Can I believe the Bible? Good question? No. Here’s an answer that puts us altogether on the wrong track. Think for moment about the story of the two sons, the prodigal and the older. What kind of answer can we give to the question: ‘Can I believe the story of the prodigal son?’ Only a muffled murmur. Better to ask: ’What can I learn from the story of the prodigal son?’ or: ‘Does this tally with what I know of a young person’s choices?’
Humorist writing thrives on the tongue firmly in the cheek. Samuel Butler played it for laughs in ‘Hudibras’. Garrison Keillor and Hans Helmut Kirst continue this tradition.
If we go further afield, we may apply the question to the words and works of Jesus. Better to ask: Did he actually perform those miracles of healing and feeding? We may then go on to ask baffling questions such as: ‘Did Jesus know the answers to some of the most difficult questions mankind has been asking for centuries?’
It’s hardly appropriate to ignore the opening words of the Bible. Are we to understand what the writer of Genesis tells us about the beginning of things? Does the Bible support or deny the story of a big bang? Here we come into the various meanings of the word ‘believe’. To desert the Bible for a moment we have to acknowledge that we can learn a great deal about matelots and their doings from ‘The Cruel Sea’ or the exploits of the Surprise just as we can learn much from the Admiralty policy on Prizes and half-pay regulations.
In other words there are different kinds of beliefs. We have to consider the value of statements and intimations in the whole mix of information we receive. Kipling’s observations in his tales and verse from the print-shop can take us quite a stretch just as other authors with other sightings can do.
In short the biblical documents offer different genres, different highways to making sense of life. The Bible is not a telephone directory. Nor is it a sci-fi anthology. And it is not a guide to the occult. If anything, the Bible is a a grown-up book for grown-up people – though there are good bits like Noah’s ark specially for children.
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