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Disclaimer - I'm not saying that you have to be a fundamentalist to be a Christian. I'm simply explaining the Fundamentalist perspective on this issue. it's likely to offend someone. That's not my intent.
Biblical Literalism, from a Fundamentalist perspective dies not mean hyper-literalism. Instead, we tend toward historical-grammatical method of interpretation, which provides guidelines for determining what content is to be taken literally, and where a non-literal interpretation is warranted. Teaching the Word Ministries gives a fairly good set of principles and rules behind the historical-grammatical method. Rather than quoting directly, I'll summarize:
Dr. David L. Cooper, the founder of The Biblical Research Society out it much more simply. Dr. Cooper is known for his βGolden Rule of Interpretationβ which is as follows:
When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense,seek no other sense;
Therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths indicate clearly otherwise.
So, from this quote, from Dr. Cooper's perspective, we see that we are to take Scripture at face value (literally) unless...
A shortened version, which I've heard far more often goes like this:
If the plain sense makes good sense seek no other sense lest it result in nonsense.
For Fundamentalists, this is a core doctrine. It's as central to the Fundamentalist view as the doctrines of Biblical Inerrancy and Infallibility, and Divine Inspiration.
To the fundamentalist, to stray from the rules of sound Scripture interpretation is to stray into pure conjecture, in which we can make up anything we want about God, rather than worshiping Him in Spirit and in truth. We can make up a god to suit ourselves (which is also known as idolatry.)
We want a God that says it's OK to lie? That's OK. We can take that as an allegory. We want a God that allows disobedience to parents? We want a religion that teaches there are "many ways to Heaven"? No problem. Those are just allegorical statements. God didn't Mean those things...
Man is fallible. Even those in charge of our Churches are fallible. Therefore, teachings and traditions can be erroneous, and outright blasphemous. Only God's Word is infallible. Put simply, from a Fundamentalist perspective, the disciplined, literal approach to interpretation of Scripture is the only approach that safeguards us from straying into error.
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To take the Bible literally is to take the verses which are plain in meaning to you, with the aid of a dictionary if need be, and only those verses.
It's extra-biblical teaching that is all the trouble, in my Fundamentalist opinion, not the figurative speech in the Bible.
It's true that some scripture is hard to be understood, the scriptures even say that. 2 Peter 3:16. But we must not slap a teaching on the passage just because we want an answer. Prov 30:6 Instead we pass it by and pray to God for an understanding. James 1:5
The rest, pray about if you really need to understand it, and if you don't need to understand it then just pass over the verses to which you cannot ascribe meaning. You will learn more as you allow yourself to absorb more scripture and less external teaching. Don't let some priest tell you what they want those verses to say. Just pass them up for now. They are actually quite few in number.