Being overly literal about the Bible... interesting one. On one hand I believe we heave a sincere motive to embrace accurately the "inspired" word of God. Which in my mind, no doubt, the Bible is God's inpired Word. So to not take it literally would be a tough thing for any sincere and devout believer.
Yet... I am left perplexed at how some scriptures have or have not manifested in the expected results. And therefore leave me wondering if we indeed have been overly literal.
My background includes a lot of Pentecostal, Word Faith, and Charismatic envivornments. If the Word of God was as literal in application as (we) Penetcostals profess.... there would, for example, be far less death due to illness and certainly less divorce. We could just stand by faith and "whatsoever we ask will be given to us".
To be as simplistic as possible... I gotta say.... after having tried to stand on that scripture and many others, I have come to the conclusion that there has to be more to these scriptures than the simple literal translation.
An eye-opening teaching I heard one time was by Philip Yancey.... author of What's So Amazing About Grace. He refers to the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus teaches that to hate is the same as murder and to lust after another is the same as adultery.
This scripture has been used, in my experience, to beat the everlovin' crap out of poor wanna-be compliant believer. If it were that literal, there would be no hope for any of us. Yancey asks the question, could it not be perhaps that Jesus was speaking of God's ultimate standard as a guidepost to work toward? Fair question I feel. Yet this is only slightly less literal.
I can tell you... if only the literal were true, then there is no hope for me. Yet I believe deeply that there is.
So what is the right interpretation and what is not? Well ain't that the $64,000 question? It should keep the church divided into mulitiple sub-denominations for years to come!
For me, just for today, God has given me a beautiful day, happiness, a wonderful new wife, fabulous kids, health, employment and a lot of other wonderful things. Thats enough for me to interpret literally, "This is the day the Lord has made, I will be happy" (slight paraphrasing... "rejoice" is just to churchy for me).
