Better as Fiction

In class, we discussed the idea of reading the Bible as fiction with grains of truth, in the form of messages relevant to real life, running through it.  In addition to preventing the sort of fanatic fundamentalism that has led to such unpleasant organizations as the WBC, I think that interpreting the Bible as fiction can actually provide more instruction to its readers than taking everything it says literally.  After all, much of the Bible is not reasonably applicable to modern life; as a result, most people who are not crazy dismiss those parts which seem unreasonable to them, and mainly ignore them.  If such people read the Bible as fiction, a novel with embedded moral messages rather than an instruction manual, they might instead seek to find the reasons that the Bible's writers included the outdated parts, and update the ideas to apply to modern life while still trying to keep the spirit of the original intentions of the writers.