In the beginning...there was no "Bible."

In the beginning...there was no "Bible."

What Christians tend to forget in defending scripture is that for the first few years that the Church existed, there were no scriptures. The first writing in the New Testament was probably the first letter to the Thessalonians, written sometime between 42 and 47C.E. That's a good ten years of "The Church" without "The Bible."

My argument is that if they did it then, we can do it now.

I'm not saying to pitch the whole Bible out the window and into the trash heap. What I am saying is that we need to start listening to what the Spirit is saying to each of us as individuals and to all of us as a community without going all whacky about trying to defend "biblical morality."

What the hell does that mean anyway? Does biblical morality mean that I can have four wives like Jacob or kill my daughter like Jephtha? Or does it only apply when you don't like what I'm doing and decide to prostitute the Bible in order to use it as a club to beat me into submission?