 When I graduated high school, after looking at several Christian universities and colleges, I finally decided on the university with an intentional focus on providing its students with a biblical worldview. Early on as a teenager, I sensed God guiding me toward a lifelong commitment to full time ministry. I filled those years of my life pursuing this purpose, running away from it, or fighting God fiercely over it, sometimes simultaneously! When I finally acquiesced and made my decision to pursue further education in this field, I had no idea how profoundly it would shape my life.
Up until this point, my life was rooted in the church and the stories from Scripture were imprinted on my mind and heart. Yet I was never taught, or I was too young to understand, how I was supposed to read the Scriptures. When I chose to attend a Bible college, my priority was to get training on how to become a good pastor, but over the next few years I gained invaluable insight from being saturated in the Scriptures through lectures, papers, etc.
The philosophy of this particular university was to provide its students with an integrated biblical worldview that would become the framework for them to excel as leaders in their vocations, communities, churches, etc. This educational experience was of immense value to me because I gained a deeper understanding of God and a passionate appreciation for the Bible itself.
After I completed my education, my knowledge of the Scriptures felt complete to me. I finally learned how to read the Bible. What I did not learn until much later in life, was that I allowed this educational approach to Scripture to harden and dim my perspective of the Bible, thereby reducing any mystery clearly evident in the stories found within its pages. In short, the Bible had become a legal document for me to parse rather than a living document full of stories intended to breathe life into my existence
Why do I share this part of my journey? I share this because I think there is an inherent danger in stripping the Scriptures of any mystery in order to satiate our need for answers, conclusions, theological frameworks, political persuasions, judgmental assertions and a host of other preconditions we bring to Scripture. I sense that the average individual who reads the Bible encounters frustration derived from our tendency to strangle the life out of its poetry, history, and literary quality in favor of explaining away the intrinsic tensions due to our fear of divergent perspectives. By streamlining our beliefs we remove any dissent. By removing dissent, we remove the messy questions that inevitablely lead to our growth.
Have you ever been to a Bible study where no one wants to talk and one or two people want to talk two much? Some of this may be due to social dynamics, but could it partially be due to our approach to the Scriptures? I would argue that a rigid approach to Scripture as a legal document can foster an environment of fear that supresses any dialogue on the Scriptures. If we are honest with ourselves, most of us are incredibly fearful of giving the wrong answer. From a very young age, we have been taught to answer questions in terms of conclusions rather than in terms of contributing to dialogue and conversation. If you grew up in Sunday School, you were rewarded for the right answers and sometimes ridiculed for wrong answers. Therefore, going back to our Bible study analogy, many people who refuse to contribute to discussion in a Bible study are refraining because they are afraid of being wrong. When in reality, through the discussion and wrestling with a variety of viewpoints in a social setting, these individuals will grow monumentally because they are chewing meat collectively rather than individually swallowing spoonfed Gerbers. And what about the individuals who talk too much in the Bible study analogy? Sometimes, these individuals are convinced they have the right answers and feel it is their vocation to inform others of what God is saying. At times, the dominent answers conveyed in a collective setting become the system of beliefs we follow because they are the most dominant, obvious answers. This becomes the pattern of communities of faith rather than cultivating an environment where people can wrestle, struggle and come to their own conclusions through the Holy Spirit guiding their understanding of Scripture. By focusing so much on our specific theological persuasions, we can remove any potentially troublesome meddling of the Spirit with our entrenched orthodoxy.
I am writing to advocate an intentional, conversational approach to Scripture. This conversational approach will seem relativistic, dangerous and even heretical to those who read Scripture as a legal document. Let me be clear, I am not advocating that we strip the Scriptures of its intrinsic, inspired truth. However, I am advocating an honest,conversational approach that allows our questions to linger and the Scriptures to breathe.
Has the Bible become dry and devoid of any inspiration to you? Are you looking for answers instead of looking for God? Maybe it is time you allow the Scriptures to breathe, its tensions to remain without assumptions, and the text to illuminate who God is rather than strangling the text for our own theological justifications. |
