WHERE WE ARE IN THE TRANSFORMATION PROCESS
For our convenience, we think, God has simplified the transformation process into two steps. Step One is the Old/First Covenant which is God’s initial introduction of himself to people. Step Two is the New Covenant which is where God wants us to be (i.e. his spirit resides in us). All Jews and Christians are somewhere in that two-step continuum. Everyone else is outside the continuum watching. Most of what the outsiders see is Old/First Covenant religion.

We understand the human tendency to go with the literal interpretation and the attempts to explain mysterious concepts with natural phenomenon with which we are familiar. It is the easy way to go, and it seems to work — at least to a point. Religious leaders that came before Jesus searched the scriptures for their literal meanings out of the belief that they were good for spiritual food. Literal meanings do provide some nourishment for the flesh, but it is not the abundant spiritual life that is available to people who interpret the Bible symbolically. Moreover, because literal interpretation is how everyone we know interprets scripture, it seems like it must be acceptable to God if it is acceptable to all religious people. The problem is that it is not acceptable to God.

How do we know that literal interpretation of scripture is not acceptable to God? He has told us in many ways that we are to walk by the Spirit (i.e. being open to deep, symbolic interpretations of mysteries) and not by sight (i.e. what we can understand with our natural intellect).

What we need to do to experience the abundant life, therefore, is be transformed in our minds about the need to reject literal interpretation in favor of symbolic interpretation.