A Little Blasphemy

A few thoughts on The Bible and Church.

I think that The Bible is literature, the church, theater. I do not mean theater derogatorily - that is, theater in the sense of something phony and distracting. No, I mean theater as art. Both are art forms.

The Bible is really many books. It is somewhat Historical (all those Kings and begettings and so on), somewhat a How To, but mostly literature. All art, I believe, is about creating fertile ground upon which an audience member's imagination can grow. Art always leaves open space; the best art is about creating the most dynamic and fertile open spaces.

Such is The Bible. We need only see the vast disparities of interpretations of it to understand it is literature. It would be easy to say of true believers who cherry pick the bible to their own liking, Oh, you hypocrites! But this is not so constructive. Yes, it would be better if True Believers acknowledged that they take what they like and discard what they don't, but so don't we all. The Bible's goal, like all art, is to encourage you along the journey into your soul. If The Bible does that for you, great. If it does not, no matter. There are plenty of other things that can.

Likewise, church is theater. Theater is a ritualized, rehearsed, scripted event, with a passive audience who willingly subject themselves so that they might be directed to their own souls. For this reason, no one should stand up in a theater and cry out, Boo! Any more than you should stand up in a synagogue and cry "Allah is great!" We are tempted some times, but that is because part of us WANTS to subject ourselves to whatever theater is occurring even when that theater does not resonate with us, and the result is dissonant. Let it go. There's plenty of theater all around.