Honest Struggles With The Bible

By: David Schwier—8/30/2016

 

A couple weeks ago I woke up early and picked up the Bible.

Not having read the creation account in awhile, I opened to Genesis and started reading.

I didn’t get far before I felt the ton of bricks.

“There’s no way this happened.”

I’m almost 50 years old now, and I’ve studied my fair share of science.

And there’s no way the Genesis account of creation squares with science—dinosaurs, Australopithecus, amoebas,  etc…..

But maybe it’s not supposed to be science.

Maybe it’s supposed to be poetic or more like a specific communication to the culture it was originally addressed to?

Possibly.

But what was even more problematic was this:

The blame for humanity’s plunge from paradise into evil seems to rest squarely on the shoulders of…..the woman.

Ugh.

Yes, the man is complicit too, but………..

Ugh.

Then later in 1 Corinthians 11 there’s a bizarre—seemingly wholly cultural—exposition about women that gets even more bizarre in 1 Timothy 2.

Ugh.

And then I thought of Islam and the effect the Koran’s dismal view of women (supposedly from God) has had on 50 percent of the Islamic population….

Ugh!

But this isn’t the first time I’ve been plunged into a major theological crisis.

I’ve had massive struggles with the Bible before, as anyone with half a brain would, but I’ve always managed to recover.

At the very least, as far as the current crisis goes, just as we’ve seen that the Sermon on the Mount is a theological box that leads to misunderstanding (see here), the theological box of “The Fall” contains massive internal inconsistencies, badly needs retooling, and is most likely responsible for its own share of theological misunderstandings. (But that is a whole other post.)

What I’d like to talk about here is that in the midst of this current crisis, something very strange happened a few days ago:

I picked up Genesis and read again from the beginning, hoping to find some understanding or operating theory of resolution.

I didn’t hold out much hope…

But I read anyway.

I read all the way to Noah and the flood…and stopped in my tracks.

As I began Noah, it struck me how ridiculous it all sounded–

There was so much evil on earth, no one could be turned around.

But one man, who respected God, built a giant boat and put his family on it along with two of every animal, then floated to safety when God covered the earth with a gi-normous flood.

I stopped a minute and pondered.

Even if someone made up this ridiculous story, what could possibly have been the point? What could he possibly have been trying to communicate to his culture?

Did he really think the most effective way to communicate ‘whatever-it-is’ would be to make up such a wild and unbelievable story? How could that possibly have been an effective way to get his point across, whatever it was?

But I read on.

And soon came to the worst part.

The rainbow.

When the flood waters receded, Noah and the animals got to dry land and God said, “I will put my rainbow in the sky as a reminder to never wipe out humanity again.”

But come on…..

Everyone knows rainbows must have existed long before the flood.

After all, a rainbow is simply color produced by light refracted through water.

But as I was contemplating all this, I caught something in the text I hadn’t noticed before:

God said I’ll put ‘my’ rainbow in the sky….not just ‘a’ rainbow, or ‘rainbows’ in general ….

And I was struck with a memory—

In the year 2000 I was a short-term missionary in Italy. In Milan to be specific.

Yes, it was nice.

My task was to desk-top publish translated discipleship materials for the long-term missionaries.

So each day, I woke up, had breakfast and began work.

Then I’d eat lunch, work some more and in late afternoons I’d exercise by running in a nearby park.

Now, I’d always thought Ohio had the worst weather in the world….until I lived in Milan.

Ohio was rainy, yes, but Milan in the year 2000 was like living in the movie ‘BladeRunner.’

A constant dark drizzle enveloped the city each day from what would’ve been dawn til dusk, had the sun made an appearance….which it never did.

For weeks on end.

Now…it just so happened that in the middle of the park was a huge hill.

And after running for 3 weeks, I was finally in good enough shape to make it to the top, so off I went.

And what I found up there was immensely disturbing.

A Holocaust memorial.

In the form of a huge circle of rocks with the names of each and every Milanese deported and killed in the concentration camps of WW II.

Now growing up in America, I’d been pretty well inundated with Holocaust history, so I knew it well.

I’d read ‘Night,’ seen ‘Schindler’s List,’ studied Corrie Ten Boom and “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

My memories go all the way back to a kid in the 1970s walking into the room with ‘The Holocaust’ on TV just in time to see women and children ushered into the shower thinking they were going for a wash…but the horror on their faces when they realized they were being gassed…

It was horrifying.

By any and all accounts, absolutely horrifying.

In the cold, damp drizzle on that high hill in Milan, I walked around the circle reading each and every name, trying to imagine the lives they must’ve had—families at holidays, husbands, wives, children, grandparents laughing and hugging each other—

And what it must have been like when they were torn away and gassed like bugs on a windshield.

And it struck me—How could humans cram millions of other humans into ovens and cook them alive as their screaming relatives looked on?

How is that even possible?

And as I got further around the circle, I fell deeper and deeper into despair.

Until I stopped before one particular rock.

I just couldn’t move anymore.

I hung my head and thought, That’s it. I can’t do it anymore. Evil wins. There’s no way around this. God is not more powerful than evil. No way. I’m done. We’re just animals on a rock floating in space, animals in the savage wild, kill or be-killing each other in a godless void….

And right at that moment….right at that very second….I looked up.

The rain had stopped and straight above my head was the most enormous rainbow you’ve ever seen in your life.

From high on that hill, the rainbow started on the northern-most horizon and stretched all the way to the south, locking the entire city in one enormous beautiful grip.

It was unbelievable.

And in the very moment, in that very second…

The narrative in my head instantly switched, and something, or someone that seemed not me, clearly said, “No Dave, evil does not win. Not by a long shot. This city is my city. I see it, and I see everything that happens here. I see everything that has happened here. Yes, incredible evil has been done and yes, it’s horrifying when it happens. It’s unjust and unconscionable. But evil doesn’t—it never has, and never will—have the last word. I have the last word. And the last word is not evil. It’s goodness. And love. And the fullness of human dignity. This is my city. And these people are beautiful to me. Made in my image. And I love them.”

Sooooo…….

I don’t know if Noah’s ark really happened or not.

I have no idea what the author had in mind to communicate if he made it up.

But I know one thing for sure:

I did live that day in Milan.

And I did experience that rainbow in exactly the circumstances I just described.

It did happen.

And 16 years later, as I was questioning the veracity of Noah’s ark, it’s interesting and funny how that memory came to mind.

Take from it what you will.

 

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(For an interesting perspective on the meaning of the Flood, click here.)

Have you ever had a theological crisis that lasted for a period of time? Were you able to resolve it…or not? What were the circumstances surrounding your doubts?

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