Over a year ago, I began a series of blogs called "Five books that changed my life" however only managed to get down two of them before procrastination got in the way. I was reminded of this idea today, and so skip now to book number five on that list, as I was very sad to hear that the author - Marcus J Borg - passed away yesterday. So, three and four may follow at some point, but for the moment, here is the fifth book that changed my life...
5. Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, by Marcus J. Borg
A little bit of background... I grew up going along to the Sunday School of my local parish church, disappeared for a few years as a teenager and then came back to that same church when I was fifteen years old. It was - and is - a wonderful church, filled with wonderful people from a whole manner of backgrounds and worldviews.
That said, there was a degree of conservatism in the theology of the Christian faith I learned there - probably fairly typical of the church-at-large. I learned that the Bible was the inerrant and infallible literal Word of God, that Jesus died in order to pay a debt for my sins and that the only way to 'salvation' (which was understood to mean "going to heaven") was to believe this to be true.
As I entered my early twenties, it was becoming clear to me that this didn't fit with me. It seemed to me that enforcing a literal interpretation of the Bible robbed it of its more-than-literal truth. Focusing on proving that Moses literally parted the waters of the Red Sea, for example, neglects the metaphorical narrative about our requirement for liberation from systems of bondage that the Exodus story speaks of so powerfully. I could just about deal with these things - God would forgive me if I got them wrong, surely.
But the more I thought about these things, the less convinced I became of what I had learned. How could a loving God be so full of wrath that he required the suffering and death of another in order to pay for sins not yet committed? If the requirement of faith is "believing", what about those who've never been told the story and given the chance to "believe"? (And can grace with a condition attached really be grace?) If the purpose of faith was "going to heaven", why bother trying to improve life here on earth? Was I really such an awful sinner, having "fallen short of the glory of God" as every preacher-in-a-pulpit told me I was? Could I really believe in God as a super-natural being who sometimes intervened in the world and sometimes didn't?
Ultimately, it was a crisis of faith and identity. I was - and remain - convinced that God is real and knowable, but none of this fitted with my experience of God. The faith I had grown up with seemed too doctrinal and moralistic, and didn't seem to make room for the wonderful diversity of the world's other religions, or for the blessing of same-sex unions.
As this was coming to a head, I began to form a friendship with a minister who was working for the Kirk's central administration. Without knowing any of this going on in my head, she gave me a copy of this book, which carries the strapline 'Taking the Bible seriously but not literally' and told me to read it. It was an old copy, of a stuffy-looking book with a dismally beige cover and I swiftly stuck it away on a shelf and forgot about it until the next time I was going on holiday and was short of reading material.
So there, at the side of a sunny swimming pool, I began to read Borg's book. At first, I was shocked at some of the suggestions made in the book. Borg begins by suggesting that the Bible is a human, rather than divine, product. What!? I was outraged on behalf of my semi-conservative Christian upbringing!
Getting to the end of the book, the first think I did was to go back to the start and read it all again, and as I read, I realised that the reason I was feeling so taken aback by this book was this: it articulated the very understanding and experience of God that I had always known yet had repressed for fear of being some kind of heretic.
This was an immensely liberating realisation. No longer did I have to try and force myself into a particular set of beliefs, even if they did not fit with my sense of reason. Here was someone else saying the very things I had always thought. Here was a faith that I could have faith in. Here was a faith where rational thought and evidence were important.
In the book, Borg suggests a "historical-metaphorical" reading of the Bible, separating truth from factuality in what he calls "post-critical naïveté". (In other words, read the Bible like the old Native American saying: "I don't know if it happened this way or not, but I know this story is true.") He argues that the Bible is sacred scripture (in status if not in origin), is a sacrament of the Sacred (a vehicle by which God becomes present) and the Word of God (the disclosure of the divine). He paints a picture of God, not as a supernatural being, but as the "more" in whom we "live and move and have our being", whose passion is justice and transformation of the world. He speaks of a faith where believing in a set of propositions is not what it important; he rejects the "be good now for the sake of heaven later" model of Christianity for a faith where what matters is to be passionate about God's passion for transformation of real lives in the real world, here and now. He speaks of a God for whom liberation from bondage, return from exile, sight for blindness, food for the hungry and freedom for the captive are just as important as forgiveness of sin.
He provides a paradigm in which it is possible - and, indeed necessary - to take the Bible and the Christian faith seriously while simultaneously being able to affirm homosexual relationships, religious pluralism and scientific advance and reject doctrinal absolutes such as sacrificial atonement.
The title of the book - Reading the Bible again for the first time - is very apt, as this enabled a complete re-seeing of the Bible for me and afforded me confidence in the God I know and love.
Since then, I have been an avid reader of Borg's work. Walter Wink is quoted on the cover of one of Borg's books as saying "In every generation, there is a handful of writers of whom it can be said, "Read everything they write". Marcus Borg is one of these today." I couldn't agree more. Just last year, Borg published his last book 'Convictions: A manifesto for progressive Christianity' which is a semi-autobiographical summary of all his works and is a compelling and challenging summary of a faith rooted in justice and compassion.
It was with a great sadness that I read of Borg's death, not just because we lose a great thinker and theologian, but because his work has had such a transforming effect on my life. He has challenged, encouraged, frustrated and inspired me more than any other writer, and it is sobering to think there will never be another new Borg book to get my teeth into.
Whoever you are, and whatever you believe, I would encourage you to read the work of Marcus Borg. You won't be disappointed.
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