Opening the Bible

I just finished reading Opening the Bible by Thomas Merton. I told my philosophy instructor that I was planning to read the Bible and he suggested that I check out this book. It was a fairly quick read, only 94 pages. I have to admit, though, that a lot of the material went a little over my head. But there was still plenty I got out of it. Probably the most important thing was remembering that you're only going to get as much out of reading the Bible as you put into it. Merton quotes Karl Barth as saying: "The Bible gives to every man and to every era such answers to their questions as they deserve. We shall always find in it as much as we seek and no more ... nothing whatever if it is nothing whatever that we seek." The other important message I took away was that if you approach the Bible with a particular agenda or set of biases, you'll inevitably find portions of the Bible that will confirm those biases - and you'll probably also ignore any passages that contradict your biases. Therefore, we need to approach the Bible with an open mind and be prepared for it to challenge our beliefs. As Robert Stone's introduction says, "the Bible demands the reader's personal involvement. Because such involvement lays one open to unforseen conclusions, our tendency is to avoid the arguments which lie within its pages altogether, particularly when we have predetermined what the Bible will say to us!"

Merton also reminds readers that it is important to not blindly accept everything the Bible says. Again, reading this book requires our personal involvement and that requires us to question whether (and why) we truly believe in what we're reading. As he puts it, "the basic claim made by the Bible for the word of God is not so much that it is to be blindly accepted because of God's authority, but that it is recognized by its transforming and liberating power. The 'word of God' is recognized in actual experience because it does something to anyone who really 'hears' it: it transforms his entire existence." Later, Merton says "that becoming involved in the Bible does not mean simply taking everything it says without the slightest murmur of difficulty. It means at once being willing to argue and fight back, provided that if we are clearly wrong we will finally admit it. The Bible prefers honest disagreement to a dishonest submission."

The last thing that's important to remember is that the Bible raises more questions than it answers. As Merton points out, "the Bible raises the question of identity in a way no other book does ... When you ask: 'What is this book?' you find that you are also implicitly being asked: 'Who is this that reads it?' ... One's questions are answered not by clear, definitive answers, but by more pertinent and more crucial questions ... If we approach it with speculative questions, we are apt to find that it confronts us in turn with brutally practical questions. If we ask it for information about the meaning of life, it answers by asking us when we intend to start living?"