Pimping The Bible

There are leaders among us—politicians, pastors, and pundits—who hold the Bible aloft in their claim to ownership and sole reverence of the Bible. This idolatry of the Bible weaponizes it as a sword of power instead of a ploughshare for human thriving. The polarizing tendencies of social media have only worsened the problem.

This idolatry persists because, like junk food, it quells the pangs of the natural human craving for identity. This quick fix shortcuts the “long obedience” of any true religion in favor of an instant status that claims unimpeachable divine backing.

To claim God’s stamp of approval for one’s own schemes has proven to be an almost irresistible temptation, one that has a long history of eager adherents.

The temptation to force onto the Bible what we want it to say about us and others is in striking contrast to the agenda set for us, ironically, by the Bible itself—which is, wisdom in all things.

Wisdom is the ploughshare that undercuts the sword of those who use the Bible for pursuit of power. Wisdom is about striving to discern—patiently, over time, and with humility—what God’s agenda might be, which a deep and mature grappling with the Bible itself will show us.

By contrast, a weaponized Bible is a fail-safe rallying cry for leaders who manipulate the delusional hope that they are the commanders of God’s army.

These self-proclaimed God-appointed leaders among us, drunk, it would seem, on creating apocalyptic fervor, set up a power struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between true Christian patriots and their pagan oppressors–between “us and them.” It is a short line from loyalty to a leader believed to be appointed by God to a frenzied willingness to marginalize–or even harm–those who are of a different mind.

These consequences are not doom’s day fear mongering. We see it across human history in people groups, tribes, nations, and allies whose identities are rooted in the age-old temptation to divide up the world into winners and losers according to religious litmus tests—and the Christian faith, because of its global influence, has been used for these purposes as much as or more than any other tradition.

A pimped Bible supports absolute religious authority and conferred status, preying on our craving for identity and our need to categorize ourselves and others according to the grand scheme of who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s in and who’s out, what’s moral and what’s immoral, and who gets proved right in the end.

All of this really matters—not just for the sake of Christianity, but for all who live under its influence. The challenge is before us: whether to continue as is by accepting the pimping of the Bible as reality, or to engage in the full-on disarmament of the weaponized Bible as a tool of conflict and replace it with another way of not only reading the Bible, but of being human.

I sincerely believe that the Bible, just as easily as it is pimped, can reveal a beautiful vision of human life, human community, and the unity of all things given life by a loving God. This is a vision we get to live into, by the love and wisdom of God . . . if those who claim the name of Christ lay down their swords and beat them into ploughshares.