Okay, so maybe there was a Friday post coming this week after all. If you’d like to check out the journey through 1 Corinthians 6 which led to this post, click here for part 1, part 2, part 3, or part 4. Also, this post is inspired by the conclusion to A.J. Jacobs’s The Year of Living Biblically, which I cannot recommend strongly enough.

I think it’s fairly common knowledge at this point that not all branches of the Christian family tree get along with one another. Whether we’re banishing one another to The Colonies or just tweeting passive-aggressively at one another, Christians over the ages have hurled a lot of accusations at each other. In recent years, one of the most popular insults has become “Cafeteria Christians.”

The term evokes the image of a cafeteria serving line where people can choose what they want on their trays and leave off the less appetizing options. In keeping with this image, Cafeteria Christians pick and choose the parts of the Bible they like best rather than taking the Bible in its entirety. “You know, Janice, I think I’ll pass on the tithing and snake-handling today, but can I get an extra helping of forgiveness please?” This label portrays some Christians as picky and entitled and willfully ignorant of the more difficult parts of the Bible, and it assumes a proper Christian would take every verse of the Bible as literal and equally authoritative. But there’s a catch:

The Bible was never meant to be read this way.

Many parts of the Bible were never meant to be taken literally.
This book contains poetry, parables, and symbolic imagery.
The authors were not always concerned with science.
Some of its histories are out of chronological order because their authors placed greater emphasis on themes and morals than the literal historical timeline.
Some entire books function as extended parables disconnected from history,
but the fact they are “stories” does not decrease their thematic importance.
There are contradictions,
there are verses we cannot understand without context,
and there are words we’re still not even sure how to translate.
On top of all this, some parts of the Bible, when taken out of context and read at face value, simply do more harm than good. And, at some point, God trusts us to make a judgment call about which passages of the Bible will most inform how we interact with the world and which passages we will respectfully set aside.

Truly taking the Bible seriously requires not taking every word literally.
It requires being both charitable and critical
as we consider every verse through the lens of God’s love.
Some may call me a “Cafeteria Christian” for having this attitude toward the Bible,
but I call it a balanced diet, and here’s another tough truth:

We are all of us Cafeteria Christians.

Whether we admit it or not,
we are all selective about which portions we emphasize or set aside.
No Christian, no matter how devout, follows every command in the Bible,
so I guess the real question is:
What will you select from the serving line?