Editorial from a NM InDepth writer's perspective on the Bible

Category: Editorials Editorials
Published: 19 June 2024 19 June 2024

[Editor's Note: This is posted with permission to place in editorials on the Beat.]

This is from New Mexico In Depth's mid-week newsletter. We think it's crucial to stay in touch and tell you what's on our minds every week. Please let us know what's on your mind as well. Or, got tips? What do we need to know? Contact us: nmindepth@gmail.com

A couple of weeks ago a writer at the Federalist blog faulted Dolly Parton for ascribing her loving attitude toward all her fans, including her LBGTQ+ ones, to her Christian faith. 

I am not going to defend Dolly Parton here. She doesn’t need me to. The legendary songwriter and

performer has conquered a brutally competitive, male-dominated industry over a 50-year career and can take care of herself. And the writer has since lamented targeting the immensely popular singer to make her point after legions of Dolly’s fans protested her column. 

What interests me is the point the writer is trying to make and where she derives her moral authority to make such a bold statement.

The essay’s headline gives away the writer’s point of view: There’s Nothing Loving About Dolly Parton’s False Gospel.

Passages from the essay explain why the writer considers a loving attitude without judgment a false gospel.

“... Parton’s version of love, which includes condoning immoral sexual behavior (“be who you are,”she’s said), is unaligned with God’s vision for humanity.”

Later, the writer pinpoints what gives her the moral authority to say what she does:

“... calling sin out by name isn’t judgment. It’s adhering to Scripture.”

This last line made me chuckle. 

I am not making fun of scripture, which is code for the Bible, the sacred text of Christianity. I’m laughing at the writer’s implication that there is only one way to read the Bible and that she is reading it correctly.

What the writer is not saying out loud is that her opinion comes from her particular interpretation of the Bible and the theological doctrines that infuse that interpretation.

It is important to acknowledge that no one reads the Bible as if they and only they have a hotline to God. Everyone reads the Bible through an interpretative lens — a point of view that is influenced by how a particular faith community taught them to read the Bible and how that interpretation interacts with the beliefs that the community uses to help guide it in faithful living. The society in which people live and the cultural issues that are debated also play a role in shaping a person’s interpretation.

In other words, the writer’s reading of scripture is not absolute truth but is a very human construct by a very particular faith community.

When someone tells me otherwise, that they and they alone possess absolute truth and if I just believed as they did the scripture would all make sense, my immediate reaction, perhaps unfair, is they haven’t spent much time taking the messiness of the Bible seriously. 

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