text: We are not called to 'submit' to the word of God; we are called to discern the movement of the Spirit through the Word of God, and through the Creation and through Life and our own life, and submit only to the God who is Compassionate, Merciful and hears the cry of the oppressed.
  We need to use every means at our disposal, including our intelligence, to discern not only what earlier peoples understood, but to discern afresh what God may be saying to us today through the history of his people and especially as interpreted through the example of Christ. 
  It is a mistake to read the Bible \literally' rather than as a dramatic re-telling of how the people writing it interpreted what they had experienced, and re-interpreted from that experience, the stories of their forebears. It is a cumulative learning. We would be foolish not to do the same.