Terribly Poetic

Have you ever wondered why we as humans are so resistant to change? I mean, sure we love new things like movies, music, and the like, but real life change!?! I think we like to resist at all costs. Whether it is changing a simple way of doing something (how resistant is a church to changing simple music?) or whether it is making significant life change, such as moving, changing the way one thinks about theology, or the like. We always seem to resist change – why? Are we only resistant to change because we worry? Cause if that’s the case then maybe we need to place that area of our life into the hands of the living God. I mean, doesn’t it tell us that worrying about something isn’t going to make anything better. Is it this worry about change that makes us shy away from it? Or could it be that we are just plain stubborn? Either way, I hope that we would be able to embrace change, see it as another opportunity to learn from God. If not then we will fight change tooth and nail, and we might come out the other side changed not for the better but for the worse.

Continuing back to my discussion on the Bible.
McLaren writes that the Bible can be “killed” by the way in which you
approach the Bible and how one reads it. He writes, “You can sanitize the
text of all evocative language, paradox, multiple perspectives, and
interesting, three-dimensional people to end up with cute little morals,
simple two-dimensional systems, and flat, boring prose that reads like a
legal code or assembly instructions. As a result, the Bible itself begins to
vaporize, to disappear, leaving the desired residue of systematic theology,
which is all you ever wanted anyways.” Could it be that our modern mindset
have corrupted our thinking so much that we may need to retreat somewhat in
how we read scripture? Could we have created an individual that tries to
interpret scripture without the aid of the community or even the Holy
Spirit? Should we begin to read the Bible a story, a family story, that we
are apart of. It calls us to become part of the story, the story of a God
who wants us to become part of the story, complete with our many failures.

I find it interesting that the story has a great character called the
church. I found out that the church from the greek means, “the sent ones”
but is that what the church of today is… Maybe this is a whole other
topic…so I’ll move on.

Just one example of the above…I remember hearing a preacher talk about
suffering in our lives and using the passage about “sharing in the
sufferings of Christ” and “becoming one with Christ…even death on a cross”
(sorry about the lose quotes) While I thought the message on dealing with
suffering was great, but it always made me feel uneasy on how the passage
was used. When Paul talks about sharing in the sufferings of Christ (I
believe its Phil 3) he is also talking about how everything on earth is
counted as rubbish. I dunno, maybe I am out to lunch here. Another example
that comes to mind is when people talk about Song of Solomon as all about
an analogy of Christ’s love for the church. Just a few thoughts here…
Please feel free to correct me if I am messed up and comment please…

I am beginning to rethink the way I view the Bible. Instead of looking at scriptures as my foundation I am beginning to look at scriptures as just one anchor in my faith. I heard it said recently that if an outsider where to try to understand the trinity that they might look at it as “God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Scriptures” To me this statement means alot and is a warning.

If we are to look at scripture as our fondation then where is there room for the Holy Spirit to work in your life? Using words like foundation is such a linear building term, in fact it makes me uncomfortable.

In Brian Maclaren’s book “A New Kind of Christian,” instead of comparing it to a building he compares it to a spider’s web. Where is the web’s foundation? Well, it doesn’t have one. Exactly.