Terribly Poetic

This is an article taken from Relevant Magazine which I find to sum up some of the feelings I have about the Bible. Many of these things I heard from many a church and many a speaker. The one that gets me the most is “Bible as answer book” or it could be called “Bible as Manual for Life.” This one can actually make me angry as I’ve heard it thrown around alot. It’s time to end that talk now.

Now I will post the full article as seen on Relevant Magazine written by Jason Boyett

How to read the Bible without trying to make it into something it’s not.

One of the most curious artifacts of my Bible-belted, Southern Baptist childhood was an activity called Bible Drill, in which kids in grades four through six compete on how well they know the Word of God. We’d be quizzed on our ability to quote verses, memorize references and identify passages. One of the coolest parts of the competition was a timed event where we had 10 seconds to locate a specific book of the Bible. We’d line up, facing a crowd of nervous parents, and the moderator would call out the get-your-Bibles-ready command: “Attention. Present swords. Begin!” And in a flurry, we’d scramble to locate, say, the book of Amos.

I rocked Bible Drill. And weirdly, I still find that archaic phrase “present swords” fluttering through my mind, like song lyrics without a melody.

There’s plenty of precedent for using Scripture as offensive weaponry, including the famous Armor of God passage in Ephesians 6. But we’ve taken that metaphor much further, turning the Bible into a box of ammunition. Individual verses have become our bullets in the culture war. Fighting homosexuality? Load up on Romans 1:27. Battling Hollywood filth? Chamber a round of Philippians 4:8.

The problem is that the Bible is so much more than a rulebook. Granted, parts of the Bible—Leviticus and much of Deuteronomy, for example—were sets of rules. But Jesus redefined that way of thinking and living. Later, Paul made it clear that an over-reliance on the “law” side of Scripture was like living under a curse (Galatians 3:10) or looking at life through a veil (2 Corinthians 3:14).

If the Bible can be reduced to a collection of ethical principles, how do we deal with the fact that Christians throughout the centuries have come to contradictory conclusions on what they are?

The Bible as Toolbox

You can’t walk through a bookstore these days—religious or otherwise—without seeing the Good Book made into a tool to enhance your life. Biblical steps to weight loss. Biblical steps to overcoming addictions. Biblical steps to business success. We crack open the Bible for parenting advice, marital tips and scary prophetic insight into oil prices and the Middle East.

That’s missing the point, too. Not that the Bible doesn’t have a lot of great information about living a fulfilled life. It’s useful, Timothy says, for teaching, correcting and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16). But our tendency is to jump into a passage, yank out a principle about joy or perseverance, apply it to some out-of-context situation, then pat ourselves on the back for our dedication to the Word.

But that’s like watching a great movie so you can find an inspirational quote to tape to your fridge. Sure, it’s one way of interacting with Scripture, but there’s so much more to it than that.

The Bible as Science Book

Not long ago, I came across a statement by a creation-science lecturer who pretty much said this: If you don’t believe the world is 6,000 years old, then you don’t believe the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Therefore, you don’t believe the Bible, and your faith is in jeopardy.

Yikes. Focusing on the factual accuracy of the Bible is a wrong approach, because the core of my faith has nothing to do with whether or not the days of creation are 24-hour days. My salvation doesn’t depend on my interpretation of Genesis. It depends on whether or not I believe the Gospels, whether I believe Jesus is who He says He is. According to Paul, our faith hinges on the resurrection, not on Noah and the flood.

To get bogged down in the math and physics and biology and chronology of Scripture is to major in trivia. It misses the point.

The Bible as easy answer book

“God wrote it, I believe it, that settles it.” According to this mindset, the Bible fell from heaven one day, bound in black leather and helpfully divided into chapter and verse. With a satin bookmark.

The truth is that the Bible and its history aren’t nearly that simple. The Old and New Testaments come from a bunch of crumbling scraps in a mix of genres, written across the centuries by dozens of different scribes.

Don’t worry: I believe the Bible is God-inspired and perfect in what it communicates. But the “God wrote it, I believe it” brand of inspiration fails to account for an important kink in the process: People are idiots. While the Bible’s message may be perfect, those of us reading it are unequivocably not. It’s easy to rip verses out of their cultural and literary context so we can slap them on a bumper sticker.

The easy-answer approach makes it that much easier to misuse or abuse the Bible. A number of recent evils, from modern sexism to slavery and genocide, can be and have been backed up by carefully selected passages of Scripture. A better approach is to read the Bible with careful analysis of context, an acknowledgment of its complexity and a healthy dose of humility.

What, Then, Is the Bible?

The Bible contains powerful moral authority, but it’s not just a weapon. The Bible points to a fulfilled life, but it’s not just an advice manual. The Bible tells us where we came from, but it’s not a history or biology textbook. The Bible addresses many of life’s biggest questions, but it’s by no means an easy read. To reduce the Bible to these ways of understanding is to spotlight little truths at the expense of the big Truth.

The big Truth of the Bible is Jesus. Yes, there are layers upon layers of depth and truth and revelation to be found studying Scripture, but the main story of the Bible is Jesus. The purpose of its thousands of words is to point us to God’s final Word: Jesus Christ.

This article originally appeared in RELEVANT magazine.

