The Way of the Source

Literal or Literate?: How Your Understanding of the Bible Can Awaken Your Faith

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JD Merrill

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Most of my life, I read the Bible the way I was taught: like an instruction manual, each verse standing alone, perfectly clear in its meaning without any errors. If it said the world was made in six days, then six literal 24-hour days it was. If Jesus said, pluck out your eye if it causes you to sin, well, thank God no one took that literally… but we understood most of it that way—at face value. As if the text had been written last week, by God himself, in plain English for a modern American audience.

Turns out, that’s not how books—especially ancient books—work.

The word bible actually means “the books”, and if you took Spanish you may already know that it is etymologically tied to the word library. Most Protestant and Evangelical churches teach the Bible as a monolithic univocal document dropped from the sky in its final form, rather than the living, breathing, deeply human library of writings it actually is. And when we flatten it, we lose its beauty, depth, and—ironically—its truth.

The problem, however, is not the Bible itself. The problem, my friends, is how we often read and interpret it.  The way in which we read the Bible (or our hermeneutics for short) changes everything. What happens if we read it literately instead of literally? What if we took it seriously enough to see it as it actually is—a collection of books with different genres, written by different people across centuries, in different cultural contexts, with different purposes? Suddenly, the Bible doesn’t just make more sense. It comes alive.

What Does It Mean to Read the Bible Literately?

To read literately means reading with an awareness of what kind of text we’re dealing with. Is it poetry? Prophecy? Myth? Parable? A first-century Jewish sermon? A legal code from a nomadic desert tribe? A deeply symbolic apocalyptic vision?

Imagine streaming Breaking Bad like a DIY tutorial. You’d walk away thinking anyone with a Winnebago and a chemistry set can build an empire. That’s how many modern Christians read the Bible—mistaking poetry for science, metaphor for history, and cultural laws for eternal commandments for all people throughout time.

A literate approach considers the:

• Genre â€“ Are we reading history, poetry, wisdom literature, prophecy, a letter, or an apocalyptic vision? Each one of these requires an entirely different lens.

• Author & Audience â€“ Who wrote this, who were they writing to, and why? A letter from Paul to a church in 1st-century Rome isn’t a universal law for all people for all of time.

• Original Language â€“ Words in Hebrew and Greek often don’t translate neatly into English. Nuance gets lost. A single word, sometimes even a letter, can change everything.

• Historical and Cultural Context â€“ What was happening in their world when this was written? What cultural assumptions would the original readers have had? Where is the setting?

How We’ve Gotten It Wrong

Let’s take a look at a few well-known passages and see how a literate approach changes things:

• Genesis 1 â€“ The creation story here is structured poetically, with rhythmic repetition and symbolic numbers (7 days, representing perfection and completeness). It’s less a scientific blueprint and more a beautiful theological statement: God, our Source, brings order from chaos. And did you know there are actually 2 different creation stories in the book of Genesis? And if we try to read it literally, the creation stories have some pretty significant differences, including which name it calls God.

• The Book of Job â€“ Often misunderstood as a historical account, Job reads more like an ancient drama exploring human suffering and the nature of God. It opens with a heavenly wager between God and “the Satan” (which means ‘the accuser,’ not necessarily the devil who is never even mentioned in the Hebrew Bible) — a setup that sounds more like a stage play than a court transcript.

• The Parables of Jesus â€“ The Good Samaritan isn’t just a nice story about kindness. To Jesus’ audience, Samaritans were despised outsiders from another country. His point was and still is scandalous: The “enemy” is the one who is showing God’s love. A literal English reading often misses that gut-punch.

• Revelation – Apocalyptic literature is highly symbolic. Reading Revelation like a future newspaper misses its original purpose: to offer hope to persecuted Christians under Roman rule. The Beast isn’t your least favorite politician from that other evil party — it most likely represented Emperor Nero. You know… in Rome?

How This Can Change Your Faith (For the Better)

If you stop reading the Bible like a list of divine tweets straight from God’s thumbs and start reading it as a collection of ancient, sacred, deeply human writings wrestling with the divine, something happens.

  1. It becomes way more interesting – No more boring, redundant rulebook. Instead, you’re diving into ancient poetry, mystical visions, political resistance literature, and letters of encouragement to underground faith communities.
  2. It opens itself to mystery – Instead of needing everything to be perfectly clear, rigid, and factual, you may start embracing subversive language, paradox, symbol, and meanings with deeply rich layers.
  3. It frees you from harmful interpretations – A literal reading has been used to justify war, slavery, misogyny, homophobia, and genocide. A literate reading recognizes when a text is describing something, not prescribing it.
  4. It deepens your connection to the Divine – Rather than a static set of rules and doctrines, you encounter a dynamic conversation with God, one that invites you, like its characters, to wrestle, question, doubt, misunderstand, and grow.

Jesus Read the Scriptures This Way… So We Should Too.

