OCD in the Bible

    I took a class that was an online certificate program at a seminary program last fall, and when we studied the book of Luke in the Bible, we talked about the gospels being kind of like a corroboration of witnesses. The fact that there is some variation in the reports actually adds credence, and of course the overwhelming agreement is the main verification of the unbelievable claims and events described.  It is very interesting to think about, but there is something else that has to do with that topic when you expand to include the disciples who did not write the gospels, and you look at the case of Doubting Thomas, who in my opinion, may have been mentally ill.  After the crucifixion and resurrection, Thomas famously said that he would not believe Jesus was alive unless he put his hands in Jesus’s wounds.  He told this to the other disciples after they claimed to see the risen Christ, and then a week later, Jesus was with them and told Thomas he could touch his wounds.  You could tell it was on Jesus’s mental to do list, like a social worker. There were other disciples who also had trouble believing it and were going to have to go out into the world and tell people about everything that was happening.  It is crazy to think about and I relate to them as an evangelical who has felt a burden to tell others what I have known even while doubting so much myself.  But I think that even though God has made it clear in the Bible that he likes faith and he likes for people to believe and trust him, sometimes unbelief is more like disbelief, and corroborates the miraculous and truly “unbelievable” nature of what God has done for us.  

    That could be enough to say, but this topic could really still be expanded and I will go ahead and say that I think the Bible can be seen this way, too.  The Bible is true beyond belief, and there are things contained in it that could literally blind people’s eyes if they really read it for what it is.  And just as there can sometimes be more than one interpretation, there can also be different levels of interpretation. People can read it and simply do what it says, or people can read it and actually be looking at the scenes depicted in it through all the ages. I am talking about making eye contact with Bible characters.   And I want to suggest something controversial, and say that even in the face of that kind of miracle, seeing the Bible as completely untrue might be one level of interpretation that isn’t as bad as some people think. I think the possible legitimacy of interpretation like this, which often comes in the form of not appreciating the Levitical Laws or Paul’s letters, has to do with Christ’s death. The Logos, or "the way, the truth, and the life," (John 14:6) died. Nicodemus, who as a Jewish Pharisee was not supposed to touch dead things, took care of Jesus’s dead body. 

    Christianity hinges so much on the resurrection, but the reconciliation of sinners to God happened through the atonement, which happened when God died as a human.  To see the Bible or word of God as dead, irrelevant, or even false could be part of seeing Christ on the cross as the sinner that he wasn’t, and I do not doubt that whole cultures could take that view and be saved.