The Bible
From the Series—Creed
March 23, 2004This evotional begins a new series of evotionals titled Creed. Over the next six weeks we’ll explore six core beliefs that form the nucleus of our faith—The Bible, The Creation, The Cross, The Resurrection, The Trinity, and The Revelation.
Creed
In her book, Creed or Chaos, Dorothy Sayers says, “We are constantly assured that churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine—‘dull dogma,’ as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—the dogma is the drama.”
“Creed” isn’t the kind of word that that elicits lots of excitement, but it should. Sayers said, “If the ‘average person’ is going to be interested in Christ at all, it is the dogma that will provide the interest. The trouble is that, in nine cases out of ten, he has never been offered the dogma. What he has been offered is a set of technical terms which nobody has taken the trouble to translate into language relevant to ordinary life.”
I hope this series of evotionals is able to translate the ancient creeds of Christianity into a street language that is relevant to your Monday to Friday life.
The Rosetta Stone
In July of 1799, a slab of stone was found in a small Egyptian village. Egyptologists had been unable to decipher an ancient language known as hieroglyphics for 1400 years. The Rosetta Stone proved to be the key that unlocked the language. It had inscriptions of the same ancient text in three languages—Egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic script, and Greek. By comparing the translations side by side, Egyptologists were finally able to understand hieroglyphics.
The Bible is like our Rosetta Stone—it is two languages side by side. It is the language of God and the language of humankind. I don’t know of any book with more divine thoughts, but it is also so down to earth. It is so human and so divine and so unique.
The Bible was written over a span of 1500 years by more than forty writers from every walk of life—kings and fisherman and poets and prophets and shepherds and generals. Different books were written in different places—dungeons and hillsides and islands and the wilderness. It was written on three different continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa. It was written in three different languages—Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. It contains writings on hundreds of controversial topics yet there is an amazing harmony from start to finish.
The Bible is also omni-relevant. Here is a remarkable thought. The Bible is being read right now by people of every age—a six year old, a twenty-something, a centenarian. The Bible is being read by people of every occupation—engineers, lawyers, poets, and plumbers. The Bible is being read by people every ethnicity and every language. How many books are relevant to every person on the planet?
Authority
Let me put my cards on the table: I believe the Bible is God-inspired. It is the final authority when it comes to matters of faith and doctrine.
C.S. Lewis said, “Do not be scared of the word authority. Ninety-nine percent of the things you believe you believe on authority. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, and the circulation of the blood on authority—because the scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them; in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to content to know nothing all his life.”
When I was a student at the University of Chicago my beliefs were basically dismissed apriori. I couldn’t even get a hearing. If I said, “The Bible says” I’d get laughed out of the classroom. But that is intellectually disingenuous. Ravi Zacharias says, “The same type of ‘authority referencing’ is given by irreligious persons who also provide no defense for why their source has served as canonical for them.”
In other words, all of us take all kinds of things on authority all the time. You certainly cannot prove or disprove the inspiration of Scripture, but as a follower of Christ I have made a conscious and conscientious decision that Scripture is authoritative in my life. It is my map, my blueprint, my instruction manual.
Audit
James 1:22 says, “Do not merely listen to word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”
The word listen means “to audit.” When you audit something you take in lots of information but you don’t do anything with it. You don’t do the homework. You don’t take the tests. You don’t get graded. But you don’t get credit either! The same is true in our spiritual lives. You don’t get credit for auditing Scripture! The goal is not to know. The goal is to do.
False Dichotomy
Let me talk about what I think is a false dichotomy. In the western world we make a distinction between knowing and doing. But there was no such distinction in ancient Jewish thought. There is no distinction in the Hebrew language between knowing and doing. Knowing is doing and doing is knowing! If you don’t do it you don’t know it.
Jesus said it this way in Luke 7:35. “Wisdom is proved right by her children.” In other words, the proof is in the pudding.
A few years ago I read Bodil Jonsson’s book Unwinding the Clock and she said something so profound I’ve never forgotten it. She said, “Dynamic Properties are not revealed in the static state.” Too many of us try to understand God in the static state, but you’ve got to put it into practice. Someone has said that a billion dollar guidance system is worthless as long as the rocket stays earthbound.
I think one of the greatest dangers we face is turning the Bible into an end instead of a means to an end. And what we end up with is head knowledge. The technical term is bibliolatry. The goal is not to know Scripture in the compartmentalized western sense. The goal is to do Scripture in the ancient Jewish sense.
I like the way Brian McLaren talks about it in his book A New Kind of Christian. He says the value of a math book isn’t the answers at the back of the book. He says math books are valuable “because by working through it, by doing the problems, by struggling with it, you become a wiser person, a person capable of solving problems and building bridges and balancing your checkbook and targeting the trajectory of a rocket to Mars.”
The Bible is valuable for the same reason. It has the answers, but it’s not about head knowledge. It is about actually living out the truth. I think sometimes we approach Scripture like a scientific experiment. We dissect Scripture instead of allowing Scripture to dissect us. McLaren says, “You can kill the Bible by demythologizing it. You can read it like an engineer and dismiss anything that doesn’t fit your modern, Western rationalistic, reductionistic mind-set. You’re left with a pickled specimen, a hollow shell, a stuffed tiger this way too, through a kind of expert theological taxidermy.”
