The Narrative Sterilization of the Bible
Recently I've been trying to become more aware of how much I view the Bible through a sanitized and whitewashed filter.
This is the result of being familiar with certain aspects of the Bible, but not the whole story. I've heard it being called "VeggieTales Effect" (Tim Mackie, BibleProject podcast) or the "The Lullaby Effect" (Marty Solomon, BEMA Discipleship podcast).
I like to call it the "narrative sterilization" of the Bible.
It is often a result of two things:
Being told a cleaner version of a Bible story as kids with an emphasis on fantastical elements.
Not really reading the Bible, but reading what we've been told about the Bible.
So I spent a bit of time thinking about how this has affected my own understanding of the Bible. What I've come to realise is that when whole narrative aspects of the Bible are sterilised:
I miss important details because I'm not as familiar with the story as I think. I've heard of the story many times which makes me think I know it, but I haven’t properly read it for myself.
I gloss over the details when reading a story due to familiarity. My tendency is to skim over the minor details to get to the familiar content, but there are often lots of little pearls in what would seem to be weird or boring parts of the Bible.
Here is an example:
The Prophet Jonah - I'm sure you're familiar with the title "Jonah and the Whale". And how this is a story of a prophet running away from God's instruction, gets swallowed up by a whale, repents for his sin and gets vomited back on land, and then goes on to see the salvation of the city Nineveh.
But the whole whale/fish part is just a small aspect of the overall story. The more you read that story, the more you see how much of a pessimistic prophet Jonah actually is. And the story doesn't end on a high point - it ends with Jonah questioning the grace of God, and God responds with "And should I [God] not pity Nineveh...?" (Jonah 4:11a).
For a very long time, I've missed the core themes of that story due to the narrative sterilisation.
This is a story of the grace and sovereignty of God. God can use a reluctant servant to redeem an entire Gentile city. How many times had my own disobedience prevented someone else from experiencing the goodness of God??
So who is to blame for this?
Should we start to point fingers at the Sunday school kid's teachers and demand that they tell our kids honest and gory versions of the Bible?
No!
I don't want my kids to hear that!
Should we start shouting at our preachers for not teaching us more complex theology?
No!
They have a hard enough time to preach a 30-minute sermon that evangelizes, aligns a church, has relatable stories, is funny, explores life challenges, let alone somehow be deep enough for the Christians who can't be bothered to read the Bible outside of a Sunday service.
I've come to learn that the person to blame is myself.
For not simply reading the Bible for myself.
For just assuming I know the story without bothering to meditate on it.
So this is what I've started to do.
I’m actively trying to find ways to break up my familiarity with the stories. Some of this includes:
Writing it by hand.
I wrote about this in my post "Writing Genesis By Hand". I found that this was a great way to take a stroll through the Bible and really appreciate the effort the authors put into each line of text.
Read it aloud to myself.
For a long chunk of history, the Bible and the Tanak (Old Testament) were orally communicated as many people couldn't read them. Reading it aloud shakes me out of familiar mental cadences and hear specific facets of a story.
Memorising larger chunks.
I'm terrible at memorising things. But just the attempt at memorising larger chunks of the Bible has been interesting as I'm required to spend time on each word and line of the Bible. This has made me notice specific wordings and phrases that I normally miss when skimming over them.
Reading multiple chapters together rather than a few verses.
A lot of Bible reading plans just get you to read one or two chapters at a time. This is ok, but sometimes a story is spanning multiple chapters. Go a little bit further in daily readings has helped me notice patterns spanning entire books that I would have missed before.
Anything that stops me from glossing over what I think I know is good. There are a bunch of other things I'm trying like turning off chapter and verse numbering in digital Bibles, rereading my handwritten Bible, audio Bibles, reading various translations.
Why do this?
There are a lot of details and themes that can be discovered when you spend the time to look at the story in its wholeness.
Ultimately I want to be familiar with the story for myself. I don't want to have to be dependent on someone else to articulate the story of the Bible, but I want to know each aspect of it for myself so I can meditate on it, tell others about it, and help others through it.
The more I know the story, the more I learn about the nature of man, and whose image we've been created in.
I want to encourage you to become more aware of how the narrative of the Bible has been sterilised for you. And try some different things to break up that familiarity. Spend time in the seemingly boring and difficult parts of the Bible and meditate on how that may be a part of the bigger story.
It's all intentional, and it all contributes to the good news of the scriptures.
Happy reading!