The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love

Catholic New Times, July 3, 2005 by Christina Cathro

The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love by John Shelby Spong, New York, HarperCollins, 2005.

John Shelby Spong's latest volume looks at the number one, best-selling book in the world, the Bible, and questions the legitimacy of its description as the "Word of God."

He does not set out to disclose all of the inconsistencies of scripture in meticulous depth. Rather, he renders a timely exposure of what he describes as the "terrible texts" of scripture, those that can no longer masquerade as the "Word of God."

Why? Because they have given license to unending, "righteous" violence, to continuing population growth, to unprecedented "use" of the environment, to abuse of women and children, and even to insidious anti-Semitism, irrational hatred toward gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. They have even supported unwavering certainty among some about the nature of God.

Bishop Spong outlines how a more accurate depiction of the contents of the Hebrew Scriptures would view them as an historical epic of the Hebrew people, a sacred collection of wisdom, designed "to help [them] make sense out of their existence." Writers of these Bible texts recorded "their walk with who they believed God was through their own national history."

Accounts Of Jesus' life, written some forty to seventy years after his death, become a part of this recommended "reading scripture as epic history." More accurately, they become interpretations of memories of Jesus, provided by the writers to convey with all the intensity of vivid language, the powerful meetings with God that they experienced in the person and life of Jesus--to assert that "Jesus must be where God is."

Spong invites his readers to seek the experience that is underneath the layers of descriptive accounts of Jesus' life and words. Under them is an invitation to accept a new consciousness, one that invites us to realize our potential and live out our full humanity--to free ourselves from all that binds us: prejudice related to gender, sexual orientation, class, race, and religion and the fears that drive that prejudice.

When we live this reality fully and freely, we "enter into the realm of divinity" characteristic of Jesus. John Spong, retired as Episcopal bishop of Newark, New Jersey, now a widely traveled speaker and progressive Christian thinker, notes that "no human tradition can corner the market on salvation and pretend that it controls the only doorway to God."

Nevertheless, at the end of his last chapter, I am left wondering what he means precisely by 'universal', and whether the use of this word is a helpful one, since it can reinforce a notion of 'the ultimate message for all.'

No doubt some readers will label Spong a heretic. If so, then he is in good company! This book is both compelling and an important read. It is a courageous and timely work that requires of us a task that we cannot afford to refuse any longer, namely, to remove those "terrible texts" that serve to legitimize our hatred, discrimination, prejudice, divisions and violence toward one another.

It is a call for our time, the legacy we leave for our children.

Christina Cathro, a member of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions, works in Toronto as a spiritual director.