Earlier this summer, Joan had gone with Madeline to the store, so I was lying on the couch, praying, when I heard a knock at our back door. No one we know ever knocks, they just walk in, or call out. We’re not long on formalities. So when they knocked, I knew it wasn’t family or friends. I was a little annoyed because I had been deep in prayer. It’s a new kind of prayer I’ve been practicing that involves closing your eyes, slowing your heart rate, and taking deep, long breaths, sometimes for up to half an hour, right after lunch. That’s when it seems to work the best. So there I was praying when someone knocked on the door. It turned out to be a man and woman from the Seventh Day Adventists there to give me literature and tell me I had been misinterpreting the Bible all my life and that the true Sabbath was on Saturday, not Sunday.
I don’t know what would compel someone to knock on a stranger’s door and tell them they’ve misunderstood the Bible, but I suppose everyone needs a hobby. I’ve often wondered if my discomfort with the Bible has to do with the way it has been brandished by those who claim to love it. If a person hits you with a club often enough, you come to resent not just the person, but also the club. This is unfortunate because it blinds us to the beauty in the Bible. The Sermon on the Mount is one of the finest ethical treatises ever written but is too often dismissed by those who’ve been bludgeoned by Scripture so often they don’t believe anything redeeming can be found in it.
It was said of George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, that if the Bible had been destroyed, he could have reconstructed it from memory. The Bible certainly informed early Quaker theology, our testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, and equality have their origins in Scripture. Nevertheless, the early Friends were not what we would call “people of the book.” I have Baptist relatives and they are people of the book. They believe the Bible is the final, authoritative, and inerrant Word of God. Capital W, Word of God. We Friends never believed that. We were determined not to replace a Roman Pope with a paper Pope. We made it clear that for us, the ultimate authority was not the Bible, but the Spirit that inspired the Bible.
For the Quaker, Scripture is not the most important source of truth. It can be helpful. It can be useful. When rightly interpreted, it can be a tool to understand God, but it is not our primary Guide. Rather God’s spirit, the Inward Light, is our teacher and guide, our ultimate reality. We do not believe truth can be once and forever expressed and encapsulated in any book written and rooted in time. We believe truth unfolds, that truth is living, emerging, and evolving. Just as truth cannot be fully captured on paper, neither can it be fully contained in the human mind. So while we’ve been discussing those things the early Quakers got just right, I would add to that list our belief in ongoing revelation, our conviction that God is still speaking. We join with Gracie Allen, who wrote in her journal, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.”
If we were people of the book, we would forbid women from teaching in the church, but we are not, so we do not.
If we were people of the book, we would believe God ordered the Hebrews to kill the Midianites, every man, woman, and child, but we are not, so we do not.
If we were people of the book, we would believe wealth was a sign of God’s favor, but we are not, so we do not.
If we were people of the book, we would believe gay people deserve death, but we are not, so we do not.
If we were people of the book, we would believe only Jewish people and Christian people can experience salvation, but we are not, so we do not.
If we were people of the book, we would believe God spoke his last and final word in the book of Revelation, but we are not, so we do not.
If we were people of the book, we would believe God was a him, but we are not, so we do not.
There’s a new movie making the rounds, feeding the paranoia of the Christian Nationalists. Here’s the plot: America has a new progressive president, presumably a Democrat, who orders the government to publish a new Bible called The Enlightened Truth Bible. So they destroy the old Bibles, the Gideon Bibles at hotels, the electronic versions on the Internet, every Bible in every form, except for The Enlightened Truth Bible, which they dispense for free.
But a group of wily Christians, the true Christians, manage to save a dozen or so Bibles from destruction, which they smuggle out to churches in the Midwest. Part of this movie was filmed in Danville, which is how I learned about it. I sure liked it a lot better when Danville’s claim to fame was the Mayberry Café.
When I first heard about this movie and watched the trailer, the Christians in the movie were upset because without the Bible, their faith collapsed. If you believe the Bible is the final authority, the inerrant, unchanging Word of God, and you no longer have the Bible, you’ll no longer have a faith. There were no Quakers in the movie. I don’t suspect the producers are well-versed in the broad scope of Christian history. Because if we woke up tomorrow morning and there were suddenly no Bibles, if they had been taken from our homes and churches, and mystically wiped from our minds, our faith would remain. The Inward Light of God that illuminates and guides all people would in no way be diminished. Since it is timeless, it existed long before the Bible was written. Since it is eternal, the Inward Light will exist long after the Bible crumbles into dust.
I have sometimes been asked why I don’t preach from the Bible. To me, and to early Friends, the Bible was a secondary source. Better our faith and testimony be anchored in the primary source, that Stream of Life that flows through all and in all.
This Life touches not only the Jew and the Christian, but the Muslim, the Buddhist, the pagan, and Hindu. It transcends every border, every party, every ideology, race, and station. As the Quaker William Penn wrote in1693: The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will know one another.
To regard the Bible as God’s final and ultimate authority is to dwell in temples made by men. How better, how richer our lives, to dwell instead in that Inward Life and Light that fills and fortifies us all.