Movement magazine issue 154

NAOMI
CAITLIN
Often, when I tell other non-religious
people that I’m reading the Bible with
my girlfriend, I get a blank look and a
‘why?’ Fair question, especially coming
from people who’ve known me for a
while.
Until I went to university, I was the kind
of atheist who had never given much
thought to religion, except to assume
that a) it was all a bit pointless and b)
nobody my age was actually, properly
religious - were they? And then I
moved into halls of residence and met
my neighbour, a Christian. We got on.
We became friends. Through her, I met
other Christians, and became friends
with them too. Then, just over three
years ago, I started going out with one
of them. And she’s not just a Christian,
she’s a theology student! Sometimes I
go with her to church, or to Bible study.
And although I can often be heard
loudly asking how this became my life
as I listen to yet another debate on the
finer points of Anglican theology, here I
am. Reading the Bible.
That’s a lot to tell someone in one go
though, so I say I’m doing it because
it’s interesting. Which it is. What I don’t
explain (because it’s personal and a bit
mushy) is that I want to actively try to
understand more about Christianity,
about the Bible’s place in it, and about
faith in general, not just to satisfy my
own curiosity but because it is a part
of who my girlfriend is. Before we got
together, I would never have guessed
how significant her faith and my lack of
it would be in our relationship. Reading
the Bible and talking through each
chapter has sparked some interesting
and revealing conversations about
where our beliefs intersect and diverge.
Inevitably, our longest and most
interesting conversations have been
about the Gospels. When Caitlin
converted, she accepted Jesus Christ
as her Lord and Saviour. For me, He’s
more of a vague acquaintance. It is
when we read the Gospels that I am
most aware that the Bible is not only
a cultural artefact but a holy text. I’m
sure that most of the people reading
this will consider that an eye-rollingly
obvious thing to say, but I haven’t
always known it and I think that’s true
of a lot of people who grew up without
a religion. It is sobering to remember
that what I see as an intellectual
exercise, Caitlin sees as central to her
faith.
Every story and every person in the
Bible has been different to what I was
expecting, and this is true of Jesus
as well. I genuinely thought that the
Bible was going to be full of boringly
good people being boringly virtuous
- how did that rumour get started?!
The Jesus I am confronted with in the
Gospels is neither the gentle hippy
that many other atheists talk about
(‘he was just a great moral teacher!’),
nor the terrifying judge that people
wearing sandwich boards in the city
centre shout about. What I am mainly
struck by is that what Jesus is asking
you to do is really hard. It is nice, as
an atheist, to be free to disregard the
difficult, boring or unpleasant parts of
the Bible, to not have to wrestle with
Jesus’ commandment to give up all
material possessions, or to cut off my
right hand if it causes me to sin. Still,
this experience has made me examine
my own beliefs and behaviour. Like
Harry Potter, I have to choose between
what is right, and what is easy.
I could talk a lot more about what
I’ve got from this experience - how
disappointed I was when I found out
that Exodus isn’t quite the same as
Dreamworks’ The Prince of Egypt,
how much I’ve enjoyed telling various
long-suffering friends and relatives
what went down between Jacob and
Esau, how I instantly became obsessed
with John the Baptist - but ultimately
what it has been is a challenge. I have
questioned my own thoughts and
reactions every bit as much as I’ve
questioned Caitlin’s, and I certainly still
have more questions than answers.
And I’m still not a Christian. But I think
it’s been good for me, and I want to
keep going.
NAOMI BERRY
With glee, I suggested to Naomi that
we take part in my Church’s ‘Bible in
a year’ challenge. I didn’t think that
this would stop the barrage of daily
questions about Christianity, but I did
think that it would give her context
for my own explanations of theology,
orthodoxy, and the quirks of the
Church.
Naomi is intelligent, and I knew she
would love the strangeness of biblical
texts, especially the Hebrew Bible. The
trickster Jacob and the fool Esau, the
drama of Exodus, and the polemic of
David’s psalms delighted her, and it
has been even more delightful for me
to read these with her. Bible study has
been fun with texts from the Hebrew
Bible. Reading Ruth together was
wonderful because we were able to
discuss the various interpretations
of the relationship between Ruth and
Naomi, arguing over which made the
most sense and conceding that more
than one reading can be applied.
Reading the New Testament has been
less fun for me. Because it is more
central to my faith, the challenges that
came from Naomi felt more personal
to me. I didn’t mind laughing over the
stupidity of Abraham trying to pass
his wife off as his sister, but I did mind
criticism of Jesus. I was constantly
gauging her reaction to Him and giving
my own explanation of the text, figuring
out where I stood in relation to it and
trying to convince her to agree with me.
It reminded me very much of reading
these texts myself for the first time; I
converted from atheism at 19, went
to university to read English and came
out with a Theology degree specialising
in biblical studies. Because of my
experience of studying the Bible with
other Christians and other students, I
thought I would be able to approach
this objectively. I was prepared - I had
my theology textbooks, my knowledge
of biblical exegesis, and some of the
apologist arguments I was fond of
when I first converted.
But objectivity has not happened.
Something about reading the Gospels
with someone who I love and respect,
and in our home, meant that I was
much closer to reading it devotionally,
but I was still being confronted with
criticisms I would expect to be fielded
in a university or evangelistic setting. I
had read the Gospels critically before, I
had read them with Christians before,
but never before had I read it in a
personal way with someone who wasn’t
a scholar and wasn’t a Christian, but
who early on grasped the elementals
of exegesis. I’ve suddenly become
equally yoked with someone in terms of
biblical interpretation, except that their
views often differ greatly from my own.
This hit me harder than I expected,
especially when Naomi didn’t like
something that Jesus said or disliked
one of my favourite verses. However,
giving concise reasons for why I
found something beautiful or morally
challenging helped me to understand
my own relationship to the Gospels.
I feel like layers of interpretation and
certainty have been pulled away and I
am left looking at the Bible in its raw
and powerful complexity. And this
will happen again and again as I keep
rereading it. And I will encourage
others to read the Bible for themselves,
and not as a means of conversion. The
Bible is more than John 3:16, and more
than an ancient text. It is a holy text,
but it is also a cultural artefact. There
is so much interpretation, so much
which needs to be contextualised,
dissected, explained and contested.
We have as much right to embrace this
odd collection of books as previous
generations have - creating meaning,
and insight, and most importantly
destabilising the truths, reactions and
certainties we had previously taken
from them. We should remember
this, the weirdness of these texts,
their plurality and mystery and the
fascination that they hold not just for
Christians, but for everyone. Reading
the Bible is an end in itself, not merely
a means to substitutionary salvation.
CAITLIN WAKEFIELD
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