Why We Should Literally Read The Bible

So do we have to read the Bible literally in order to believe it literally is the word of God? How does that work?

First, let’s consider what we mean when we refer to the Bible. Sure, it’s bound together as one big book, but what we really have between the covers is an entire library of books, written by some 40 different authors from 3 different continents, at least 3 different languages and cultures and over a time span of some 1500 years. Its authors were kings, soldiers, herdsmen, legislators, fishermen, courtiers, priests and prophets, and a Gentile physician.

As a result, it was also written in many literary styles or genres, including history, law, religious poetry, lyric poetry, parable and allegory, biography, personal correspondence, and even personal memoirs and diaries.

None of us would read books from any of these genres in the same way, and neither should we read all the books of the Bible in the same way. Even within each book, we know we need to adjust our approach. We would interpret Jesus differently when he is using strong hyperbole against the Pharisees, or teaching crowds through parables, or talking privately with his disciples, for example.

And we should realize that the Bible wasn’t really written TO us, but that as God’s Word it was definitely written and preserved FOR us. When we read the letters of Paul, for example, we should realize that we are really reading someone else’s mail, carefully preserved and passed down for many generations, including our own, to learn from.

Much of the Bible is written in a way that a child could understand, but as Paul wrote “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” The original audience and purpose of this passage was to tell the Corinthians about how to mature in love, but it applies to all aspects of our relationship with God, including how we approach God’s word.

For many, like a young man named Stephan whom I spoke with in an outreach conversation, the only thing they know of the Bible is from their memory as a child, and we know that children tend to take things literally, often in a very comical way. I believe we are to move beyond our childish understanding of the Bible, and read it as adults, which includes reading it with a childlike faith in it’s Author.

The Bible is God’s primary way of communicating and revealing Himself to the world. It is the most widely distributed work every written, with the number of Bibles sold well into the billions, and now on the internet it has been translated into 799 languages and downloaded over 200 million times to date! It has greatly influenced western civilization, laying the groundwork for democratic forms of government and law, the rational exploration of the natural world, movements in both art and literature, and societal morals and values.

Yet, popular as it is, no other written work has been so attacked, scrutinized, and persecuted. It has withstood the test of time even as it has been chopped, knived, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified, yet no other book continues to have the same impact on individuals and on our world.

What we have is not simply a distorted version of the original manuscripts as one would expect if it came from a single source like the “telephone game”. And we don’t have a case of circular reasoning for the same reason, as the dozens of books in the Bible from so many sources all combine to affirm the truth of one divine Author who inspired all its human writers.
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We cannot and should not read every part of the Bible literally or we will end up with only a childish understanding, but we can and should read it as literally God’s Word, not to us but for us, and with a child-like faith that allows us to read it as God intends.