Does taking the Bible literally mean you don't believe God still speaks today?

I understand being devoted to the Bible. But some churches seem to worship the Bible, giving it the final word—rather than listening for God to speak today.

I have always wrestled with how literally to take the Bible. I spent a couple decades in a church that believed the King James Version was the only true authority. When the pastor would mention the truth of the Bible, or talk about other translations, one of the men who attended would raise his arm and wave his Bible around—which had printed on the cover, “The only Bible God ever wrote.” (It was a King James translation, of course.)

One woman in her 70s condemned any translation that was not the KJV by saying, “The Bible says ‘do not change a jot or a tittle’”—in other words, since different words were used in other translations, they were wrong, because the Bible tells us so.

But the reality is, the quote she used to make her point was itself a translation. And another reality is that the verse didn’t say what she thought it did. Matthew 5:18 says, “For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle shall in any wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.”

I tried to believe scripture literally, or at face value, which is how evangelicals teach the Bible. They believe it says what it says, the meaning is clear, and it is meant as a promise or guidebook for each and every one of us. The layers of meaning one ascribed to a scripture—the new insights, based on your current situation or context—were not changes, but God speaking to us today.

Since then, I’ve heard numerous teachers say that the reason we’re in such a mess today, with Christians misusing scripture and greater-than-ever divisions among believers, is because of the rise of evangelicalism and its belief that anyone can interpret the Bible’s meaning without any education or knowledge of the Bible’s history, authors, or context.

Even as I tried to take the words of the Bible literally, I struggled—because I preferred reading the NIV translation, or sometimes The Message. We use language today differently than the English translators in the 1600s did. The meanings of some words and ideas have evolved, and in some cases, are nearly opposite. One verse I like to use as an example of my struggle is this one: “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons” from Acts 10:34. The way the sentence is built makes it sound in today’s language like God doesn’t respect people. What it actually means, from the NIV translation, is “…God does not show favoritism.” Those are very different things.

Or what about a sermon I heard once about how Jesus took the disciples to a desert place, and then he had them sit on the grass. The preacher made the point that Jesus can turn death into life, take something barren and make it vibrant. The KJV uses the word “desert” in Matthew 14—in the NIV, it says “remote.” In other words, the disciples weren’t in the desert as we picture it, but in a remote, grassy area. When I questioned the preacher later, he wasn’t bothered by that, and said, “Well, God can bring dead things to life, don’t you agree?” I couldn’t communicate why I had such a problem with this kind of logic.

In nearly every debate about the infallibility of the Bible—about taking every word literally—the argument starts to fall apart the second you realize there is more than one translation. The nuances—and sometimes the bigger picture—changes, depending on which translation you are devoted to.

I’ll be honest (because when am I not?): I don’t know how to read the Bible now.