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Why It's Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong
(religiondispatches.org)
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I never thought someone could take the clear prophecies pointing towards Jesus throughout the old testament and distort them to think "yeah this means Jesus isn't literally real". Also the quotation where he claims Christians are still holding onto fourth century beliefs as if it's a bad thing- does that mean Morality is subjective? That what was moral 1600 years ago isn't moral now?
There's also undertones of white supremacy to this attitude as well. Suddenly, what white society sees as moral is morally correct. Taking the Bible seriously (or "literally"), we have the justification that we have the inspired word of God (which it claims to be, 2 Timothy 3:16). So we could take what the Bible says is wrong and have confidence that it is objectively wrong. The writer of this article claims they helped ordain someone in a homosexual relationship, when the Bible is clearly against this within the Church (Romans 1:27). So it seems he isn't taking that part literally. This is all fair and good, but if morality is whatever society says is okay and not the Bible, is it okay to refuse to give to the poor? In China homosexuality is seen as largely not okay, but giving to the poor is also frowned upon. Charity is non existent. For someone like the writer to say that the Chinese are wrong and need to learn to give to the poor and affirm homosexuality, they wouldn't be preaching from Christianity or objective morality, they would be preaching from their white supremacist mindset.
Just a thought.