Today we continue to look at the role of literary genre when we go to hear the "truth" within the Scriptures. From William Placher:
...The genre of a particular text shapes its meaning. Its meaning determines what it is for it to be true. And therefore I cannot properly affirm its truth without thinking about its genre. If I am to believer in the story of the good Samaritan in the right way, I need to understand that it is a parable and not a crime report.
Data, the robot in one fo the Star Trek series, cannot understand jokes. He takes them literally. He is or was not a good audience for a comedian, and he would frustrate a comedian if he said, "But I took you more seriously and literally than anyone else did." His literalism does not mean that he is the most faithful audience for a joke; it means he misunderstands.
What a good example of literalism! What an important point about how we all need to walk into a text and come to understand how it comes to us. This is where our discussion with one another is so important. I would suppose that there would be many different ways to look at a biblical passage and we would have quite a time dealing with the questions we would ask...if we felt free to ask the questions. Remember, literalists will not give themselves permission to ask the kind of questions that may lead to greater questions and even new interpretation. The text says...this. That's it. But it does not simply say one thing. When we leave the text to be a form of data that is written in stone and therefore unable to be touched and held and tossed around and looked at from many sides, we miss many of the life-giving ways it can touch us! I am not saying you can interpret a text as you want and that will be it. Rather, I'm saying that we come together to talk and contemplate and question and put the text within a context both then and now. It is here in the mix of all this that we are not left with a literal interpretation and we are not left with our own little interpretation. The community is an essential component of take the text and seeing its life.
Connection: We would all do well to practice asking questions and looking at more than the face value of texts...and people's lives.
Come, O Spirit of Life, for as you come among us we are all transformed and sometimes moved from one place to another and come to see life as we may have never seen it previously. Come and take us beyond ourselves into the adventure of community that your Word brings to us. Amen.
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