Truth is not truth for me unless I experience it in my own being. Something is not true because the Bible says it is true. It is possible to claim, however, that the Bible says things because they are true – because they are true in ways that you and I can experience in our own beings.

If some group is interpreting the Bible to mean things that are not true, it follows that there is something wrong with their method of interpretation. The truth that the Bible can call to our attention is a level of truth this is typically more illusive than reading Bible statements in a “scientific” or “literal” manner. Most of the statements in the Bible are poetry or legend or story, not factual science or factual history.

Interpreting a story is something different than interpreting a historical writing. For example, the story of Jonah and the whale is misinterpreted if we assume that Jonah was a historical person who was actually swallowed by a huge fish and later spit out on the dry land. In order to hear the truth in the small book of Jonah we have to begin with the realization that this is a novel, a short story, a tale told to make a point about truly living our lives.

When interpreted in this way, the truth of the book of Jonah comes through quite clearly. Here is truth we can experience in this book: being a spokesperson for Final Reality entails telling the truth to people we don’t like, to people we don’t want to heal of their illusions, to people that we don’t want to repent and live a happy life, to people who are (in our silly opinions) inferior, wicked, foreign, clueless, inconvenient, and so on. Further, this book tells us the truth that spokespersons for the Final Reality who flee from their calling to tell the truth end up in the belly of hopelessness and despair. Furthermore, when spokespersons for the truth even grudgingly do their job, people can quite surprisingly be healed. And the final truth of this story is that spokespersons for Final Reality can be resentful of having been instrumental in the healing of people they did not want to see healed. Further, they can falsely expect Final Realty to love them on their own terms. As this story ends, the spokesperson for Final Realty has taken offense with Final Reality because some worm destroys his shade plant. In the closing lines, Final Reality speaks to Jonah with a healing message to Jonah himself: “Why did you wish Final Reality to take pity on this shade plant when you did not wish Final Reality to pity the complex city of Nineveh with a hundred and twenty thousand persons who were clueless, and also much cattle.”

This biblical tale is hilarious and also true to our lives in any century. But the book of Jonah is not true because it is in the Bible. It was selected to be in the Bible because it is true, and because some truth-experiencing selectors saw its truth.

These same principles apply to every other passage of the Bible. The opening chapter of the Bible (Genesis 1) is not true because the world was (historically speaking) created in six days and in the order stated in that chapter. It is true because it claims that all of nature is good: mosquitoes and butterflies, gentle breezes and hurricanes, deer and wolves, life and death, everything. These verses are also true because they claim that the Mysterious Source of all nature is the appropriate core dedication for human well being. A devotion to all of nature and to nature’s Mysterious Source is the primal goodness for the human being. According to this story, this goodness is the starting point for being an authentic human person. And this is the core truth that pervades the entire Bible.

In the second and third chapters of the Bible another story is told – this time about how wickedness enters human affairs. Wickedness happens when human beings choose to invent their own views of what is good and what is evil, and thereby fall away from the goodness indicated in chapter one. This story claims that wickedness in human affairs comes about because human beings choose to make themselves their own center of value rather than being devoted to the goodness of nature and nature’s Mysterious Source.

In third story of the Bible is about how murder comes about as an aspect of human affairs. According to this story murder results from wanting our inventions of reality and devotion to be affirmed by Final Reality and when they are not choosing to become possessed by a vicious envy toward those whose inventions of reality and devotion are being affirmed by Final Reality. In this story, Cain yields to the power of his envy, kills Able, and finds his life scarred by his deed. He is driven even father away from his original goodness. Nevertheless, Final Reality continues to affirm Cain. Other stories will tell us about murderers who repent and are restored to their goodness and to their active service of the goodness that is the basic condition of human nature – devotion to nature and to nature’s Mysterious Source.

The subtlety and profoundness of the truths being told in these stories may not register with many of us. Indeed, feeling the force of such truths entails an active surrender to them. No one actually knows that all of nature is good, including human nature, unless he or she has actively chosen as his or her core devotion the Mysterious Source of all nature. The Bible is unequivocal about claiming that this goodness and happiness is there for everyone, but also clear that no one knows this who has not chosen to trust that this is so.

So the Bible does ask us to trust, but not to trust the Bible. Rather, we are challenged by the Bible to trust the Mysterious Source of all nature. When we do, then the Bible comes alive in story after story after story. It comes alive as true, not because it is the Bible but because the literature of the Bible was written and collected by people who in various levels of depth trusted the Mysterious Source of all nature. We are challenged to join this community with its long trusting lineage. This community wrote the Bible. Those of us who join this community of trust will find the Bible to be true in ever more amazing ways.

Some passages of the Bible are difficult for us because they are about ancient laws that only made sense in ancient times. Other passages are difficult for us because they are about depths of human experience that we have never experienced or have fled from experiencing. Other passages are difficult for us because the ancient language is confusing; it is confusing because its meaning needs to be translated into the images and references that point to what we experience in our lives today.

The Bible is being misused by people who want to read their biases, prejudices, and security systems into some of the Bible’s more obscure passages. A prominent example is the interpretation of passages about a final reckoning of wickedness at the end of time as literal predictions that can be applied to various current events about Palestine or Iran or something else. These and other misuses can create demonic followings and sour others on the entire worth of the Biblical heritage. Those of us who truly treasure the Biblical heritage will need to defend it from such misuse.

And here is a principle with which we can begin our defense: if the truth we experience in our own lives is in fundamental conflict with some group’s interpretation of the Bible, there is something amiss with that group’s method of interpretation.