Everything in the Bible is true.  Not everything in the Bible is the truth.

Before you charge me with heresy, hear me out.

In Genesis 2:15, God tells Adam, “…you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” (NIV)  Later in Genesis 3:4, Satan tells Eve, “You will not surely die” when he suggests she take a bite of the forbidden fruit from that tree.  She listened to him and ate the fruit.  And you know what?  She did not die (immediately), so Satan must have been telling the truth and God must have been lying, right?  No, what Satan was saying was the lie: Not everything in the Bible is the truth.  The truth or deceit in a given passage must be read by considering the entire counsel of God on that topic.

Now, some of you may be saying, Adam and Eve were never real people.  I won’t reveal my thoughts on that here, but I will say in every case where my scientific upbringing has caused me to wonder about the truth of the passage, that passage has always met the following criterion:

It is either literally true or figuratively true.

The parable of the Good Samaritan and a story around it exemplifies what I mean.

There is a story about a guide in the Holy Land who took a group of tourists to a site that was at the time undeveloped.  He told the tourists this was the site of the inn the Good Samaritan took the wounded man to.  One of the tourists pointed out, “The story of the Good Samaritan was just a parable taught by Jesus.  It didn’t really happen.”  Whereupon the guide quickly replied, “Well if it had happened, this is the inn the robbed man would have been taken to.”

The parable is not literally true in the sense it describes something that really happened.  However, it is literally true in the sense that Jesus actually taught this parable under the circumstances mentioned in Luke 10:25-37.  In both cases, the LESSON of the parable is figuratively true.

But the story doesn’t end there.  I had chuckled at the guide’s remarks (perhaps like you), thinking he was clever to come up with a response like that and that he was really just spinning a yarn about the inn.  At least that’s what I assumed until the January/February 2012 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.  On pages 47-57 of that issue is the article, “Inn of the Good Samaritan Becomes a Museum.”  It turns out there really is a genuine inn on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho that Jesus had in mind when he told the parable!  I assume it was this very inn that the guide had pointed out to his group.

This reveals another truth about Biblical truth-sometimes we are not ready to see how really true something in the Bible is until we’ve been prepared to see it.

Agape

You will notice my correspondences end in "Agape."  In case you do not know what that means, here is my understanding.  Greek has four words for love, "eros," "philia," "storge,"and "agape" (the latter two end with  an "ay" sound, like they were invented by our friends to the north).  The former is sensual love.  It gives rise to the word, "erotic."  The second is the loyalty and affection that can exist between friends and within a family.  It is used in "Philadelphia," the city of brotherly love.  The third is the natural affection family members have for one another.  I know of no English word that has this root and unlike the other three, it is not used in the Bible.  Finally, the latter is the Holy, unmerited love of God.  When I use it, I am not trying to suggest I am God (horrid thought), rather I am wishing you the blessing of God's love from the bottom of my heart.

If you want to learn more, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love.

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