When we open the pages of the Bible, we are not reading the direct handwriting of Jesus. We are reading memories, reflections, letters, and visions written by his followers and by countless others before them. The Old Testament was penned across centuries by prophets, poets, and priests. The New Testament emerged decades after Jesus’ life, composed by disciples and early leaders like Paul who sought to guide communities through the turbulence of a new faith.
This raises a profound question: if these words come through human hands, do they also carry human prejudice, judgment, and limitation?
The Human Fingerprints on Sacred Text
Every scripture is both divine and human. Divine, because it carries glimpses of wisdom that transcend time. Human, because it is bound to the culture, the worldview, and the struggles of its authors. Ancient societies were patriarchal. They saw morality, sexuality, and purity through lenses far removed from today’s values of inclusion and dignity. What they called order, we may now recognize as bias.
To pretend otherwise is to deny the humanity of the writers themselves. They were not empty vessels; they were people of their time, wrestling with how to make sense of God in their world.
Jesus and His Followers
The contrast is striking: Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, speaks again and again of love, compassion, forgiveness, and lifting up the marginalized. He breaks bread with outcasts. He silences those eager to condemn. He embodies a radical welcome.
His followers, meanwhile, wrote letters full of practical instructions — how to keep communities in line, how to fit within the Greco-Roman world, how to survive as a minority faith. These writings sometimes carry harsher tones, lines of judgment, and moral boundaries that feel heavy to modern ears.
Two Ways to Read
- The literal path: The Bible is taken as divinely authoritative in every command, regardless of context.
- The discerning path: The Bible is a witness to God’s presence in human history, but the role of faith is to sift the eternal spirit — love, justice, mercy — from the cultural limitations of the past.
Neither path is easy. The first risks freezing truth in time. The second risks reshaping truth too loosely. But both call us to honesty: what do we really believe about God’s heart?
Scripture for a Changing World
We live in times where questions of inclusion, identity, and dignity press urgently on our hearts. Can we say with integrity that every word of the ancient texts should be wielded as law today? Or do we dare to trust that the living Spirit of God still moves — guiding us beyond the letter, toward love?
Perhaps scripture was never meant to be a cage, but a doorway. Not the final word, but the beginning of the conversation.
Closing Reflection
When we read the Bible today, we are invited to listen to two voices at once:
- The voice of the ancient writer, bound by their world.
- And the deeper voice of Love, breaking through the cracks of human limitation, calling us toward compassion that transcends time.
The question is not only “What did they say then?” but also “What is Love asking of us now?”