Facts and/or Truth

By Bill Colburn

I am repeatedly fascinated by the tension held between 'fact' and 'truth' in the Bible. By this I mean that some things may not be 'factual', but could none-the-less be 'truth'. Why this tickles me is that it runs measurably counter to the way I was raised to think. I used to think that if the bible is truth, then what it says must also be unquestionably factual. If God is perfect then inspiration is perfect and thus everything it says must be fact.

It was in this logic that I recently listened to a preacher/friend interpret the bible story of the Rich Man and Lazarus - using metaphor as literal fact, proving that hell is a place where the unjust are eternally toasted and tormented. When I later mildly challenged his presentation, he responded with the belief that Jesus would not have told a story that wasn't factually accurate, right?

When folks are taught to think about inspiration in this way the result is a concocted interpretation of scripture that conforms to our need to fit God into our finite controllable little boxes rather than entering into a transcendent delight of worshipping the infinite, eternal, Creator God. The scriptures do not present themselves as a book of facts, but as a record of testimonies designed to lift us out of our limited perceptions into the humbling eternal truth of God who is far beyond even our wildest imaginations. Rather than grounding us in manageable temporal realities, it invites us beyond what can be seen and understood - into the realm of faith. The Bible, in many ways, is a projective, a spiritual Rorschach of sorts, eliciting faith through our life-long, daily interactions with it.

A couple of examples from the gospels may suffice to further agitate this notion. John the Baptist was imagined, by some, to have literally been Elijah - returned in the flesh - as Malachi promised. Jesus responded to the queries about his cousin with these words,

"if you are willing to accept it, my cousin John is Elijah".

If we are willing to accept it? Was John or was John not Elijah? At least that is how I once responded to the text. Uncomfortably, in 'fact', John the Baptist was not Elijah. Yet, in 'truth' he was. Don't you just love a 'yes and no' answer?

From another perspective, Jesus tells us that we can be factually guilty, yet simultaneously innocent. In Matthew 12, the disciples of Jesus were accused of breaking the Sabbath. Jesus never denies this as factual. Rather, he pointed the Pharisees back to the scriptures, to David who in 'fact' broke the law, but was in 'truth' innocent.

He then spoke of the priests who in 'fact' broke the Sabbath law, but were also, in 'truth', innocent. Here the facts pointed to guilt, yet the truth pointed to innocence. Why? Well, of course, they used the law lawfully (1 Tim 1:8). The law is not about the law. It was given to lead us to Christ, the compassionate one. Mercy trumps all other purposes for the law.

I used to be a formidably proud, narrow-minded legalist. I perceived scripture as merely two-dimensional. I needed to understand everything on that plane of plain facts. I wanted it all to make sense if it was going to be a part of my life. I spent most of my time trying to make everything manageable within my reality. Such an approach seemed unarguably reasonable. I could only imagine a God who spoke in eternally confirmable facts. I couldn't imagine God making divine accommodations for finite human minds. There wasn't any lisp, as John Calvin once wrote. As a result, there wasn't any room for the unexplainable - no opportunity for the Spirit - thus no transformation in my life.

When we insist on extracting only 'facts' from scripture rather than allowing the Spirit to use the scriptures to lead us to Jesus - the 'Truth' - we get bogged down and 'heavy laden'. There isn't any rest in a penchant for proving everything. Our rest comes in trusting in Christ alone, who is - in fact - the Truth. We need every letter of the law to lead us to Jesus, who gifts us with the Spirit, who, in turn, helps us to live out the spirit of the law - which is to be like Jesus.