It's interesting to me that you say it doesn't need to be seen as theologically right. I would that if God is all-powerful and His chosen way to reveal Himself to us was through the Bible, He would see to it that it stay theologically accurate over the years.
I get this approach, but how do you know when to interpret something literally and when it is a metaphor?
Well, this is where I'd point out that God's chosen way to reveal Himself to us isn't the Bible, it's Jesus Christ. The Bible isn't God's Revelation of Himself, Jesus is God's Revelation of Himself. In Christianity the Word of God became flesh, not text.
The Bible's purpose is to point us back to Jesus.
Just because something is written in the Bible does not mean it is a proscription for how Christians ought to act, or even find praiseworthy. Description is not proscription. There's a lot of people behaving badly in the Bible, even often the very sorts of people who in other stories we're supposed to be rooting for. The Bible has this habit of presenting people pretty honestly, nobody is some squeaky clean moral superhero, everybody is broken, everybody is messy. In one place it seems like "these people here" are the bad guys, and yet elsewhere we have a prophet speaking about how "those bad people" will eventually be redeemed and healed, and then it talks about "these people here" are the good guys, and yet then these same "good guys" do some pretty evil things. That's pretty downright human, people are messy, and the Bible doesn't shy from talking about how messy people are.
The Bible in its honesty about human nature and the condemnation that arises against injustice from the just law of God which calls and commands people to love one another, to be humble, to act kindly, to act justly, to care for the poor, the hungry, the outcast, to show mercy and to forgive others (etc) it showcases a kind of mirror that reflects ourselves back to us. We look at the Bible and find ourselves staring back at us, and if we are being honest, we probably shouldn't like what it is we see. I should love others, but I don't; I should be kind and merciful even to those who mistreat me, but I don't; I should forsake myself for the good of others, but I don't. And so I find that even though God's commandment is good and just, "Love your neighbor as yourself" He says, I see that I am not good and just, but a sinner. And in this way the Bible reflects back to me myself as I am in the nudity of my brokenness.
But that isn't the chief point of the Bible. The chief point of the Bible isn't the Law, but Jesus Christ and His Gospel. The Bible isn't a compendium of divine instructions, or simply a mirror showing me my flaws; there is interwoven through its many stories, through its proverbs and songs and narrations, a thread of redemption: That no matter how bad things look, no matter how bad things are, no matter how bad they might get, God is at the reigns leading history toward its culmination with the birth of Jesus Christ and all which He said and did. This is the Gospel, the good news, that even though I am a sinner, not by anyone's fault but my own, God does not come toward me with condemnation, anger, or hostility--God comes to me as the One who eats supper with prostitutes and tax collectors, hangs out with sinners and lepers, who embraces the horror and humiliation of the cross in order that this world, including me, might be restored back to God.
That I, though hostile toward God as demonstrated time and again through both my action and inaction--doing what I ought not, and not doing what I ought--am not rejected or scorned or condemned by God, but loved by God. God's will, God's work, God action in the world is to establish peace with me, that I might be healed of this sharp wound to my soul, be reconciled to God, and that I have a life that is bigger than death; indeed a life that cannot be destroyed by death because in the end even this very body, these flesh and bones, will be raised back from the dead to that life that never ends when God renews the earth and illuminates everything and filling the whole of creation with His uncreated light and love.
And so when I come to the Bible, I do not come to the Bible that I can read about how to build a city, or how to govern a nation, or how to punish the wicked; I come to the Bible that I might see clearly the log stuck in my own eye, that I--the one who would condemn and judge others am just as guilty as they, and even as I judge so too am I judged. Thus, instead I am to be the one who cries out for mercy, I am the one in need of repentance; and I see that God does indeed showcase and bring forth His mercy, not out of my having earned it, but simply because that is who God is toward sinners: the God of mercy. For I meet God in Jesus Christ, the very Word of God, who as the Divine Son made flesh says, "If you have seen Me you have seen the Father" and so I have met God through Jesus, the God who throws Himself away in love, the God who abandons Himself in love to the cross not for Himself, but for us, that we might live. That i, selfish and hostile though I am, am nevertheless forgiven. God's kindness toward me is infinite, and unconditional--it's who He is, to me, to you, to everyone. That's the Gospel.
That's the point of the Bible.
-CryptoLutheran
