"Biblically Based." God Approved?

My husband and I are on a road trip this weekend to Tennessee. As you can imagine, eight and a half hours on the road leaves ample time for scanning the radio waves and we've noticed that the farther south you go, the more religious radio stations there are. Around 10 PM last night, we happened upon one of these channels and we noticed that the vast majority of commercials talked about "Biblically based" programs- mental health programs, treatment programs, churches, schools, Chick-fil-a (i'm not kidding).

I have heard of "Biblically based" programs before--and each time (including this time), I've wondered- what does that even mean? Now- you might think that a seminarian would know what the words "Biblically based" mean. Now- I can infer what it means-usually it is a conservative Christian group- and Biblically based is usually code for anti-gay ("pro-family" as they would say), anti-choice (pro-life), and/or usually involves getting "saved". And quite often, the words "Biblically based" are meant to infer- "GOD APPROVED." But for me- the descriptors listed above (anti-gay for example) are NOT God approved...which is what brings me to my point.

If I, a progressive Christian, were to ever use the words "Biblically based" (dare to dream...), then I would mean something more along the lines of pro-love, acceptance, inclusiveness, and forgiveness (and some other stuff). That is a radically different view of what it means for something to be "Biblically based". The Bible means many different things to many different people. Some people believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God. Others believe the Bible is inspired by God, but fallible because it was written by humans. Others believe that the Bible has no worth whatsoever. Still others consider the Bible a story of a people's experience of God and that these stories can inform us about characteristics of God. Whatever your belief- we can agree that when it comes to the Bible- we may literally be speaking different languages. What we privilege in the Bible (because you can find pretty much anything in there: from violence to peace and everything in between)- depends on where we sit. What do we choose to uphold and why?

I think it's important for all of us to ask ourselves these questions. First- what do we believe about our religious texts? Second, why? We all have baggage with our beliefs-- some of these things yield beliefs that uplift, and others leave us with beliefs that destruct. Knowing that, I feel like it serves us all to examine our belief systems and think about the terms that we use to describe them.