I remember meeting with someone who had begun attending our church. They wanted to know how tolerant our church was. Before I answered their question, I asked them one of my own. “If you became convinced that the Bible didn’t meet your definition of tolerance, would you throw out the Bible or your definition of tolerance?” My point wasn’t that the Bible is intolerant, but before I began the conversation, I needed to understand whether I was trying to defend the Bible or explain the Bible. Was the Bible the authority that helped them evaluate all their other beliefs, or was a certain view of tolerance the standard by which they would evaluate the Bible? After a long pause, they decided that if the Bible didn’t agree with their definition of tolerance, they would abandon a commitment to their definition of tolerance and accept the Bible’s. Sooner or later, everyone who reads the Bible needs to make a similar decision. Will we treat the Bible as a nice book, even one of our favourites? Or will we put it on the top shelf, in a class all by itself, with ultimate authority in our lives?
Very few people want to discard the Bible altogether. It’s a holy book after all, and there are passages in the Bible that even the most cynical atheist would admit are beautiful and inspiring. But, sooner or later, everyone finds parts of the Bible that make them feel uncomfortable. There are teachings that disagree with what we believe. There are commands to do things we don’t want to do. And there are warnings against doing things that we want to keep on doing. When we come to one of those uncomfortable places, we’re tempted to conclude, ‘That part must be wrong.’ If the Bible contains errors, then we get to pick and choose the parts we like. So, how true is the Bible? Does it contain mistakes? How can we know? These are important questions to settle in your mind.
I didn’t use to think that I needed to take the Bible too seriously. I assumed that its message had gotten passed down through the centuries a little bit like the telephone game. That’s where everyone lines up and whispers a message from one person to the next down the line and when the last person says what they’ve heard, we all laugh at how garbled the message got along the way. Once I had done some investigation, I realized how wrong my assumptions had been. Over the years, I’ve talked to so many people with the same assumptions that I wanted to address how the transmission of the Bible differs from the telephone game.
It’s easy to keep doing the same things without thinking about what you’re doing. That’s not a recipe for personal growth, though. This week, I’m taking a course called “Preaching the Narratives of Scripture.” There were a couple of books that I had to read in preparation as well as papers to write, summarizing their contents and my reflection on them. On Wednesday and Thursday, I’ll take in day-long lectures with the instructor, Kent Edwards, who will come to us from California by Zoom video call. On Friday, I’ll preach to my computer screen and then have the professor, and fellow pastor-students analyze and critique everything I’ve said and done. Pray for me! In the follow-up to the course, I’ll submit another three sermons for written feedback from the others and in turn, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the other participants. Having gone through the same process for the course I took in the winter, “Preaching Old Testament Poetry,” I know the value (and the stress!) of the feedback and reflection. You can’t grow in the echo chamber. Let me share some of the lessons I’ve learned so far.
The actor, Jared Leto, recently emerged from a silent meditation camp only to learn that COVID-19 had become a global pandemic. After close to two weeks in a desert retreat, it was a shock for him to learn what had happened while he had been unplugged. With the constant barrage of troubling news reports and alarming developments, escaping to a desert hideaway may sound tempting. Meditation sounds like it may help deal with the uneasiness that many people are feeling. But does the Bible say anything about meditation? Is meditation Christian? And, if so, is it any different than Hindu and Buddhist forms of meditation?
I remember a woman in one of my Bible studies in Japan who approached me, puzzled, one day. She said, “I don’t know what to do with the Bible. It contains stories that are so remarkable that they can’t be true. But it’s not written like any of our legends or myths. It reads like a collection of eye-witness accounts and historical records. How am I supposed to read it?” She was actually asking a very profound question. Whether people read the Bible or reject it, they often do so without considering what the Bible says about what kind of book it is. The Bible makes the following five claims about itself.
On Sunday, we started a new series in 1 Thessalonians entitled, “Living Life in Light of the End.” I’ll be away camping with my family this week so instead of my regular post, I want to encourage you to watch this video overview of 1 Thessalonians from The Bible Project. I hope it gives you a better feel for the letter. I’ll be back on Sunday for a look at 1 Thessalonians 2:1-6.
At this week’s FEB Central Regional Conference, Mike Bullmore gave an exposition of the longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119. His teaching did what all good teaching should do: move me to look closer at the Bible. The result was four questions to help get more out of Bible reading. Reading the Bible is not only one of the most important things a Christian can do to grow, it’s also for many one of the most difficult things to do. Psalm 119 provides some help.
I’m not a Jew. But I do love the Jewish Scriptures. And I believe they contain a compelling reason to read what Christians call the New Testament, and it’s a reason that’s often overlooked.
If you want to avoid becoming self-righteous, you need to read the Bible through two lenses.
