![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Bible as Idol
Jun. 3rd, 2020 12:04 amAt Evening Prayer today (2nd June) one of the psalms set was psalm 135 which contains the verses:
And what struck me having seen the photo of the 45th President of the US standing in front of a church holding a Bible having had the police use tear gas etc to clear peaceful protesters out of the way was that the Bible has become an idol. Not of silver and gold, but of paper and ink. Just waving it around means nothing.
Yes, the Bible has been used for centuries to justify slavery and white supremacy but it has also been used to proclaim good news to the poor and liberation to those in prison. It is a complex text and has difficult and challenging passages and we need to grapple with those passages and with how those passages have been used to oppress and harm rather than liberate and heal. The church does not have a clean record on racism and colonialism. And yet, we follow a man who was executed by the state for being a troublemaker, who turned over the tables in the temple, whose mother, on meeting her cousin while they were both pregnant sang of God "casting down the mighty from their throne. We usually remember that meeting, the feast of the Visitation on the 31st May but because this year that was a Sunday and Pentecost, it was transferred by a day to Monday 1st June. The very day the president tried to use a Bible and church as props in declaring war on his own people.
How long O Lord?
The idols of the nations are but silver and gold, ♦
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak; ♦
eyes have they, but cannot see;
They have ears, but cannot hear; ♦
neither is there any breath in their mouths.
Those who make them shall become like them, ♦
and so will all who put their trust in them. R
And what struck me having seen the photo of the 45th President of the US standing in front of a church holding a Bible having had the police use tear gas etc to clear peaceful protesters out of the way was that the Bible has become an idol. Not of silver and gold, but of paper and ink. Just waving it around means nothing.
Yes, the Bible has been used for centuries to justify slavery and white supremacy but it has also been used to proclaim good news to the poor and liberation to those in prison. It is a complex text and has difficult and challenging passages and we need to grapple with those passages and with how those passages have been used to oppress and harm rather than liberate and heal. The church does not have a clean record on racism and colonialism. And yet, we follow a man who was executed by the state for being a troublemaker, who turned over the tables in the temple, whose mother, on meeting her cousin while they were both pregnant sang of God "casting down the mighty from their throne. We usually remember that meeting, the feast of the Visitation on the 31st May but because this year that was a Sunday and Pentecost, it was transferred by a day to Monday 1st June. The very day the president tried to use a Bible and church as props in declaring war on his own people.
How long O Lord?
