Every word in the bible is literal and true. Samuel made the sun sit still, the world was made in a 24 hour period regardless of the presence of a sun before day 4, and placing a penis into a man's anus is an abomination. Every word is god breathed and is useful for rebuking... well that is the important one. Of course, this only happens until we have to describe our pains, our struggles, and our perceived agonies. When jesus said "I have been sent to those in prisons" it can mean a spiritual prison, a prison of finances, a personal prison of poverty, a prison of bad habbits and addiction. However, on the topic of Noah, there were dinosaurs on the ark. We can make things like work a graven image in our lives, like football, like women, pornography, drinking addiction, poverty can be our idol if we worship SNAP and medicaid. Also, if you believe in anything other than Jesus is going to come back and burn the edifices of those people we judge and dislike, you are a decieved ignoramus who refuses to accept the literal word of God. Swearing, not in it's literal sense of swearing oaths, but in being profane, using God's name in vain, and using the replacements for those words like heck and gosh. You may as well say those profanities and cursings. A fetus is murder because the bible literally says "I knew you when in your mother's womb" no interpretation issues or anything, and if we let gays get together, we will be showered with fire and brimstone. There is no other interpretation. However sometimes we are being opressed by philistenes like the government, philistines like not wanting read your bible and giving your offerings and tithes, philistines like poverty, and addiction, and abortionists. It's not literal philistines and I should know, my pastor told me and I dechiphered the poetic language of my bible. The poetic words of the Psalms is the literal wod of God. You have to be familiar with it to understand it. There is a literal valley of the shadow of death that I walk in, and I think it is in Huston. Now, someone's figurative valley could be taxes, abortion, addiction, sadness, gossip, depression, abortion, poverty. That is not literal, and you have to be able to be discerning in these matters. Take it fom me; I know the pastor. My uncle is the pastor, my cousin married the pastor and I went to youth group and had a bible study during lunch.
Tell me, why can we fudge literal interpretations just because it justifies our grace and defiles those we are to love? When we have that selective play with definititions, we run the risk of defining what we wish and not what is. If the bible is literal, let it be literal, but do not turn and say that literal, clear things , mean something they do not because we ironically think that by inventing a definition, we support the undefined and literal interpretation of a book with no modern context.
Morally, it is all allegory. It is mythology. It is Entymology. It is a window into the insights of prior generations of humans with a view into where our ideas comefrom and where our values originate.
