Friday, 18 July 2008

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  Jesus and Thoughtful Bible Study

  

  
  --from a sales flyer for LifeWay Christian Stores, July 2008

  What.

  Have we done.

  With the Bible.

  What on earth is this catalog talking about so ungrammatically (is it that hard to say “better than we do”)?  To “do Bibles,” in the context of the advertisement, apparently means to sell them.  “Save, save, save” is marketing code for “Buy, buy, buy.” 

  That doesn’t seem like much to be proud of.  Surely translating Bibles, giving them away, or producing hand-lettered illuminated manuscripts are more noteworthy endeavors.  But the marketer informs us that no one, absolutely no one, sells Bibles better than they.  Of course.  Excuse me a moment while I break into song: “You’re so vaaain; you prob’ly think this post is about you, don’t you, don’t yooooou….”

  Ahem.  Where was I?  Ah yes.  It’s clear that a lot of people, Christian or not, have missed something significant about the Bible.  When you’re dealing with any book, you have to know what its purpose is, or you won’t understand it correctly.  Most books don’t exist simply to make money (although you had better not get me started on The Secret). 

  Usually, the context of the book itself will give you important clues as to why it was written.  Miss those, though, and you will likely misinterpret the whole thing.  Have you ever read an interpretation of Alice in Wonderland as a serious Freudian allegory of Lewis Carroll’s repressed desires?  No?  Lucky you.

  Obviously, that approach to Alice, even if it’s true (of which I’m skeptical), overlooks most of the things that make the book worth reading in the first place.  But how many of our approaches to the Bible commit the same error?

  Often in Christian devotions, you’ll see the Bible compared to “a love letter from God.”  But just put the Bible next to any love letter.  Whoever makes the comparison clearly isn’t familiar with the contents of the Bible, or hasn’t gotten many love letters, or both.  Love letters are full of gushy sentimentality; the Bible—well, isn’t. 

  And what about the skeptics who read the Bible like the lawyer in the old story, “looking for loopholes”?  Of course, it’s well known that if one sentence in an obscure chapter of the Bible seems to indicate that an ancient king committed what might appear to us to be a war crime, why then the whole book must be without any value at all!  This approach often borders absurdity:  I once saw the same angry atheist express, in the space of three comments, his opinion that Christians were fools to believe in absolute morality, and his outrage that the God of the Bible was so absolutely immoral. 

  One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that (very interestingly) people’s attitudes about the Bible generally reflect their attitudes toward God.  The antitheist who hates God reads the Bible and sees God presented as a hateful being.  The atheist who thinks God is a myth reads the Bible and sees mythology.  The self-righteous Pharisee who sees God as a law-giver reads the Bible and sees a book of rules.  The sentimental church lady reads her favorite happy psalms and is inspired.  The person who’s getting tired of church leaves the Bible on the shelf.

  Does that mean that the Bible is purely subjective, and any meaning we find in it is one we bring to it? Of course not; it says what it says, and anyone can find that out with a bit of study.  It does mean, though, that perhaps when people object to the Bible, their objection reveals more about them than about the Book.

  So what about the book?  If all these approaches to it are suspect, what approach could we gather from looking at the book itself?

  There’s this man named Jesus of Nazareth who figures very prominently in the Bible, for reasons that should be obvious to most Christians.  A very good portion is spent foreshadowing what He would do when He arrived, or recounting the details of His life, or reflecting on the results of what He did.  So if a person as significant as Jesus had something to say about the Bible, it should be a very substantial piece in our understanding of the book.

  (Guess what that was leading up to.)

  Jesus on the central theme of the book:

  And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself….  Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.”  And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. –Luke 24:27, 44-45

  • According to Jesus, the central theme of the Bible is—Himself.  Everything in the Scripture, whether in the Law of Moses, the charges of the prophets, or the prayers of the Psalms, points in some way to Jesus.  That would be mind-bogglingly arrogant for anyone to say about themselves… unless it was true.  Yet the effect of listening to Jesus was a better understanding and comprehension of the Scriptures.
    
    

  Jesus on a summary of the book in two sentences:

  Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”  Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” –Matt 22:35-40

  • There’s Jesus’ “Readers’ Digest version” of the teachings of the Bible: Love God, love your neighbor.  According to Jesus, all the teachings of the Bible are, in some way, expositions of those two ideas.  In other words, if you say you understand the Bible, but you don’t love God or your neighbor, something’s probably wrong somewhere.  And probably not with the Bible.
    
    

  Jesus on the origin of the book:

  “But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying,  ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” –Matthew 22:31-32

  • That is one doozy of a sentence: The words that you read in a certain book can have precisely the same effect as though God was speaking directly to you.  And which book is that?  You guessed it.
    
    

  Jesus on why some people just don’t get the book:

  You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. –John 5:39-40

  • Jesus has two strong points here:  First, all of the Scriptures “bear witness about me,” in other words, as He said elsewhere, the whole Bible is about Him.  Second, even this is no substitute for coming to Him yourself.
    
    

  This last verse was originally spoken to religious people who had a thorough academic knowledge of the Scriptures.  Yet Jesus contended that even they had missed the point.  The most important thing is, as Jesus put it, to “come to me that you may have life,” and no amount of book-knowledge can substitute for that. 

  Perhaps this applies to the skeptics as well.  Suppose we really did find a genuine logical or factual contradiction in the Bible somewhere that couldn’t be reconciled through a better understanding of language, context, or culture.  (If you think you have, I’d recommend checking it out with the Christian Think Tank or Tektonics before crowing too loudly.)  That would be interesting, maybe, but it wouldn't change the real issue: If Jesus is who He claims He is, then He is the only true source of eternal life.  An error in a book doesn’t change that.  If you don’t believe in Jesus, the issue you should be thinking through is Jesus Himself.

  Let me put the point of all this in one word.  A man in a hurry once asked R. A. Torrey if he could say in one word the best way to study the Bible.  Torrey replied, “That is a lot of weight to put on just one word, but if I had to, the word would be… Thoughtfully.” 
  

  A flippant, shallow reading (or marketing!) just isn’t going to cut it.  But read the Bible thoughtfully looking for the truth about Jesus, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you found it.

   

  Recommended Further Reading:

  The Truth of the Bible: Learning to think spiritually by A. S. A. Jones.  The self-described “ex-atheist” explains how a change in her approach to the Bible helped her to see what she had been overlooking.

  Profitable Bible Study by R. A. Torrey.  Getting the most out of Bible study has a lot more to do with the reader than with the method.

  Jesus and the Sufficiency of Scripture by yours truly.  An older article of mine listing some other things Jesus said about the Scripture.

  How to Study the Bible and Enjoy It by Skip Heitzig.  A great little introductory book that I used to recommend during my bookstore days to people who found Bible study boring.

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