Stories to Live By

'Stories to Live By: Reading the Bible in the new millennium,' by Ched Myers

In this thought provoking piece, Ched Myers boils down what is most useful in the post-modern approach to biblical study and summarizes it in succint, concrete terms that are easy to understand --even if you aren't as interested in theology as I am.

Central to the article is the notion that the Christian community needs to be more open and honest about discussing different interpretations of the Bible. It's a struggle to make the text make sense in our lives, and a challenge to be more faithful about living out our interpretations.

According to Myers, biblical interpretation should be done primarily from the grassroots on up, not like the present model of looking to specialized experts and clergy to tell us what the Bible means. While this could be taken as a kind of anti-intellectualism and anti-clericalism, I don't think Myers intends this. He means to free us to make the Bible live as a radical document for social and personal transformation.

While I think that reading the research of biblical scholars with different interpretive lenses can certainly aid in our understanding of the Bible, I also have a big populist streak in me that says that this is OUR book and we should be free to be inspired in our interpretation of it and creative in how we apply it to our lives.

PUBLISHER: Stores to Live By. Ched Myers. Sojourners Magazine, March-April 2000 (Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 32).

(Source: http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0003&article=000313)