The Bible is For You, Not Against You
The unfolding of your words gives light;
it gives understanding to the simple.
Can you keep a secret? I kinda hate the Bible. It’s awful, I know. Much of my life I’ve had a mainly dislike, kinda love relationship with the word.
I’ve never enjoyed how people debate about things in it. Whether it be hot button issues of our contemporary time or merits of centuries old systematic sets of theology, I don’t like when the Scriptures are weaponized. Generally arguments on theology come from two bloated egos, yet it is evident, pretty blatantly, that God hates pride (Proverbs 8).
To be fair, the Bible is harsh. A lot. It makes cutting commentary about a variety of people, and frankly is incredibly politically incorrect, from both a progressive perspective AND a conservative perspective.
This is both the best part of the Bible and the most frustrating.
The Bible doesn’t care about your ideologies, the regional values of your hometown, or your meticulously crafted political stances.
It isn’t available to coddle your vulnerable, whiny ego or to viciously berate your cultural rivals into ideological (and apparently tangible) hell.
The Bible is after your heart. It claims that it is deceptively wicked, but also that it can be redeemed.
But the heart can’t be redeemed through the Bible; rather, it is redeemed through trust in God.
American Christians have idolized the Bible far too much. The irony is that the Scriptures being so idolized are not the Scriptures Jesus regards so highly. We have placed a high value on particular theology and “right” thought about God while maintaining a low value on character growth and the fruit of the Spirit (see our current president and many fallen from grace pastors).
Why is it this way? As I state many times on my home page, I have not gone to seminary. I don’t claim to have all the answers or to have totally sound doctrine (although it seems I’m pretty orthodox for most folks standards). But I have noticed in many years of church attendance, bible classes, Christian seminars, “heretical” podcasts, and a lot of things in between that the Bible has become an idol and hindrance to spiritual growth.
How can that be? Because people read the Bible to affirm themselves and criticize their enemies rather than to affirm the Imago Dei of their enemies and to criticize their own shortcomings.
I do this. You do this. We all do this. It’s natural for us to cherry pick verses we like, ignore verses we don’t, and adapt our own kind of “systematic theology” according to our divine interpretation. Afterward, we read those verses, interpretations, and contexts onto our godless enemies, stroking our fragile egos for how enlightened we are all while ignoring verses and passages whose sole purpose is to destroy our egos and help us see where we need to ‘carry our crosses.’ Our theology claims objectivity, but only reveals our sin in its subjectivity.
This tendency of Scriptural analysis comes from Greek tradition, specifically Platonic sociological ideals, and is not Jewish in the slightest. Richard Rohr puts it like this:
I remember the final words of my professor of church history, a very orthodox priest theologian, who said as he walked out of the classroom after our four years of study with him, ‘Well, after all is said and done, remember that church practice has been more influenced by Plato than by Jesus.’ We reeled in astonishment, but the four years of history had spoken for themselves. What he meant, of course, was that we invariably prefer the universal synthesis, the answer that settles all the dust and resolved every question — even when it is not entirely true — over the mercy and grace of God.
This ‘universal synthesis’ can be liberal or conservative. Progressive and “woke” or traditional and fundamentalist.
Any interpretation of the whole of Scripture that does not both radically convict you to obey God’s law but also deeply encourage you to do so through the grace and providence of God is deeply flawed and broken. God is opposed to earning salvation, as Dallas Willard is oft quoted, yet not for exerting effort (he really loves our effort. Another post, another time).
The Bible is for you, not against you.
So we’ve established the Bible is harsh and soft. Politically out of touch and dramatically ahead of its time. Something that keeps us up at night and also what gives us rest when insomnia strikes.
How then should we read it?
To start, do not expect to ever achieve an “objective” interpretation of the meta text. We as people are a bundle of paradoxes. No one person has 100% precise theology, other then Jesus. The writers of Scripture were fallible, broken, prejudiced people, just like us, but their words are God breathed, and, according to 2 Timothy, “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Since we are all sinful, and all fallen short of the glory of God, we can’t expect to ever arrive at perfect thoughts about God, let alone perfect character through our fallible understanding.
Second, approaching it with confusion is better than with absolute certainty or not approaching it all. If we believe it is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, we ought to anticipate scratching our heads and questioning our hearts before, during, and after reading. The religious elite of Jesus day, the progressives (Sadducees) and the fundamentalists (Pharisees), were constantly flustered by Jesus corrections of their ‘accepted’ and ‘air-tight’ understanding of Scripture. Clearly, approaching the Bible with the posture of being proven right is far less important to Jesus than approaching the Bible with a posture of humility and a desire to change.
Finally, if the Bible is overwhelming and intimidating, and if church leaders in the past have caused you to read the text only through a lens of moralizations, condescensions, or as confirmation of all that you lack, read the portions which encourage and uplift you, then move on from there. When Jesus first arrived on the scene and began His ministry, He called those who had ears to hear to repent and believe the good news. He didn’t call it mixed news, like some progressive leaning Christians might have you believe in lieu of climate change or hot button social issues. And it wasn’t bad news of a petty God smiting randomly and harshly as many fundamentalist leaning Christians teach to a desperately struggling world.
The unsure and afraid, the weak and the needy, the outsiders and the unclean, the totally lost and ‘unredeemable’ sinners saw something in Christ that those who find little to no fault in themselves could never, ever find. They had need and He filled it. They felt broken and He made them complete. They felt unlovable and He was love, incarnate.
Something is bent within us. The Bible is apt to remind of this often. However, it is also apt to remind us that our God is a God who understands, who is near to the broken-hearted and saves the crushed in spirit (Psalm 34). A God who is gracious and righteous, and full of compassion (Psalm 116). A God who said of Himself, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
(In regards for the cryptic sounding punishing of the third and fourth generation, I super recommend my own pastor’s book, God Has a Name by John Mark Comer)
Jesus loves kids. Of this I connect with Him most. When His disciples attempted to rebuke them, to get them away from their divine, wise, and remarkably intelligent Rabbi, Jesus rebuked them, stopped, and began to bless the little ones. I’d argue He played with them too.
There’s wisdom in the foolishness of kids. Because they are keenly aware of their insufficiency, their deficits, and their fears, it is easy for an educator or parent or counselor or Rabbi to correct them. The correcting part may be difficult, but the need to be corrected is obvious.
I think the way Jesus likely corrected children is the way we should see the Bible correcting us. If we approach the Bible with insecurities, with worries, with concerns, with confusion, like the way a young child brings themselves to their guardians, the Bible will nurture us. It will discipline us, definitely, but it will show us time after time our deep need for the mercy, grace, and love of God. It is well aware we will fall short so it is well equipped to encourage us to get back up again.
If, however, we approach the Bible with arrogance and certainty, with a strong desire to be proven right and a shallow desire to be loving, the Bible will strongly implicate our need to repent and change not only our thinking but also our being and our doing. Remember the ’ fierce rebuke Jesus regarding the “goats” in his sheep and goats parable. Apparently for Christ, how we treat the least of these has a strong corollary to how we will be treated on judgment day.
If we, after reading Scripture, champion the poor, forgive our loved ones, and love our enemies, we have read Scripture the way Christ would have us read it. If, however, after reading scripture, we flay our ideological rivals, harbor resentment toward our loved ones, and continue to hate our enemies, we have not read Scripture the way Christ would have us read it.
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”