Teaching The Bible To Seniors

WE DON'T HAVE BIBLE STUDY at the senior center anymore. It used to be on Monday morning, bright and early. When I noticed that it had vanished, I asked the director about it, and was told that there had been a problem with people getting along, so, they stopped it. I didn't bother to ask what they didn't get along about; presumably some matter involving scripture and its interpretation. This is the same group of people, mostly folks in their seventies and eighties, who argue over things like bean bag baseball and bingo. Disagreeing about the Bible, almost any part of it, is easy, because so much of what it says is vague, or hard to believe, or subject to any number of different possible interpretations. Plus, those who participate in a Bible study group are usually the most likely to love the Bible deeply, and to have strong opinions about it. So, unless any such group has a strong leader rather than a loosely organized structure, trouble lurks. I would love nothing more than to start a Bible study group, and to lead it. Problem is, in my small conservative southern town, a fact based intellectual historical scientific study of the Bible is likely to cause anger, and departures from the group. I would teach the Bible the way they do at Harvard, and at any other world class seminary; factually, historically, critically, scientifically. If you want a devotional based Bible study, attend your local junior college, or any normal Bible study group in some small conservative American town. In my class I would point out the errors and contradictions in the Bible, like they do at Harvard, of which there are hundreds, and I would not ignore the fact that the bible, in its current form, is the most recent version of hundreds of changing translations through the centuries. If God inspired the writing of and the content of the bible, then God's truth is an evolutionary process, not absolute. Just don't tell anybody that at your local small town senior center.