Dionysus on a Bike

Jeremiah 26:1-12 – 6/23/2026

It may be that they will listen and will turn from their evil way, that I may change my mind about the disaster that I intend to bring on them because of their evil doings.

Jeremiah 26:3 (NRSVue)

Though there are many ways to read scripture, some of those interpretive frameworks have come to dominate Christian discourse. One particularly pervasive way is to take Scripture literally and to hold that each and every thing that Scripture claims is true. This literal reading of Scripture as infallible leads to positions such as young earth creationism and justifications for genocide, slavery, the condemnation of same-sex relationships, and the subjection of women among other things.

This is certainly not the only way to understand and read scripture. One can take historical context into account and recognize that each book is the product of a human author with a specific perspective and background. Once one has let go of the idea that the Bible is some kind of poorly organized encyclopedia of true propositions, it is possible to see the history of a faith and a people who are seeking the divine and attempting to know that divine and live well in accordance with that understanding. Scripture becomes a record of the meeting point of particular people in history and the divine that we can learn from if we are sensitive to context and how each portion of scripture relates to larger wholes, including the rest of scripture, what we know of the world independently of scripture, human reason, and our own needs and values. It becomes clear that there is not a single way to be Christian, that there are multiple ways Christians and the Hebrews who came before understand the divine, and that our relationship with truth, God, and the Good are dynamic, changing, and always incomplete, at least in this life.

This more expansive and fecund way of reading scripture allows for differing understandings of who God is and how we are to respond to God. Nevertheless, it can be an interesting and useful exercise to take Scripture in a kind of literal straightforward way to see what worldview and understanding of God a particular passage contains. These kinds of readings show that scripture has multiple understandings of the nature of God depending on who is writing and in what context. Today’s reading from the Prophet Jeremiah gives us an understanding of the divine that is quite different that traditional theism, including the theism of those who usually espouse a literal, infallible interpretation of scripture.

In today’s reading, Jeremiah is tasked by God with proclaiming to the royal court their sins and their need for repentance. God then tells Jeremiah that perhaps the hearers will turn from their evil, which God says “may change [God’s] mind about the disaster [God intends] to bring on them because of their evil doings.” On a straightforward reading of this, God does not know how the royal court will react to Jeremiah’s prophecy, and God declares that depending on how they react, God might change God’s mind about the consequences of their sin. A literal reading here precludes the possibility that God is omniscient, that God knows everything. There is no doubt about the meaning of the Hebrew; the people who hear Jeremiah may or may not respond by changing their ways. God may or may not withhold punishment if they do change their ways.

This picture of God contradicts the traditional understanding of God as all-knowing and immutable. God, understood as the perfect being, must know all things and cannot change or be changed. And yet, here in canonical scripture God declares that God is changeable depending on how humans react and that God does not know the outcome of future human choice. God, according to the words recorded in the Prophet Jeremiah, cannot be the God of classical theism.

What can we learn from this? The reader who holds to an infallible literalism about Scripture is forced to concede that God is quite different than they might have imagined. As a matter of fact, most readers committed to holding that the Bible taken literally is infallible do all kinds of mental and hermeneutical gymnastics in order to preserve their per-conceived understanding of God. Without such gymnastics, one sees that a hermeneutics of infallible literalism about Scripture inevitably leads to contradiction rendering such an approach to the Bible untenable and unhelpful.

Released from the need to understand Scripture in such narrow terms, the Bible can speak to us in its the complexity of its multi-voiced authorship across centuries of changing cultures and power structures. Here the words of Jeremiah in today’s reading tell us less about the nature of God and more about how a people and their prophet understood one another and their relationship to God during a time of unfaithfulness and turning away from God and the good. Understanding the text in this way that focuses on interrelationships between humans with each other and with the divine instead of straightforward descriptions of the divine itself mean there are numerous insights and lessons that might be drawn from this text, more than could ever be outlined in one daily lectionary reflection. Today I refrain from giving my reading of this text in favor of the preceding reflection on how not to read scripture, preferring at the moment to offer a criticism of a way of approaching faith and scripture that I long ago rejected.

Further Reflection Question: How would someone who holds a literal and infallible hermenutic for reading scripture deal with this passage in Jeremiah? How could someone maintain God’s omniscience and immutability in light of what God tells Jeremiah?

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Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary by Justin Marquis