constructing faith.

this was recently posted

the fact that this letter had to be written makes me angry. part of this is because my first semester in seminary, i had to sit through my pentateuch professor taking 2 1/2 hours out of a 3 hour lecture to plead with the students in the class not to hate him, hate the institution, ignore the class, or lose their faith because of what he was teaching.

and at orientation at princeton this week, i sat through a faculty panel where they all openly acknowledged that biblical studies classes were the hardest on students' faith. that a little bit of deconstruction took place that then had to be recovered from.

if pastors, teachers, and church leaders wouldn’t teach people ways of misreading or mishandling the bible in the first place (e.g. the-bible-as-handbook, the-bible-as-literally-true, the-bible-as-perfectly-open-and-understandable, and quite frankly, just not encouraging people to read the bible), we wouldn’t have to deal with students in seminary having a faith crisis. as far as i am concerned, it is irresponsible to build people’s faith on these things.

having a crisis of faith in your biblical studies class shouldn’t have to be a rite of initiation in seminary.

i happen to have an undergrad degree in ancient literature and critical theory, so i didn’t have this crisis, which probably makes me somewhat unsympathetic. but i just don’t understand why the things presented in these classes can’t be part of the teaching of the church at large. we don’t need to protect people or protect their faith. if we who take these course can retain our faith in and love for the living God and in his kingdom and in Jesus, then i fail to see why people seem to be convinced that it can’t be taught outside of grad school.

i also put my money where my mouth is :) 2 weeks ago, i taught in my worship community on exodus 15. i was asked to chop my teaching in half so a special announcement could be made. of the half i kept, an aknowledgement of the ambiguity/diversity of the exodus narratives and why this doesn’t destroy the authority of the bible stayed in. i thought it was that important.