Born to Die, part thirteen

I am not a biblical scholar. My course of study for ordination may have given me an above average exposure to scripture, but I am well aware of many who possess a much greater understanding of the Bible than I. My education has made me aware that the regard I have for scripture—the hermeneutic—is all important to my interpretation of it. I am neither a literalist nor a fundamentalist. I lean toward the more liberal school of sympathetic interpretation, which means that I understand scripture to be the product of human beings rather than a divine dictation. The Bible (the scripture with which I am most familiar because of my Judeo-Christian heritage) has far too many inconsistencies and contradictions for me to believe that it stands precisely as God “wrote”, and that leads me in the direction of a more contextual criticism that attempts to take into account the setting and worldview of the author(s). It is important that I make my hermeneutic clear before I proceed to answer the question of whether or not the Bible tells me what happens when I die.