The Bible's Seductive Trap

And an Inclination Toward Overcoming It

In my interaction with society and politics, the Bible has always been a shadow and a flashing neon light. A shadow in its lurking underneath political ideologies, religious traditions, and people’s life philosophies. I had no idea, for example, that the Jewish holiday of Sukkot is explicitly referenced in the Torah (which comprises Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). A flashing neon light in its explicit invocation to promote a cacophony of claims and fancies, from Creationism to leftism to homophobia. Here’s Tim Walz referring to Matthew 25:40—“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (KJV)—in the 2024 vice presidential debate.

The seductive trap—most obvious when the Bible metamorphoses into a neon light—is selective orthodoxy. Matthew 25:40; Deuteronomy 10:19—“And you shall love the sojourner, for sojourners you were in the land of Egypt.” (Robert Alter); Genesis 18:23-25—“And Abraham stepped forward and said, ‘Will You really wipe out the innocent with the guilty?…Far be it from You to do such a thing, to put to death the innocent with the guilty, making innocent and guilty the same.’” (Robert Alter); and surely many more snippets from the Bible point toward compassionate leftism. In addition to Tim Walz leaning on the Bible to bolster this angle, other political figures like Pete Buttigieg do the same, talking about how Jesus spent his time with sex workers and lepers.

The Bible works the other way too. In frankly one of the best comedic moments of our generation, Bruno asks an anti-gay pastor whether he’d want to undress a naked Freddie Prinze Jr. if this apparent sex icon crawled into the room on all fours, and the pastor responds by quoting the Book of Job: “The Book of Job says, in a verse, that Job would not put any worthless thing before his eyes and that he would not look upon a virgin.” In a more straightforward usage of the Bible for right-wing aims, consider Numbers 33:55, which occurs within the context of the Lord speaking to Moses: “‘And if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land from before you, it will come about that those of them you leave will become stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they will be foes to you on the land in which you dwell.’” (Robert Alter). It’s not hard to find right-wing Israeli nationalists using this quote or the similarly inclined Deuteronomy 7:1-9 to justify marginalization and expulsion of Palestinians from the land from the river to the sea.

An alternative approach attempts to avoid the trap of cudgeling the Bible to serve specific ideological ends. The Bible is a shape shifter, and those who best employ its versatility use it as a backdrop—granting profundity and heaviness to ideas and stories—instead of a cudgel. I want to walk lightly with the Bible, drawing upon its imagery and symbolism and philosophy and theology and narrative, yet I try to avoid allowing snippets or strands within it to be the bedrock from which my opinions flow. Unsure as I am of what that bedrock is, I’d rather live in uncertainty than consider sufficient loosely pieced together biblical verses.

Frederick Douglass efficaciously tapped into the Bible throughout his career, and one gem is in an 1864 speech he delivered in Baltimore: “The return of the dove to the ark, with a leaf, was no surer sign that the flood had subsided from the mountains of the east, than my coming among you is a sign that the bitter waters of slavery have subsided from the majestic hills, and fertile valleys of Maryland.” This biblical metaphor is elegant, pointed, and as multifaceted as it is subtle. Frederick Douglass, formerly enslaved in Baltimore, made this speech the day after Maryland abolished slavery. And the United States was in the midst of the Civil War, a conflict that Frederick Douglass forcefully painted as a battle over slavery and—arguably apocalyptically—as a battle between good and evil. Therefore, Douglass casting his existence in Baltimore as a sign of the volatile waters of the Civil War beginning to subside is fitting; what could be a better sign of pending victory against slavery than an ex-slave walking freely in formerly slave-holding Maryland? It’s also fitting that Douglass referenced the Flood, as not only does the Flood represent the destructiveness of the Civil War, but the Flood is a divine turning of the moral page for humanity, which corresponds with Douglass’s framing of the Civil War. And lo, what this biblical invocation doesn’t do hides yet another layer. Douglass mentioned the dove returning to Noah’s Ark, yet the Flood lasts a bit longer after that event, and he could have alternatively cited the dove not returning to the Ark a mere verse later (indicating in the Flood story further receding of the waters). One interpretation of him choosing the dove returning is a convenient parallel between the dove coming back to the Ark and him coming back to Baltimore, and another—not mutually exclusive—interpretation is that he was hinting that the Civil War and the fight to abolish slavery (and achieve Black equality?) wasn’t quite over.

There’s a spectrum of biblical integration—with selective orthodoxy on one end and erudite interweaving on the other. I’ll leave the reader with a poem I wrote last night, which I hope is toward the latter pole.

Auschwitz
It was rainy. I was cold.
I did what I was told.
I didn’t have much else to do.
I looked up and saw the forest beyond.
Could I go there instead?
Instead, I returned to the soil, naked.
Then from the dust, I become the stars.