Thoughts on Biblical Literalism

It’s simply not possible to live 100% of the bible literally in modern society. Besides the presence of verses that contradict either other directly, there are more than 700 rules and prohibitions listed. Some of which could easily put you in prison, at the very least make your life incredibly difficult in the modern world. You aren’t going to murder your children for back talking, or stone adulterers in the street, or never ever sit down in any public place so as to be certain that you are not sitting someplace a menstruating woman has sat, or any number of arcane practices or punishments the bible demands. Then there is the case of selective enforcement; I for example have never heard a televangelist shouting “ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE WEARING POLYBLEND SHIRTS IN CLEAR VIOLATION OF THE WORD OF GOD!!(LEV 19:19)” but of course a passage very near that one “if a man lies with another man as a as with a woman it is an abomination(LEV 20:13)” is cited frequently. So we have to acknowledge from the beginning that it is necessary to some degree to pick and choose from the bible what is relevant and vital to our spiritual lives and what is not. Christianity is obviously not monolithic, different denominations place different emphasis on different passages and books. Some passages that are absolutely essential to some groups are completely disregarded by others. So what Christianity is the “correct” Christianity? Is it even possible to make such a judgment? If it is possible, by what standard is the correctness of one Christianity over another to be established? If it is not possible then doesn’t the existence of the plethora of Christian denominations developing within and between disparate cultures with disparate values, ideas, and interpretations itself demonstrate the flexibility of Christianity as a religious system and in a way provide its own renunciation of a ridged inerrant biblical literalism?

We have no choice but to acknowledge that Christianity is not uniform. The New Testament itself should serve as evidence that as long as there have been Christians they have believed differently than one another. Why would Paul need to write letters to different communities if the truth was so self evident as to be universal? Why would Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John contain different events, often different versions of the same events, if early Christians all believed uniformly? If our goal is understanding God through the bible, the word of God, how can we honestly claim to do so without acknowledging that different communities and cultures at different times and places in history, including the very earliest Christians, were and are capable of reaching radically different conclusions about the nature of God and Jesus and the Bible without one group’s ideas being “false” while another is “True”?