Lately there has been lots of talk about the “grey” in the Bible. Conservative Christians are supposedly waking up from their stunted, abusive, check-your-intellect-at-the-door sham of a faith and realizing that the Bible on their shelves is a lot more grey than it is black and white. And, what a relief for them! It is so nice, they say, to put aside the oppressive teachings of the youth groups they once thought were awesome. It’s incredible to finally understand that the Bible is only a book, albeit a pretty good one, written by lots of flawed humans, handed down through all kinds of unenlightened cultures, compiled by who knows what kinds of means (by more flawed humans) and finally given to us as a laughably irrelevant guide to life in 2014. I mean, come on, what did Jesus know about gay marriage? And, it’s wonderful, they say, to be able to distance themselves from the big, bad, mean church. It’s nice to be able to say to the world, Hey, world, you big ball of grey, blurry, undefined truth, I’m with you! I’m nothing like those so-called church people (*cough, Pharisees*). And they write their blogs and they tell and retell all that the church is that they hate. And they tell and retell all that everything else is that they love. There is no “right” way to interpret the Bible, they say. And they embrace the “grey” that lets them blend into the great lostness of this world.
The questions, they say, are more important than the answers. Who cares what the answers are, they ask, as long as you’re sincere? Even things the Bible seems to be clear on are not really clear when you take into account the cultural influences of the day in which they were written, and then of course there’s the whole angry misogynistic god issue, and in the end it’s really better to just quote the love chapter a lot and talk about how Jesus would do the exact opposite of whatever the church is doing.
And during all of this talk which is peppered with many references to themselves as great warriors of peace and love, there is an important element of the gospel which is noticeably absent: the truth.
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