In our modern world we have used a metaphor for approaching our sacred text that may be responsible for a growing set of problems. We have said the Bible is our Owner’s Manual for Life, and we start using this idea early. Metaphors are lenses we use to give us insight. But we have to remember the limits of metaphors. They are illustrative. Metaphors work because there is a an element of truth that rings clear. But metaphors breakdown. Metaphors are culture specific. Metaphors that work today may not work tomorrow. We have been referring to the Bible as an “Owners Manual for Life,” and that metaphor has outlasted it’s welcome. Life can’t be negotiated with an owners manual. Life is too dynamic and too situational to yield to simple looked up entries in an index that refers us to a page for “the answer.”
And when I say “we” have been using the bible this way, I mean me and a host of other pastoral and professorial friends and colleagues. Guilty as charged we have propagated this messy myth. First let’s just admit that the idea of an owners manual implies a widget or gadget that needs a manual. That is distinctly modern. I just don’t see Justin Martyr or Origen, Thomas Aquinas of Martin Luther using this metaphor. I am not thinking they would have known what an owner’s manual was. Second, let’s admit that the metaphor implies a comprehensiveness in the manual that it simply can’t support. What do I mean? When we make ridiculous and outlandish claims that if you have questions, the Bible has answers, that if you have issues the Bible has a way through it; we are placing on the good book a burden it can’t begin to carry nor was it written to do so. There are numerous things the bible doesn’t address and because of it’s historical location couldn’t begin to address. Third, let’s admit part of our love of using the metaphor of the owner’s manual is because it reduces the wild, inconsistent text (yes it is inconsistent – more on that later) and a difficult and hard to understand text into something that is as easy to use as the little manual I got with my toaster oven.
We need some new ways forward in dealing with the text of scripture. When I first became a Christian I was taught the most important passage for me to follow was Joshua 1:6-9. You meditate on the book of the law and prosperity was going to be yours. GUARANTEED! Such a claim would appear to be true if the text was an owner’s manual. The book says it, I believe it, that settles it? Really? It is that easy?
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Hi bro,
I don’t find the metaphor of “owners manual” very helpful. Who actually reads “owners manuals” anyway? We tend to try and figure out the gadgets for ourselves – and only turn to the “owners manual” when things go bad. Brian Mclaren has suggested that we look for more organic metaphors. You engage a machine differently from a living organism. When a toaster is broken, you can take it apart – reducing it to smaller parts – to get to the problem. But say a cat is sick – you can’t take away a limb without affecting the whole.
Keep up the good work!