EXPLORE
YOUR FAITH
How
can I know the truth about Christianity if I question the
Bible's status as the literal Word of God?
For
people who are literalists and see the Bible as a divine product,
having a divine guarantee to be true, if that set of beliefs
isn't getting in their way, if it's not causing them intellectual
problems, and if they're not using those beliefs to judge other
people and beat up on other people, then I have no need to try
to change them. The spirit can work through Biblical literalism.
Most often, of course, it does lead to a division of the world
into the “saved” and the “unsaved .” But
basically, if a literalistic way of seeing the Bible is leading
to a life that is more and more filled with the spirit and filled
with compassion, I have no problem with people staying in that
place.
But
for people who can't be literalists and for people who are literalists
and are fearful if they let go of [their literalism] then the
whole thing falls into ruin, I would say that in one sense of
the word know, we can't know that Christianity,
or any of the religions, is true in the sense of being able to
demonstrate it. One use of the word "know" in the modern
period is something you can verify. In that sense, we can't know.
But
we can take seriously a different kind of knowing. It's a very
ancient kind of knowing. The ancients called it intuition. And,
unfortunately, in our world, intuition is seen as kind of a weak
thing. It's associated with women's intuition, a vague hunching
or something like that. But the ancient meaning of the word "intuition" or “intuitive
knowing” is direct knowing, a knowing that's not
dependent upon verification. A synonym for intuitive knowing
would be mystical knowing. There are people in every culture
who have had what they regard as direct knowing experiences of
God or the sacred. That kind of knowing is possible, and for
me personally, it's
that direct knowing, that intuitive knowing, that is the most
persuasive soft data for affirming that God or the sacred is
real.
--Dr.
Marcus Borg |
