Hey, Paddington. Along with making claims about what you believe, can you also provide some evidence supporting your claims? I think it would be good to know how you reach your conclusions. Maybe take one of the above claims and lay out your argument how you came to that conclusion?
Would it be fair to say that you don't believe everything in the Bible is true, either through inaccuracy or because it's myth?
Assuming by "true" you mean "that's what it would have looked like if we had a time machine and could go witness the event", then it's fair to say that I don't believe everything is true.
If so, what percentage of the stories that occur in the Bible do you believe to be true?
What percentage? Well, I'd probably lean towards all the "historical" stories having some level of "truth" to them. So, if the numerator and denominator are based on stories as the unit of measurement, then I'd say close to 100% are true in the sense that there was some kind of flood they were talking about, some kind of exodus, some kind of wilderness journey, some kind of battles for the land, some kind of kingdom, and some kind of exile. It's more the details within each story that I'd say aren't true as the author was free to tell the story in a way that communicate their theology about who God is and what he was doing in the world. To quote The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter:
Nevertheless, these stories are not, strictly speaking, historiography, but rather the imaginative reenactment of history by a gifted writer who organizes his materials along certain thematic biases and according to his own remarkable intuition of the psychology of the characters. He feels entirely free, one should remember, to invent interior monologue for his characters; to ascribe feeling, intention, or motive to them when he chooses; to supply verbatim dialogue (and he is one of the literature's masters of dialogue) for occasions when no one but the actors themselves could have had knowledge of exactly what was said. The author of the David stories stands in basically the same relation to Israelite history as Shakespeare stands to English history in his history plays.
So, if we used individual details of the story as the unit of measurement, I think a high percentage isn't "true". Just from dialogue alone, that's going to be high. There's a lot of narration through dialogue; putting words in people's mouths as a way to deliver the narrator's message. Numbers are often symbolic. It sure is strange that so many things in the Bible take 3, 7, or 40 days/years. My guess is if we were there to witness many events, we'd see that they didn't actually take the exact amount of time the author indicates.
What needs to be true for the Bible to maintain the spiritual impact it's had on your life?
This is a great question. I don't know. I definitely went through, and still going through, a bit of a crisis of faith because of how I see things compared to how I saw things for over 40 years. I never had much doubt until recently. Strangely, my faith has never been stronger. That's mostly because I see faith differently now. My faith used to be almost entirely wrapped in what I believe. In other words, it was about me being right. If I hold the right beliefs, then I have faith. As many of beliefs were being altered, it felt like I was losing my faith. Yet, I was, at the same time, finding myself caring more about people are more interested in doing good things. I feel much more faithful despite no longer really knowing what I believe in so many areas. The less I cling to my old view of the Bible, the more impact it has had on me. A helpful book for me has been The Sin of Certainty by Peter Enns. In it, he relays this story:
In 1975 the Jesuit philospher John Kavanaugh went to work for three months at the Homefor the Dying in Calcutta, India, with Mother Teresa. He was searching for an answer to his spiritual struggles. On his very first morning there, he met Mother Teresa.
"And what can I do for you?" she asked.
"Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.
"What do you want me to pray for?" she asked.
He answered with what I'm sure he felt was a perfectly reasonable and humble request, in fact the ery reason for which he traveled thousands of miles to India in the first place: "Pray that I have clarity."
"No. I will not do that."
Kavanaugh asked her why.
"Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of."
"But you always seem to have clarity."
Mother Teresa laughed. "I have never had clarity. What I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God."
I think our culture values certainty; being right. We have defined faith as being entirely in the brain and holding the right beliefs. It's not that I think God wants us to have the wrong beliefs, but I think he cares much more about us participating in his mission to repair the world. Loving one another is our participation. I find it interesting how we talk about someone "losing their faith". I have only heard people say that in relation to what someone believes. "I heard Bob doesn't think Noah was a person. He's losing his faith!" Meanwhile, Bob is a loving dad, doesn't verbally abuse waiters when his glass is empty for a few minutes, and feeds the homeless every week. Yet, he's "lost his faith" because of what he believes. I think it's a jacked up metric we've created for being faithful.
