Whoever has followed my posts will know that I am not the scholar that some are here, but my contribution is mainly that of experience. Having had an extensive Bible schooling over several years, teaching and preaching in various settings, and having been an elder in a parish, I ‘came out’ as someone who saw the biblical sources as inspired, but to a large degree containing legend and mythology, leaning only slightly on historical fact. I also see many scriptures of other traditions as inspired, but also as legends, mythology, allegory, parables, fables and metaphoric in nature.
To inspire means literally to breathe or blow upon, or to infuse (something, such as life) by breathing. Infuse also means to drink, which is also a taking in. To me, to be inspired means inhaling (figuratively) and thereby having a particular strong feeling or reaction, feeling that one wants to do something and can do it, and gaining an insight into the nature of things. “It propels a person from apathy to possibility and transforms the way we perceive our own capabilities”. This can be achieved by any experience, whether by observations in nature, by the actions or words of someone, or by means of literary sources. Inspiration is therefore not primarily religious, and even the inspiration from religious sources need not be religious in nature.
The fact that the God of the OT breathes life into the clay form he’d made, and man came to life is a typical metaphor for the ‘inhaling’ of consciousness, something that is continually experienced when new-born babes take their first breath. In fact, everything we say about inspiration is taken from what we observe and experience in natural life, and our colloquial vocabulary doesn’t differentiate much between mental and physical processes. That is why the ancients also used stories about spirits, people or animals to carry information to inspire people to behave in a certain way or understand the world.
There has been dispute on ILP between believers and non-believers, often absurd disputes, because we fail to understand the nature of inspiration and its value for our lives. Einstein was inspired by his imagining he could travel alongside a light beam, which is absurd in one sense but inspiring in the other, producing the theory of relativity. We all use such imaginations in our lives, and such as have been transmitted over thousands of years can continue to inspire us, if we take its figurative speech into consideration. Some stories are irrelevant, some contain wisdom between the lines, some are expressively wise. We have the capacity to differentiate.
This capacity is, however, dependent upon us not just dwelling on the particulars, but expanding them into our everyday experience, because whatever wisdom is contained in these stories is only useful, if we can apply it in our lives. An academic interest may reveal things hidden in language or symbol, but it is the application in our lives that makes a story relevant or not. I therefore propose that we talk about those stories, or other sources that inspire us.
Do you have any proposals?