Biblical Case Method

I experience many people of faith struggling with the Bible. The stories are often fantastic. The context has vanished in the sands of time. Some hear about the horrors in the Bible more often than liberations and joy.

Yet, we can’t quite get it out of our collective head. I still hear it mentioned at parties by people who are not religious. The value in this book, maybe even simply in it’s age, embeds into the hearts of a seemingly random assortment of people. We all chew on it together.

My way of eating the scriptures nourishes me. I take them in, chew and digest (1) them alone or with company, and try to allow them to come back out of my actions.

My way of ingesting, digesting, and using the Bible is a case method approach. Many will be familiar with aspects of this approach in their professional life. Pioneered by the Harvard Business School, doctors, social workers, military, and many other fields use case studies to investigate and hone their practice. This method is especially useful for pressurized moments.

Applying this method to the Bible takes that written work, then, as an Interfaith (2) collection of theory and case study regarding best practices of God’s people. The cultural and geographical difference between the origins of that document and our place and time among the flowing waters as still snow-capped peaks necessitates some allegorical acumen to be able to extract the nugget from any given bible story (or case) and attempt applying it.

The theory is the stuff that’s not the narrative. These are things like the prophets, wisdom literature, the Epistles, and revelation. This is God on paper. What does God look like? God is love. With whom does God have sympathy? With the oppressed and those who suffer (3).

The case study is all the narrative. What does faith look like? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah are people holding onto a story with no evidence of its virtue (4) other than their daily survival. What does Justice look like? It looks like God punishing corrupt officials like Pharaoh and Ahab (5). What do we do when we’re trapped in the wilderness and can’t find our way to the promised land? We stick together and take one step at a time toward at the pillar of cloud and the pillar of Fire that is the Holy Spirit and our God (6).

When I read the Bible, I sometimes ask the same questions I imagine a reporter would ask. Who wrote this? Who were they writing it for? What was their day-to-day reality like? I often reflect on how most people in the Bible spend more time outside than most people I know. I try to spend as much time outside as possible if only to get a smaller window into their reality.

When I was a musician, I learned music theory and music history. I watched what the living masters did. I tried to copy them while still maintaining my own voice and expression, playing music for my audience and time. I do something similar with God and the Word. I learn the theory and history as best I can. I watch the living saints today. I do my best to find stories that allegorically relate to any situation I’m in and study them like an athlete studies tape before a game.

Bible is an Interfaith, Intercultural, collection of wisdom detailing the thoughts and activities of people of good faith throughout the historic era of human development. It’s a book about losing more than it’s a book about winning. I think that’s why people who are used to losing usually like it. I like it. It has never let me down. I’m better for it. That’s how I read the Bible.

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1: Ezekiel 2:8-3:3

2: Abraham worships Elohim. Moses worships a God named Yahweh. Judaism after the exile described in Ezra, Nehemiah, etc. is very different from the worship of Yahweh found previously in the Pentateuch and history of kings. Then, of course, Christianity shakes the whole thing up again in the additional testament. Even that faith undergoes significant evolution in the <90 years it chronicles. Many organized faith systems are present in the Bible.

3: Maybe the clearest example of this is found in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). The Beatitudes (Matt 5:3-11, Luke 6:20-22) which reference the tectonic social reordering of God’s justice (Isa 40:3-5).

4: The length of time Sara and Rachel waited for children coupled with the length of time between the original covenant with Abraham and the eventual social organization as the people of Israel.

5: Exo 1: 8-14; 1 Kings 21

6: Exo 13:21