I love camp fires, especially late in the summer. You know when it gets cold at night and its that perfect temperature to sit by the fire, feel the warmth, but not get swelteringly hot like in July. I have always found it so easy to sit and reflect beside a fire. It reminds me of those nights when I was younger at Kadesh. We would sit around the fire and long to sing songs for hours and hours. I remember singing, Father of Lights, an old song now I’m sure, and watching God amaze us with the most spectacular display of northern lights. Those where good times. I felt God so close in experiences like that when I was young. I wish I could say that my time at Ranger Lake was just like those moments around the fire when I was younger, with just as much a deep spiritual connection to God. But I can’t. Instead, I felt nothing at all like that. I find it interesting that the experience I am going through right now comes at the same time as I read this blog today over at nakedpastor. Mother Teresa Me and You. It speaks of the struggle Mother Teresa went through without sharing, a heavy burden that she shared with no one. The article states something interesting, “Now that she is no longer with us and her letters are being published, perhaps the next and most important leg of her ministry will begin: giving people permission to express their spiritual struggles and inner torments.” While I don’t know where I am on this journey, or as St.John of the Cross calls it, a “Dark Night of the Soul,” what I do know is this: we must be free to share struggles, to be allowed to question, and to even doubt God’s presence in our lives. Openness and vulnerability are things which we need even more in our communities of faith. That is how I try to write on this blog….
So while I didn’t feel a deep spiritual connection around the fire at Ranger, I did notice something…the fire was bright, it was hot, but for some reason I keep having to trek into the woods for more fire wood. I noticed I had to do this quite alot in the first hour or so. It reminded me of my personal faith….the fire can be extremely hot, and bright, but I must continue to hike, trek, and put fuel onto the fire or it will burn out. So while I don’t always feel God’s presence or get a great spiritual experience, I must keep fueling the fire. I read in Pete Grieg’s book “God on Mute,” about a man who lost all taste for food. Eating gave him no pleasure, but to survive he had to keep eating, therefore, so must we continue to seek out truth, to pray, to seek times of solitude. They are the fuel for the fire, even if we have lost that connection. For one day we will be made complete, we will taste and see once again.

We often talk about faith has believing in a set of truths, or our faith in our theology and ethics. And as a result, as Christians we get ridiculed for having blind faith. I am reading Bruxy Cavey’s book, The End of Religion and came across this great insight into faith…
“Faith is not so much a cognitive word, used to describe a list of things that we accept as true whether reasonable to believe or not. Rather, faith is a relational word. It means trust or trustworthiness….Faith is the belief or trust in a person that moves us to act lovingly and loyally toward that person.”

I would encourage you to give this book a read. Its not long, but is a great read.

So I feel like I got hit on the head and I must of forgotten about my blog. I noticed my last post was Nov 1 and its the 22nd today. That is uncalled for. We did go on holidays for a week of that time where I stayed away from computers for the most part. However, that is still no excuse. I even forgot to blog my daughter turning 6months old. I guess I have allowed life to take over or maybe its just being my laziness and all the tv we’ve been watching lately. Anyways, I feel like I am back now.

Recently, I just finished reading Mere Christianity, I feel that this book is so great that everyone ought to read it. CS Lewis has amazed me in many of his writings as this was the last of three of his books that I finished.

Here are some great quotes to wet your appetite to go and read this book.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

“Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning…”

“All that we call human history–money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery–[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

“[The natural life] knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that.”

“Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self…”

I find myself impressed with the way he describes the real self. After I just finished reading the book last night I loved the way that he describes those living according to the world as the ones who aren’t creative and the Holy New Man to be the most different. Anyways, go and get this book right now.

Five reasons why this guy is Post Emergent.

1. The conversation still looks to much like the old conversation, white, male and academic. The dominant culture still dominates.
2. The values behind the conversation aren’t readily expressed in actions. No generous orthopraxis to go with the generous orthodoxy. (see my previous post)
3. The lexicon of the white European theological framework which still dominates. There is very little inclusion of black theologians and the theological framework of people of color. People of color seem to be included in the conversation only if they are willing to use this language and framework. It seems we all need to read NT Wright in order to have any credibility.
4. Talk, talk and more talk. My experience is we love to talk about this stuff but other than retro worship stuff we don’t get around to acting on it. Even so talk about diversity has never come to the fore. I want to be the church and act like the church not just talk like the church.
5. Ultimately its about relationships and I have made some good ones which go beyond the whole emergent (non movement) thing. So I’ll go about the spiritual practice of reconciliation through relationships with my brothers and sisters and leave emergent tag to others.

I am starting to believe that there is alot of truth to what he is saying. The popular ideas of change in our churches are not always tagged as emergent, but the basic idea is the same. The idea that we talk to much and have very little action is something that has been a problem for a long time. Even Solomon warned of talking to much in Ecclessiaties. The “retro” worship stuff we talk about often becomes just a different order of worship and a differnt “look.” Instead of traditional worship services with “fellowship” before or after, we replaced it will fancy coffee times and call it changed. I don’t buy that. True change is attitude. I agree, its about relationships and we need to change the way we approach these relationships. Away from the “us and them” mentality towards thinking about the community as a whole, not just OUR community.