good Reasons Not to Read the Bible Literally.” There is always something you might glean from another person’s perspective that can be helpful, but there might be potholes that steer you in a direction away from truth.

His first reason to not read the Bible literally is, “Nowhere does the Bible claim to be inerrant.” Actually, there are different ideas about what it means for the Bible to be “inerrant.” Some believe that there are no grammatical errors or mistakes in the ancient texts. Others believe there are no errors in the teaching of the Scriptures. Lose seems to touch on the first (factual errors) and skim lightly over the second. He then quotes 2 Timothy 3:16 but does not give the emphasis that is in this verse. “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” That is, all of the Bible is the infallible revelation of God’s will for our lives.

Second, Lose says, “Reading the Bible literally distorts its witness.” He cites the example of an apparent glitch in Scripture that Jesus cleansed the temple, and that the Bible writers seemed to be confused on whether this happened at the beginning or end of Christ’s ministry. If you believe the Bible is a trustworthy record of God’s actions in history you would choose the option that Christ cleansed the temple twice. On the subject of “literal reading,” we think it would be best to take the approach that unless the text clearly shows that an allegorical or symbolic meaning is presented, it is best to take a literal approach to the Word. For instance, Jesus’ parables are full of symbols as are the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation. Here is another way to put it: “Allow the Bible to be its own interpreter.”

Third, Lose suggests, “Most Christians across history have not read the Bible literally.” Once more, unless you define what you mean by taking the Bible “literally,” you will spend an inordinate amount of time arguing just how true his statement is about “most Christians.” We would encourage this question be asked: Even if “most Christians” do something a certain way, doesn’t it beg the question, “What does the Bible say?” We ought to not be led by the traditions of man, but by the Word of God. A literal reading of Christ’s parables is not warranted. But other parts, such as the creation account in Genesis 1, give no hint of some ethereal or symbolic approach to the text.

Finally, Lose writes, “Reading the Bible literally undermines a chief confession of the Bible about God.” Lose’s argument is, “Most of the Bible characters are less than ideal.” He then concludes, “Why, then, treat the Bible differently?” In other words, “Fallible messengers, fallible message.” That’s sounds reasonable, except it doesn’t square with what the Bible says of itself (2 Timothy 3:16). Perhaps it would be helpful to separate out the message that is infallible from the messengers that are fallible. God used imperfect people to be spokesman for a perfect message. The Bible is divine truth spoken in human language. Ancient manuscripts might vary in minor details, but the essential truths are preserved.

So we would agree that if the text is obviously symbolic in nature (such as a description of different kingdoms in Daniel 2 represented by different metals/minerals), then we should not take those parts literally. But we can go too far with this “don’t read the Bible literally” thinking and find ourselves with an interesting literature book written by man devoid of the inspired message of God.

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[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-lose/4-good-reasons-not-to-read-bible-literally_b_919345.html