Mirror
One of the things that makes the Bible unique is that it is not passive or static. In the words of Hebrews 4:12 it is “living and active.” Scripture is “sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitude of the heart.” When you read the Bible it acts as a mirror. In fact, that is the metaphor that James uses. It is a mirror that reveals our thoughts and attitudes. Hebrews 4:13 says, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Scripture allows us to see ourselves the way God sees us. In a sense, the Bible reveals us to ourselves!
Brian McLaren goes so far as to say, “Our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves. They reveal what we want to defend, what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we’re unwilling to question.” McLaren says, “When Judgment Day comes, God might ask a lot of us how we interpreted the Bible—not to judge if our interpretations are right or wrong but to let our interpretations reveal our hearts. That will be telling enough.” Then McLaren asks a great question. “What if instead of reading the Bible, you let the Bible read you?”
I think that is what James is getting at by using the phrase “look intently.” That phrase has a cool connotation in the Greek language. It means to “bend over” or “bow down.” I think it suggests more than a cursory reading.
One reason this phrase is meaningful to me is because I love to read and sometimes I get so engrossed in a book that I realize a few hours later that I have a sore back from bending over a book. I think that is what James is saying in this passage—bend over, bow down, look intently. Every once in a while we ought to have a sore back because we’ve bent over and bowed down and looked intently into the Bible.
Kaleidoscope
In 1816, Sir David Brewster invented the first kaleidoscope. A kaleidoscope consists of fragments of colored glass that reflect light in an endless variety of colors and patterns.
If I had to describe Scripture in a word I might choose kaleidoscopic. Scripture is so multi-faceted. I never cease to be amazed at the way different verses can inspire me in different ways at different times in my life. It is kaleidoscopic.
I read an interesting blog this week by Wayne Cordiero. He said that too many Christians are “one-dimensional. ”
“Lately I am realizing that we are a one-dimensional people. We have learned pat definitions of the eternal, and think that we understand it exhaustively. ‘Grace?’ Easy. ‘The unmerited favor of God,’ we rattle off like pros. We’ve defined it; therefore we understand it. We’re ready to move on to the next unfathomable truth. We’ve conquered this one. ‘Salvation?’ In rapid words that sound more like a rap than an explanation: ‘Receiving Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.’ Done! Next? One-dimensional Christians. We know so much but understand so little.”
Intellectual
Let me say something pretty simple, but the ramifications are pretty widespread: the more you know about God the more you can worship him. I think a lot of people make what I call “the Samaritan mistake.”
There is a fascinating exchange in John 4 where Jesus is talking to the Samaritan woman at the well. He says, “You Samaritans know so little about the one you worship.” The NIV says, “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know.”
I think sometimes we compartmentalize intellectual and spiritual pursuits, but I want to suggest that learning and worshipping are not mutually exclusive endeavors. In fact, I think they are directly proportional: the more you know the more you can worship. Let me explain it this way.
In his book, Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot, author Richard Restak says, “The richer my knowledge of flora and fauna of the words, the more I’ll be able to see. Our perceptions take on richness and depth as a result of all the things that we learn. What the eye sees is determined by what the brain has learned.” And he gives a great mantra: “learn more, see more.” Here is what knowledge does: it gives us depth perception.
When an astronomer looks into the night sky, they have a greater appreciation for the constellations and stars and planets because they see more than I do. When a musician listens to music they have a greater appreciation because they hear more than I do. I like the way Bodil Jonsson talks about it in Unwinding the Clock. She says, “It’s like the biologist who can distinguish hundreds of different types of grass while other people see green and more green. The experience of experts is richer than those of other people.”
Here’s the point: you can’t compartmentalize intellectual and spiritual pursuits. Studying and worshipping aren’t at odds with each other. I think our ability to worship God is only limited by our knowledge of God. The more we know the more we worship!
Digestion
We are what we read. T.S. Eliot said it this way. “Everything we eat has some effect upon us. It affects us during the process of assimilation and digestion; and I believe exactly the same is true of anything we read.”
I had a thought a few months ago. I’ve shared it before but it’s worth sharing again: reading without meditating is like eating without digesting. In the words of James 1:22, we let the Word go “in one ear and out the other.”
Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the Word of Christ dwell in your richly.”
Final Thought
A few years ago I got into a Bible reading rut. I’d read the NIV so many times that I would skip verses because I already knew what it was going to say. Scripture became too predictable so I decided to pick up a different translation called The Message. It reintroduced me to Scripture and reignited my desire to get into the Word.
Brian McLaren says, “Sometimes, we become so familiar with the primal sacred story of the Bible that we need some fresh takes on it, telling us the same thing in different ways, or giving us some new vantage points to see what was always there, things we’d missed before.”
If you’re in a Bible reading rut I’d encourage you to pick up a different translation of Scripture and start reading.