Who Gives a Shit What Glenn Beck Has To Say?

The Bible is in trouble.  While it contains Great Truths, it is factually wrong in so many instances that a significant portion of the population doesn’t trust the Truths, either.  Then there are others who maintain that the Bible can only be read as the inerrant word of God.  Clearly this position is indefensible without resorting to magical thinking about the fossil record—or even about the Bible itself.   The fact is—and I have it straight from a leading biblical scholar, Dr. Carole Fontaine—how the Bible is read says as much about the reader as it does about the Bible.

Dr. Fontaine told a funny story yesterday, which was the first day of Intro to Hebrew Bible.  She’s a cancer survivor, and she said while she was undergoing chemo she not only renewed her Christian faith by studying Jesus.  Every day she spent at the chemo center, Glenn Beck was on TV spouting off his version of Gospel.  Finally she’d had enough of it, and said to the staff:

“Isn’t it bad enough we have cancer?  Do we have to listen to Glenn Beck, too?”

Turns out, the patient who really wanted to listen to Glenn Beck had long since finished chemo, but no one bothered to turn the channel.

Glenn Beck and others like him do use the Bible to batter others, but we can't hold the Bible responsible for their narrow interpretation.  We on the left can use the Bible to boost people up by offering our own broader interpretation.  But we’ll need to study it in order to do so.  Even a quick look at the facts calls into question the allegation that the Bible is the inerrant word of God.  First of all, there isn’t only one Bible!  There are different Canons adopted by different churches based on which of the many texts circulating in antiquity should be included, there are different translations of each Canon, and the Christian New Testament was written in Greek, which wasn’t the language Jesus spoke.  Quite possibly a lot has been lost in translation.

Glen Beck’s support of the Bible has done much to discredit the book in many respects.  People are outraged by the narrow interpretation he spouts and hatred he engenders by the spouting.  But so what if Glenn Beck believes some people are outsiders in the land of God?  Dr. Fontaine said you can win any argument over Hebrew Scripture by saying “What about Job?” and any argument about Christian Scripture by saying “Have you read the Sermon on the Mount?”

I have read both but remember neither.  As luck with have it Dr. Burrows, my History of Christianity professor, assigned some other relevant selections.  In Matt. 15:21-28 Jesus learns that there are no outsiders, a point he repeats elsewhere in the Gospels.  And yes, I said that right.  He learns this.  Peter said, in Acts 10:34 that God shows no particularity toward insiders and outsiders as construed by humans.  Paul said, in Galations 5:6 the only thing that counts is faith working through love; and in Gal. 5:14 “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.;”

There is no escape clause.  We are called to love one another. Period.

And as I mull over the press coverage Glenn Beck gets light of what I learned on just the first day of seminary school this is my conclusion: Who gives a shit what Glenn Beck has to say?