Reading for Justice, Mercy, and Love

The Indigenous theologian Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley considers Jesus’s criticism of certain religious leaders in his day and how they interpreted Scripture:

We all can have our various ideas about what Creator wants from us. But when we claim to have God’s only true intentions for all humanity through any holy book, and especially when we reject and exclude others because they don’t agree with us, we are much like those of that particular cadre of Pharisees Jesus condemned. By our exclusiveness, we miss the very point of most sacred writings.

Consider Jesus’s words to a certain group of Pharisees recorded in Matthew 23:23–24:

What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. Blind guides! You strain your water, so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!

As I understand it, Jesus is not rejecting the scriptures themselves; rather, he is rejecting a certain interpretation and application of the scriptures that excluded all others. Anytime we use our sacred writings to justify acts of exclusion, rejection, and hegemony we are neglecting justice, mercy, and love. By doing so, we deploy our holy scriptures to do more harm than good, causing us to fall into the same hypocrisy that Jesus condemned….

I understand the dilemma well. Growing up evangelical, I was indoctrinated to accept every single word of the Bible as literal truth, no matter how troubling or contradictory it seemed…. What strikes me as deeply ironic is that most Jewish communities—the very people whose ancestors wrote much of these texts—don’t embrace this rigid fundamentalism that many Christians do. In Jewish tradition, questioning and wrestling with multiple interpretations through midrash isn’t just permitted—it’s essential. They understand what many Christians miss, that sacred texts demand thoughtful engagement, not naïve acceptance.

Woodley affirms the Bible’s stories as powerful teaching tools:

By “swallowing camels,” we miss the beauty and poetry of the whole story in our holy books. We often seek the easy way out rather than allow the story to speak to us, to settle in us for a while, unleashing our imaginations. We commit ourselves to our baser, egocentric instincts rather than allowing love to break through the story….

Stories remain one of our most powerful medicines, becoming the lifeblood of human connection. They heal our isolation, awaken our full humanity beyond cold facts, and weave us into communities that remember who we are and challenge us to become who we might be. They may come to us through novels, movies, plays, orality, or even holy Scripture. We love them because of the truths they teach. Best we allow our stories to teach us, inspire us, bond us, and entertain us, as they were meant to do.

Reference:
Randy Woodley, How Western Christianity Got It Wrong: Replacing the God of Fear with a Spirituality of Healing (Broadleaf Books, 2026), 66–68, 70.