If God Still Breathes, Why Can't I?: Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority

by Angela N. Parker

If we take biblical authority seriously, then we also have to take seriously the Bible’s ability to transform each and every one of us from immature to mature communities of faith and from immature to mature conversation partners. White supremacist thought in the midst of biblical authority is immature and promotes immature readings of and conversations with the biblical text. So where does maturity originate? If we truly believe the biblical text is not equivalent to God but mediates God’s presence, then we also have to take into account the diversity of contexts, authors, cultures, and worldviews of every person who wrote portions of what the church has canonized as Scripture. The ability to discern the many voices within the biblical text is the challenging task of mature biblical interpretation. Mature people engage the complexity of the biblical text as it points us to the presence of God without it becoming God or an idol.