The Scripture Reads You

Scriptures, because they are bound as books, are considered to be books; and the metaphor that extremists of any stripe (religious or antireligious) have in their heads is that of a textbook. A better metaphor, and one more congruent with how a scripture is actually utilized by those who regard it as authoritative, is that of a primitive Internet for matters of spirituality and conduct. Just as the Internet is what you make of it—you can look up poems, or you can look up how to make a pipe bomb—so is a scripture a single searchable compendium, in which you can find justifications of warmaking or peacemaking, love of neighbor or condemnation of the infidel, promises of comfort or assurances of eternal hellfire, all depending on what you search for. Hindu scriptures span at least fifteen hundreds years between the Vedas, through the Upanishads, to the Bhagavad Gita. The Bible is what we today would call an omnibus or an anthology, containing pieces written in different languages, hundreds of years apart. The Koran grew by accretion over Muhammad’s lifetime.
These are all “books,” yes, but they are not spiritual textbooks; they are internally contradictory and contain prescriptions sometimes at cross purposes (the Bible’s “eye for an eye” / “turn the other cheek” contradiction is merely the most well-known). There is nothing wrong with this; I do not regard it as a “flaw.” If I were a God I would have set it up no differently: Create a massive contradictory omnium-gatherum of a scripture, and then monitor each mind’s search history. What passages do you cite? What actions do you use these passages to justify? By their quotations, by their readings, by their actions shall ye know them.
In practice, it seems that people of all religions and no religion at all search and retrieve what they wish from a scripture. Every search term coughs up a hit. So today the polemical atheist can find a passage promulgating slavery and use it to undermine the moral authority of the Bible. Yet in the 19th century, a Clapham Sect abolitionist could find scriptural support in the same book, supporting a crusade to end slavery. And so it goes. You only think you are reading the scripture; you are actually reading those top results of the scripture that appeared at your soul’s query. Your nature is revealed by what you find there. When you read the scripture, the scripture reads you.