Jesus himself did not read Scripture literally. He was so intimately aware of the spirit within the words that he reinterpreted, reframed, and challenged the common readings of his time. “You have heard it said… but I tell you…” was his way of saying, Hey, you’ve been reading this wrong. Let me show you what it actually means. Let me show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

When we move from literalism to literacy, we’re by no means abandoning Scripture—we’re respecting it. We’re engaging with it the way it was meant to be engaged: as an unfolding revelation, a window into the divine, a story that pulls us deeper into love, justice, peace, and transformation.

I think that’s part of what Jesus meant when he said, “The truth will set you free.“

And maybe, just maybe, it starts by learning how to read.

Resources

If you’re curious about diving deeper, here are some authors and books that have been helpful to me:

• Inspired by Rachel Held Evans

• The Bible Tells Me So by Peter Enns

• What Is the Bible? by Rob Bell

• Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright

• Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth E. Bailey

• The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr

Also check out the fascinating public scholar work of Dan McClellan.  He’s about to release his first book since he took his work public called “The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues” on April 29th.  In the meantime check him out on TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube. I also have a resources tab here, but I haven’t had the time to really put much together over there yet while I focus on writing and getting this blogging thing started.

Happy reading.

And happy un-reading, too.

6 responses to “Literal or Literate?: How Your Understanding of the Bible Can Awaken Your Faith”

  1. Willie Fultz Avatar
    Willie Fultz

    So… couple questions… how do you, personally, determine which interpretations are worthy of consideration? Is there merely one? Can several be an option?

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    1. JD Merrill Avatar
      JD Merrill

      I don’t look for one interpretation—I look for light. Like the Jewish tradition teaches, scripture is a jewel you turn in the light, each angle refracting something true, something needed, something now.

      I trust the interpretations that expand love, deepen wonder, and heal what’s been torn. If it binds up the broken, I keep turning. If it justifies fear or power over others, I set it down.

      Truth doesn’t shrink to a single note, it sings in harmony.

      I also remember that someone somewhere decided to write this down and then these stories and accounts have persisted for a long period of time. Asking why and looking to the source often reveals what the scriptures could’ve meant to its original audience and context.

      So, short answer: yes! What about you?

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      1. Willie Fultz Avatar
        Willie Fultz

        Well it’s a lot more nuanced than that, isn’t it? I mean… in one sense I can agree with you. Knowing the Jewish traditions like I do now (though there is still much to unveil), they did indeed view it as though shown through a multi-faceted gem. It’s like the old saying goes; “where there’s four rabbis, there are five opinions.” But in another sense, I can give significant pushback.

        I mean absolutely no offense, so I do hope you take it the way it’s intended (textual formats like this have SIGNIFICANT drawbacks)… but while the ears rejoice in the poetic rhetoric that you claim as your standard… removed from more precise language, it’s purely subjective expression of an individual’s preference.

        What is truth? What do you mean by “expand love”? What even IS love? And for the love of Night at the Roxberry, don’t say “baby don’t hurt me.” 🤣

        Seriously though, what presuppositions is one bringing INTO reading the text… thoughts they take for granted about reality as they perceive it… understandings of what the ancient writer(s) may have intended treating it as though it’s fact? Epistemology, my dude. What standards set the table upon which we place all the options we can consider?

        Which really brings me to my main point: how do you weed out the “bad” interpretations? You have to admit; while there may be multiple plausible interpretations like in a multi-faceted diamond, there also have to be some that you just can’t force into view. How do you know to “trust the interpretations that expand love, deepen wonder, and heal what’s been torn. If it binds up the broken, I keep turning. If it justifies fear or power over others, I set it down,”?

        If that is a metric by which we can discern proper interpretations, where does that standard come from? It can’t just come from JD, right? And it can’t be simply feelings and intuition based… or the standard is no different than the spirit-filled, Pentecostal convictions you’re bucking against.

        Don’t misunderstand me, I probably agree with you more than I disagree… just trying to understand the foundations of your personal philosophical stances and biblical hermeneutics. If we just read what we want INTO the passage, now matter how “convinced” we are that our historical insights are helping to paint that picture… we could still be guilty of eisegesis, right?

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      2. JD Merrill Avatar
        JD Merrill

        Man… first of all, thank you. Seriously. I can feel the heart behind this, and the mind too. I have found that combo is rare these days. You’re not just poking at weak spots to win an argument… you’re holding out questions like a lantern, asking if we’re all still seeing the same light.

        You’re right to push on this. And you’re also right that I didn’t really lay out how I land on that “love / wonder / healing” metric. I dropped it like a poetic mic but didn’t fully unpack the amp it’s plugged into.

        So let me try again… not to defend, but to clarify:

        The standard I’m using, what I trust when I’m reading ancient texts with modern eyes, isn’t just my personal preference. It’s the pattern I see in the life of Jesus. Not just the words he spoke, but the way he lived. The way he constantly made room for the outsider. The way he said no to violence and power games. The way he healed instead of punished. The way he chose table fellowship over temple control.

