How Many Buckets?

Yesterday morning, Adam Hamilton sold some books by posting a blog in which he talks about how the Bible functions, especially in light of the NY Annual Conference's decision to dismiss the trial against Rev. Dr. Thomas Ogletree.  In this blog, Rev. Hamilton suggests that all scripture falls into three 'buckets.'  From his blog, they are:

Scriptures that express God’s heart, character and timeless will for human beings.

Scriptures that expressed God’s will in a particular time, but are no longer binding.

Scriptures that never fully expressed the heart, character or will of God.

Being ever the salesman, Hamilton didn't actually give us the tools in the blog to figure out what scripture goes in what bucket (but for 16.49 you can pre-order the answers), however, in the 30 hours following this post, the UM interwebs have buzzed with the question, "How many buckets are their really?"  Or put another way, are there really sections of the Bible that in no way, at no time reflected the heart, character, or will of God?

Are their really parts of the Bible that serve as something of a bookmark in the history of religion showing the human witness to the spiritual around them, while misinterpreting, omitting, or embellishing the encounter with the Holy?
I hope not.

I think Hamilton is right in the sense that, when read in a vacuum, there are parts of the Bible which, as Christians, we must reject; however, this rejection is based on the completion of the narrative.  To be clear, the parts of the Biblical text that should be rejected by Christians are parts that the text itself rejects if you read it to the end.

Putting it another way, the Bible is not a list of bullet-pointed claims about reality.  Rather, we receive most of the text as narrative.  Now, think about Star Wars: A New Hope.  If you turned off the VHS when Han Solo told Luke that he was going to take his money and run, rather than help in the offensive against the Death Star, you could make a claim like, "Han Solo is such a jerk for leaving Luke and Leah high and dry." And while you could go to that scene and clearly point out how he is loading his money up and clearly point out how he refuses to join in the fight, you would be missing the most important part of the story, where he swoops in, sends Vader spiraling into deep space, and gives Luke the chance to blow up the Death Star.

The Bible has a handful of different genres, but one that we see a lot is narrative.  We see, in both the Old and New Testaments, stories told to express the character, nature, and work of God in the world.  Stories must be read to the end to capture the author's intent, because oftentimes a good storyteller will transform characters and the realities they live in as the story progresses.  If we stop short, or read the story out of order, or a passage without regard to its context, we are abusing the author.

So, I am not sure the image of buckets is going to be helpful.  I will read the book when I can get it for $2 on Kindle (which almost always happens because that is how most Christian publishers get on the best-seller list), but I am not expecting the three buckets to be earth-shattering, because it would be ludicrous to read a good novel, periodically stopping to take a red pen to the parts that I thought were inconsistent with the broader trajectory of the book.  Likewise, reading the Bible with an eye towards what parts do and don't apply to me removes the Spirit from the living, creative process that is dwelling with God through the reading of and being read by the Bible.