Does Biblical Literalism Truly Lead to A Mean Spirit?
In an amazing article on PatrolMag.com Matthew Paul Turner tells of an experience he had while working for CCM magazine.
It seems that the manager of the periodical wanted to run an interview with Amy Grant in the magazine. He also wanted to run the interview with an apology from Grant for having gone through a divorce. He is stated to have stipulated that the article would not run without the apology.
The interviewer did not get the requisite apology and was called into his manager’s office and taken to task for not including an apology in the interview (Note: The article was run in a heavily edited/rewritten fashion with a fabricated apology). What caught my attention, however, was the portrayal of Gerald, the manager.
“..Gerald called me into his office. I considered putting on a bulletproof jacket, or at the very least, wearing a wire so somebody who liked me could eavesdrop on our conversation. It was very possible I might need saving. In my opinion, Gerald was the worst kind of bully—a gruff, condescending, loud, biblical literalist.”
I can see being “gruff, condescending, loud” as things that characterize a bully. But why “biblical literalist”? What does that have to do with being a bully of the worst kind? Nothing. Nothing at all.
Why does a desire to understand the Bible literally have nothing to do with being a bully? Because, as Kevin Vanhoozer says in Is There A Meaning In This Text, the literal sense is the literary sense. So…..what does one taking poetry as poetry, narrative as narrative, history as history have to do with one being a bully? I see no reason to believe that it does.
Turner’s statement is simply a classic case of one confusing a literal understanding of the Bible with a woodenly literal understanding of the Bible. Wooden literalism doesn’t understand genre, figures of speech, idioms, etc. Biblical literalism does know the difference and appreciates those differences.
Anyone can be a bully. Being a bully and being mean spirited aren’t monopolized by people with a literal hermeneutic. Atheists, agnostics, liberals, conservatives, ad infinitum can be bullies.
What makes a person a bully, then? Sin. Inherent depravity. That makes a bully. A literal hermeneutic does not a bully make.