We must take the Bible as it is (aka literal). This is the only way to determine what God really is trying to communicate to us. When we read the Bible, we must determine what the author intended to communicate. Many today will read a verse or passage of Scripture and then give their own definitions to the words, phrases, or paragraphs, ignoring the context and author’s intent. But this is not what God intended, which is why God tells us to correctly handle the Word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). Although we take the Bible literally, there are still figures of speech within its pages that have to be interpreted. An example of a figure of speech would be that if someone said "it is raining cats and dogs outside," you would know that they did not really mean that cats and dogs were falling from the sky. They would mean it is raining really hard. There are figures of speech in the Bible which are not to be taken literally, but those should be obvious to us. For example in Matthew 5:30 it says “And if your right-hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away.” Now if we take that as it is we would all be walking around with no hands.