        When I say “expand love,” I don’t mean some vague emotional high. I mean the kind of love that moves toward the hurting. The kind that disrupts systems, but not to dominate, only to free everyone hurt by and caught up in those systems. The kind that costs. That heals. That dignifies. That transfigures.

        And yeah, I know I’m bringing presuppositions to the text. We all are. Even the ones who say they’re not are just blind to their own. But I’m trying to name mine, and one of them is this: If the interpretation makes people more fearful, more hateful, more obsessed with power or purity or punishment… I don’t care how “orthodox” it is. I don’t buy it. Because the fruit doesn’t lie.

        That Pentecostal fire? I still carry it. I just stopped confusing the goosebumps with the gospel. Now I test everything by the fruit it grows.

        And no, this metric isn’t perfect. Sometimes love gets messy. Sometimes wonder gets misunderstood. Sometimes healing requires letting things die or break open like a seed in order to germinate and bring new life. But when I stand back and ask, “Is this producing more beauty, more justice, more wholeness for everyone?”… that’s when I know I’m on the right trail.

        So I appreciate the questions, man. The philosophy, hermeneutics, epistemology, presuppositions, understandings, assumptions, are extremely important. I don’t go by “feeling” even though I do indeed feel the truth. I follow the spirit and we can know the spirit by its fruits. The fruits of the spirit. You didn’t offend, my dude, you inspired me to refine. And of course, I’d love to keep this going. Because if we’re both still hungry for truth, still open to wonder, still following that pull toward light… then maybe we’re walking the same road, just from different angles of the gem.

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      3. Willie Fultz Avatar
        Willie Fultz

        Bruh, I’m just glad you didn’t take it the wrong way. I can be intense in person, let alone over the lack of incarnate expressions associated with internet discourse. I appreciate the flowers. 😘

        Again, I hold in high regard your ability to wax eloquently. On the surface, there isn’t much to object to there… but it’s still devoid of much substance without probing further. And who knows? Perhaps the depths we would have to cover in order to make your position abundantly clear is just too lengthy for this format. Nonetheless, I have to ask…

        You said: “When I say “expand love,” I don’t mean some vague emotional high. I mean the kind of love that moves toward the hurting. The kind that disrupts systems, but not to dominate, only to free everyone hurt by and caught up in those systems. The kind that costs. That heals. That dignifies. That transfigures.”

        And my brain goes; “Ok, JD. But how do you DEFINE love?” You’ve expressed what you argue love DOES, but not what it IS. What if I define love differently? What if other readers do? If we read our personal definition into the above quote, what you said can DRASTICALLY change.

        It also begs further questions for me: what is that standard of love derived from? On whose authority? Is it Scriptural authority? Are we even considering the Bible a possible option for authority? And if we are, how do we know it’s reliable? If it isn’t, why appeal to it? If it is, are you just banking on Jesus’ words? The apostles? Paul? Church tradition. Denominations. I could go on. Lol.

        And if I didn’t already spiral enough into deep epistemological waters, you went on to say “If the interpretation makes people more fearful, more hateful, more obsessed with power or purity or punishment… I don’t care how “orthodox” it is. I don’t buy it. Because the fruit doesn’t lie,” and I can’t help but come up with more questions…

        If the interpretation makes WHICH people more fearful, hateful, etc? Any? The oppressed? Why is that the standard that we should adopt?

        Is it logically possible that THE truth, capital “T” truth, objective truth, whatever one wants to call it… is it possible that it offends? Upsets? Uttering it, even in a gentle way, ignites a hatred in those that would much rather “do what is right in their own eyes”? Is it not also possible that those who are hurt are poorly interpreting the “truth” based on horrible life experiences from a fallen and broken world? That they’re not actually upset with the truth, but more upset over who’s delivering the message? Did not Jesus say and do quite a bit that made people fearful (Mark 11:18, 32; 12:12; Mark4:41; Luke 8:37)? Spurned them toward hateful acts (the events that follow Mark 14:63)?

        Don’t misunderstand. I’m not trying to defend any particular“orthodox” stance. Overall I think I agree with your sentiments in general… but I can’t just assume we have the same starting point. Did I maybe use low-hanging proof texts to demonstrate a rebuttal? Lol. Yes. But intentionally so. All one has to do is point these out to “prove” your standards untenable… but without further clarity, it’s hard to understand what EXACTLY you’re arguing.

        Believe you me, I’m confident I hold several positions lay people would deem unorthodox (I would hope that’s evident by my rejection of PSA 😉). Some have called me outright heretical. And yet, I can’t still argue I’m within orthodoxy. I digress.

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  2. Willie Fultz Avatar
    Willie Fultz

    I meant CAN argue I’m within orthodoxy 🤦🏽‍♂️

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Hello,

I’m JD

A former worship leader, ex-Christian Metalcore vocalist, and lifelong seeker. This is a space for those deconstructing, questioning, and daring to rediscover a faith beyond fear. Here, I share my story and the ancient mystical, inclusive path I’ve found along the Way. If you’re wrestling with belief, the religious, or the divine, you’re in good company.

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