How to Get Lost with a Bible

It has been said that if the Bible is your roadmap, you will get lost.

The main reason for this is that the Bible was written at a very different time in history and under very different circumstances than we find ourselves today. In an ancient world, where the mindset was to conquer your neighbors and expand into their territory, it made sense (albeit in a cruel way) to have laws that encouraged as much reproduction as possible and the extermination of other tribes. But today, just let a nation try obeying all the laws that Jehovah supposedly gave to the Israelites after the Exodus, and it will be immediately branded a terrorist state. Just let us produce as many kids as we possibly can, and we have a recipe for economic and ecological disaster. This is because our world can no longer remain in an expansionist mode. We have to begin the transition into an equilibrium mode of sustainability. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth” no longer works because we have already filled the Earth.

However, I do not believe that we should accept the Bible as a roadmap or an instruction manual. Instead we should accept it as a record—partly historical, partly legendary—of the attempts of ancient people to make sense of the world. We can learn a thing or two from their at least partly unsuccessful attempts to figure out the right way to live in the world. This means we have to apply some judgment values to the Bible. The better part of wisdom is, today, to reject the Genesis 1 approach—that we should be conquerors of the Earth—and embrace instead the Genesis 2 approach—that we should be stewards and caretakers of the Earth.