This post is the third of four. For more information on what 1 Corinthians doesn’t say about modern LGBTQ people, click here. For a little background on Paul’s description of the body as God’s Temple, click here.

What happens when we run into one of those Bible passages which just doesn’t fit with our understanding of God’s love? What happens when a passage from the Bible seems to present a view of the world which conflicts with our own? Over the past few weeks, in our 1 Corinthians study, our group has had to wrestle with this, and I’ve presented three options for engaging these kinds of passages:

(1) Conclude the Bible says it, and adjust our perspectives accordingly.
Many of the verses in 1 Corinthians fall into this first category. In this case, Paul presents teachings which already fit our understanding of God’s love and have practical applications to our environment. Paul says what he says, and we’re okay going along with it. This becomes more difficult as passages challenge us more, but if we prayerfully discern a need to change our own views, we need to follow it.

(2) Conclude the Bible says it, but acknowledge a tension and continue to wrestle with the passage.
Some of the verses in 1 Corinthians fall into this second category. For example, some of the things Paul says about judgment in chapter 5 rub me the wrong way. I acknowledge Paul’s point and its importance to the context, but I’m still figuring out how I personally interact with these words and how I apply them to my current setting. I’m not sure I agree with Paul in some of the nuances of his argument, but so long as I’m still willing to engage his words and still consider them seriously, that’s okay. Where things get really tricky is with the third category:

(3) Consider maybe the Bible doesn’t say what we think it says, and explore other interpretations.
1 Corinthians 6 provides a great example. In reading this chapter together, our group had to dive deep into the ancient Greek culture and language. We had to explore the history of the interpretation of this passage and how it’s been applied (or misapplied) over two millennia of church history. This kind of exploration requires great care and precision, but we have a helpful guiding principle for such difficult work:

Always read the Bible through the lens of Jesus’s love.

If you open a Bible intent on finding hatred and bigotry there, you will find it.
If you want the Bible to justify homophobia or racism or classism, you can make it.
If you expect the Bible to teach you about God’s love
(rather than letting God’s love inform your reading of the Bible),
all you will find in this book is a mirror reflecting your own biases back to you.
But, if you read the Bible with the underlying assumption God loves and seeks to redeem this world and everyone in it, you will not only gain a deeper connection to the God the Bible describes, you will have a greater sense of which passages need to be reconsidered in the way we explored 1 Corinthians 6 on Sunday.

The Bible is far too important a text to be taken at face value. While the love it depicts is beautiful in its simplicity, the text itself is rich in its complexity. We should always be willing to dig a little deeper.