Beyond the fence: on reading the Bible in this secular age

Otago Daily Times

6 days ago

How should we read the Bible in the 21st century, Graham Redding asks.
For many people, the Bible is outdated, even dangerous — fuel for fundamentalism or a dusty relic of a bygone age.
But for those still curious, or tentatively open, the question of how to approach such a text matters. And the metaphors we use to describe that approach matter even more.
Consider four metaphors: the fence, the instruction manual, the cave, and the garden. Each offers a distinct picture of what the Bible is and how it might be used.
The fence metaphor sees the Bible as a boundary-setter. It marks out who is in and who is out — doctrine as gate, morality as barbed wire. This is the Bible as rulebook or creed-enforcer, where certain interpretations are fenced in as "orthodox" and others left out in the theological cold.
Fences provide security, yes, but they also restrict movement. The danger of this model is that it transforms the Bible into a tool of control, shutting down conversation and excluding those who ask difficult questions or arrive at uncomfortable conclusions.
This approach is all too familiar in religious communities that have wielded the Bible as a weapon against women, LGBTQ+ people, or those who diverge from the party line.
It is no wonder that many outside such communities want nothing to do with a text so frequently associated with misogyny and exclusion.
Closely related is the instruction manual metaphor. Here the Bible is treated as a how-to guide for life: clear, concise, step-by-step.
Want a better marriage? Proverbs has you covered. Struggling with grief? Turn to the Psalms. Need direction in life? Jeremiah 29:11 is the divine GPS.
This metaphor appeals to a modern, utilitarian mindset. It assumes that the Bible offers clear answers to modern problems, if only we read it correctly.
But the Bible isn't a single, tidy manual. It's a sprawling collection of stories, laws, poems, laments, and letters, written by dozens of authors over centuries. Much of it resists easy application.
The instruction-manual metaphor flattens the complexity of Scripture, silencing voices of protest, ambiguity, and paradox.
Taken together, the fence and manual metaphors foster a brittle kind of faith — one that cannot withstand the pressures of moral complexity or existential doubt.
Enter the metaphor of the cave. Here, the Bible becomes a place of mystery and depth, an ancient cavern to be explored with curiosity and humility.
Like explorers lowering themselves into a vast cave system, readers enter the text not to master it but to discover forgotten chambers of wisdom, veins of poetry, and inscriptions from past generations.
This metaphor recognises the historical and literary complexity of the Bible. It allows for darkness and ambiguity.
It honours the voices of lament and protest — Job's cry against unjust suffering, Ecclesiastes' bewildered musings on meaninglessness, Jesus' own cry of abandonment on the cross.
In the cave, we do not find tidy answers. But we may encounter something more valuable: echoes of our own questions, whispered across time, calling us to a more authentic form of living.
Finally, the garden metaphor. Here the Bible is less a site to be explored than a plot to be cultivated. We return to it again and again — not because it gives instant answers, but because it yields nourishment over time.
In this metaphor we bring ourselves to the text — our experience, our questions, our wounds — and we let it work on us.
Not every seed will sprout. Not every passage will bear fruit. But over time, with sun and rain and pruning, the garden grows. It may even surprise us with unexpected blossoms.
This metaphor invites communal engagement. Gardens are meant to be shared. Biblical interpretation becomes not an individual act of mastery, but a communal practice of tending a garden together, learning from those who have gone before, and passing the harvest on to those who come after.
Metaphors shape expectations. If we see the Bible as a fence, we will patrol it. If we see it as a manual, we will seek quick fixes. But if we approach it as a cave or a garden, we step into a different posture — one of openness, reverence, and transformation.
For those who have been harmed by rigid interpretations of Scripture, or who see the Bible as irrelevant in a secular age, these alternative metaphors offer a way back in.
Not to naive certainty or uncritical belief, but to a more human, more honest engagement with one of the world's most influential texts.
So let us set down our fences. Let us put away our manuals. Let us take up our lanterns, and step into the cave. Let us roll up our sleeves and tend the garden.
Who knows what we might find? Or what might grow.
• Dr Graham Redding is the Douglas Goodfellow lecturer in chaplaincy studies at the University of Otago.