"The Bible Clearly States"

One commenter recently did a self-own when he said the Bible "clearly states" and then he got it totally wrong.

“Comments on Comments” is a Friday series here on Perspective Shift.

It’s an opportunity for me to comment on comments that people leave on my various social media channels. Sometimes absurd, sometimes offensive, and sometimes maybe even interesting!

I don’t respond too often to comments online both because it rarely yields a positive result, and because the limitations of the format make it challenging to respond with substance.

So on Fridays I’ll select some of the comments people have left me, share them with you, and offer a more robust engagement.

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“The Bible clearly says…”

Anyone who’s familiar with life as a post-evangelical can empathize with the experience of being lectured that “the Bible clearly says.”

The not-so-subtle implication is clear:

1. there is only one right way to think about any given thing,

2. look here, the Bible speaks to said thing!

3. it speaks with such clarity that anyone who suggests otherwise is obviously arrogant or ignorant or both, therefore

4. they are right and you are wrong.

This kind of “reasoning” shows up in my life so often that I’ve all but built up an immunity to it. I just sort of 🙄 and move on.

Usually when I read someone claim, “the Bible clearly says,” it merely signals to me that they’re still in the earliest stages of their faith. To borrow from a New Testament metaphor, they’re still drinking the milk of spirituality and cannot yet handle solid foods. Trying to engage with someone who routinely falls back to, “well the Bible clearly says,” routinely ends in frustration.

I’ve found it does very little good to try and feed chicken wings to an infant.

Many Christians live by a belief that the Bible is nothing more than a rule book for life. An instructional manual for How to Live. And they assume that our only job is to read it (in English, mind you) and accept the clear and obvious (and literal!) meaning of the text.

To such a person, should I try and push back to suggest that maybe the verse they’re quoting at me doesn’t “clearly” say what they’re insisting it does, it is always met with suspicion. They accuse me of trying to avoid the clear and plain meaning. They think I am doing funny business with the Text. They claim that I’m forcing my own opinions on the Bible as opposed to letting the Bible force its opinions upon me (the whole eisegesis vs exegesis thing, for those keeping score at home).

As I said, I get this line of thinking thrown my way a lot in the comment sections.

But every once in a while it shows up with an added layer of absurdity that just kills me. Here’s what I mean.

• There’s the standard version of this kind of comment which just goes something like, “The Bible clearly says…” followed by a copy/paste of some Bible verse. This is usually intended to end the conversation because the belief is that the meaning is obvious and self evident. There is nothing (in their mind) to disagree with.

• Then, the slightly more advanced version might follow up “The Bible clearly says… copy/paste verses…” with an explanation of the passage they just quoted. To ensure that their interpretation… er, I mean, “the” proper interpretation… hasn’t been missed, they’ll offer a brief summary as to what the clear and obvious meaning of the text is. Thereby reinforcing the notion that “the Bible clearly says.”

• But then every once in awhile you get a comment like the one this guy left on one of my YouTube Shorts where I attempted to unclobber Leviticus in sixty seconds:

Here’s my Comment on this Comment

First, the panda-avatar’d atheist starts off as expected when he accuses me of lying to people about the Bible. That’s par for the course.

Then he goes in to the typical pattern by saying, “Leviticus very clearly states.” However he only semi-sorta succeeds here because in his (lazy) attempt to copy/paste the verse in question he writes, “those who lie in bed with a man as they would with a woman.” Already he’s revealing his lack of understanding.

Technically speaking, the correct terms to use (when interpreting the Hebrew in this passage) would be “male” (not man). As I write in UnClobber, the Hebrew language has different words for male/female (zakar/neqevah), and for man/woman (ish/ishsha). The male/female words refer to gender in general. Whereas the man/woman words refer either to a specific individual, or is meant to imply “husband” or “wife.”

So technically speaking, Atheist Panda Dude, Leviticus says, “you shall not lie with a zakar (male) as with a ishsha (woman/wife).” Again, in UnClobber I explain why this is significant.

But here’s my favorite part of this comment. He writes, “Leviticus very clearly states that those who lie in bed with a man as they would with a woman” … wait for it … “shall not enter the Kingdom of God.”

Ay yay yay…. 🥴

Oh sweet, sweet boy. How adorable. You try and Scripture-splain me by insisting that Leviticus “very clearly states,” and then not only do you get the wording of the verse wrong, but you say that it says “shall not enter the Kingdom of God.” 🤦🏻‍♂️

Here’s the thing: this phrase, “the Kingdom of God,” does not show up in the Old Testament at all, let alone in Leviticus. It is a phrase that enters the Jewish vocabulary during Second Temple Judaism, and became one of Jesus’ favorite ways to talk about the activity of God on earth. As a way to describe what it looks like when God’s dream for Creation is actualized.

But good gravy, does Leviticus “clearly state” that people who have gay sex “shall not enter the Kingdom of God?”

Not. At. All.

Now, you may think this is silly of me to bandy about over such semantics. You may think, “Well, I mean, 1 Corinthians 6:9 references gay people not inheriting the Kingdom of God, so maybe he’s just conflating or combining the two.”

But that’s kinda the whole point here. When people say such silly things as, “the Bible clearly says,” and then they not only get it wrong (in terms of quoting the Bible) but they even more egregiously whiff entirely by saying the Bible says something that it very clearly does NOT, well to me this just highlights how much this line of thinking (that the Bible is an easy to read and understand text book that tells us everything we need to know) has poisoned Christianity.

Most Christians, I suggest, don’t actually know “what the Bible clearly” says—especially on the topic of homosexuality. Most Christians have just picked up bits and pieces of bad sermons here and there and concluded that “obviously the Bible is against gay people.” And they end up recycling absurd statements such as the one above, about the Bible “very clearly stating” something that it very clearly DOES NOT state.

But that’s how it happens. That’s how bad theological ideas get cemented into people’s minds. And then they walk through life just assuming that they’ve got it right, and everyone else has it wrong. Even if/when they become a self proclaimed atheist (as this guy has) they bring with them incorrect thinking about what “the Bible says.”

In an ideal world the commenter above would be open to feedback that they are wrong and that the Bible doesn’t actually say what they’re saying it does. And then, if miracle of miracle, they could admit to their error, then again ideally that could lead to further conversation where I might say something like, “alright then, let’s explore what else you might be assuming that the Bible very clearly states,” and we could start to have a genuine interaction around things like interpretation and translation and so on.

Anyway, I found this comment to be both unoriginally pedantic (oh yes, please, tell me again what the Bible CLEARLY says) as well as hilariously wrong.

Internet users, if you’re going to say something as absurd as, “the Bible clearly states,” then at least make sure you’re quoting the Bible CLOSE to accurately.