The Bible and Politics part 3

I stated in the last entry that Jesus's message was inherently conservative, although there was a liberal side to it. This post will be devoted to explaining how my interpretation is not a political statement. Let us dive further into what it means to be either liberal or conservative.

Liberal and conservative transcends politics. People whose only interest in these terms extends to what they hear on the nightly news might view them as political leanings, but they are not. They are two different ways of defining reality.

Conservatism is a way of viewing reality based on eternal principles (thanks Ben Shapiro for the phrase eternal principles). You might better understand what this means through the word Absolutes. Conservatives believe that the world is defined through absolutes.

Liberalism is a way of viewing reality where the person observing the world defines reality and one person's definition is as good as another's. You might better understand this concept through the phrase the truth is relative. True liberals, in the progressive sense, believe that they are the sole determiners of what is true and what is not.

A non-political example of these two perspectives, of which I am imminently familiar, is that of Bible interpretation (which we so happen to be discussing).

A conservative Bible Scholar reads the Bible and concludes that the Bible means what it says. You might consider a conservative to be more of a literalist. That is why conservative Bible scholars will debate the meaning of the original words in the Biblical text to define the meaning of words. For instance, a conservative Bible scholar will not necessarily believe that God created the world in 6 literal days, but they will conclude that the days described in the creation account are defined by some absolute standard that is allowed through the interpretation of the original Hebrew word, yom.

A liberal Bible scholar reads the Bible and concludes that the Bible can be interpretted strictly according to context and will see an evolution of thought throughout the Bible. A liberal Bible scholar might see the creation account as more of an allegory (sorry conservatives, some of you interpret Genesis this way too, in contradiction to how you interpret the rest of the Bible). A liberal Bible scholar does not have a defined way of interpreting the Biblical text and many will say that such crucial doctrines, such as the resurrection of Jesus, are merely allegories meant to inspire faith.

So, conservatism and liberalism are not necessarily exclusive to politics, they also leak into the world of, well, worldview! The next post will give you a Biblical example of how two religious political groups, in the day of Jesus, supports my claim that Jesus' message was inherently conservative.

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