The Bible doesn't say what we want it to....

In the context of a resolution sent out to members of the Society of Biblical Litererature, Jim Davila makes an important point about the use of the Bible to promote political agendas. The money quote:

This claim [of the resolution that the moral issues dominating the biblical texts focus on concerns such as the well-being of individuals, the integrity of community, care for the powerless and the vulnerable, economic justice, the establishment of peace, and the stewardship of the environment] is not easy to maintain. True, the Bible doesn't address gay marriage directly, but Leviticus does call for the execution of homosexuals (20:13), which tends to imply that the writer opposed state ratification of their unions. It's a horrible passage, but it's there. And does the Bible really focus on the "well-being of individuals" (like the women and children supposedly slaughtered at Jericho by Joshua and his army at God's behest); "the integrity of community" (like the foreign women and children driven away from their husbands and fathers by Ezra and Nehemiah); "care for the powerless and the vulnerable" (see the two previous items), and so on? Sure, many places in the Bible support most of these values (although the business about "stewardship of the environment" is a stretch), but many don't. From a historical perspective this is a remarkably selective and, frankly, myopic list. The fundamentalists have as good a claim (maybe better) on the Bible for their agenda as the trendy-but-laudable laundry list of the anonymous writer(s) of this resolution.

Read the whole whole thing.