Firstly, you must know something if you are to continue reading. I make no attempts in this blog to be deep or eloquent (I'm sure you've figured that out by now.) I'm simply asking questions honestly. Thanks for reading...
As I'm finishing up The Blue Parakeet (yes, it's taken me a little while,) I have many questions floating around in my soupy brain. Scot McKnight's take on 'how' we read the Bible has been challenging to say the least. I would really like to not be the only one to have read this book, so if you have read it, please let me know (I have many questions for you.)
McKnight offers 3 approaches to reading the Bible:
1)reading to retrieve - returning to the times of the Bible in order to retrieve biblical ideas and practices for today
2)reading through tradition - giving tradition the finally authority on interpretation
3) reading with tradition - acknowledging tradition respectfully
"So, how can we read the Bible that is both a "return and retrieval" reading as well as being respectful of the Great Tradition? I suggest we learn to read the Bible with the Great Tradition. We dare not ignore what God has said to the church through the ages (as we return and retrieval folks often do), nor dare we fossilize past interpretations into traditionalism. Instead, we need to go back to the Bible so we can move forward through the church and speak God's Word in our days in our ways. We need to go back without getting stuck (the return problem), and we need to move forward without fossilizing our ideas (traditionalism). We want to walk between these two approaches. It's not easy, but I content that the best of the evangelical approaches to the Bible and the best way of living the Bible today is to walk between these approaches. It is a third way."
(page 34)
Now my questions...
- how do you read the Bible?
- maybe my first question should be: do you read the Bible? we'll start there...not as a guilt trip, but as an honest question. Do you actually read the Bible? Or is it more a little snippet here, a little snippet there...or so rarely and randomly that you can't really remember the last time you sat down to just read it? maybe you just let the Pastors read it for you...
- and when/if you do, how do you read it? straight up/ no context? lightly/ with little contemplation (dare I say prayer)? attempting to live out every single word (have fun with that - dude, AJ Jacobs tried)? or so bunged up with tradition that it skews the Word?
- now, before you think of ways to make me painfully aware of your disagreement - take a moment, step back from the computer monitor and think to yourself: what is the most God-honouring approach to reading his Word? know that I'm doing the same....
thoughts?
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4 comments:
Still working my way through the book but so far its good. Its really making me think about how I personally read the Bible. Because the way I read the Bible is then how I'm going to approach living it out and sharing it with others.
One thing I found interesting, true, funny, unfortunate, etc is on p. 48-49:
"I give students a test each semester in my Jesus class on opening day...That test asks them to fill out a basic personality questionnaire about their view of Jesus and then to answer the same questions, now slightly shifted, about themselves. The amazing result, and the test has been field-tested by some professionals, is that everyone thinks Jesus is like them! The test results also suggest that, even though we like to think we are becoming more like Jesus, the reverse is probably more the case; we try to make Jesus like ourselves.This is all part of how we read the Bible. I'm still working through some thoughts but we'll talk about this sometime.
I haven't read the book, so I'm not much good to you there.
But perhaps a good place for Christians to start, when approaching God's Word, is to remember how holy and awesome God is. He is God and I am little and nothing compared to His greatness! He created everything, including me. So, if the Bible is His Word, that is, if it's really what He is saying to us, then we'd do well to approach it with some seriousness and humility.
Some reverence and awe (and dare I say, fear) of God might be a good place to start. After all, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom (Prov 1:7; 9:10).
I'll just throw that out there... and just add that I think this topic is huge, Tyson... well worth the time.
There was a time when I read the Bible in a return and retrieve mode like McKnight describes. That was before I had a powerful awakening to the presence and reality of the living Christ. Before that, the Bible was history and good moral advice, but it was dead to me. The Bible was a "done" thing. Then I became aware that it is as alive as Jesus is alive.
This altered but also agreed a bit with my view of tradition. I come from a multi-traditional journey so I always saw tradition, especially church worship tradition, as this historical smorgasbord of Christian home cooking made up of recipes for enjoying God that were born out of the context the Christians were in at the time. The basic ingredients were offered from previous expressions and adapted to the new situation.
With food, serving the same thing in the same way over and over gets boring. It might be good, but it loses its appeal if it doesn't connect with the latest group to dine on it. Christian tradition can do that to how we read the Bible, worship in church, design ministries and do discipleship (both giving and receiving). But you can't make a great souffle without eggs. So you can't alter the basic ingredients in the recipe. You need to find creative new ways to express it.
I think McKnight is onto something when he says we need to retrieve from the text what is God's truth and respect how Christians have responded to that truth through history. But I don't think we are commanded to express our understanding and responses in exactly the same way as tradition shows us. We need the freedom to apply the truth of God's Word in ways that honor it's intent and meaning, with respect to the great examples from our tradition, but also allow us to add our contemporary expression and understanding of our context.
The new tensions we discover ourselves in grow out of finding ourselves in new spaces where we may be more aligned with tradition in some ways and more in step with direct Biblical application in others. And these new understandings may not seem to honor either at first blush.
But HOW Jesus interpreted Scripture and obeyed God's Word seemed wrong to the staunch traditionalists of His day. Still, I'll bet Jesus kept His head covered in the Temple and synagogues when He read from the Torah, and we know he had tassels on his clothes. The "how" seems to have mattered much less to Jesus than the "why".
So when I read the Bible I'm not looking for answers to the question, "How do I obey God?" I'm looking for answers to the question, "Why should I obey God?"
And the answer I find most often is, "Because He loves." Not just me but everybody, everything in His creation. And He hates whatever kills, hurts, destroys or enslaves. He hates evil. He CARES. GOD CARES. And what God cares about we should care about.
And when I look for guidance in Christian traditions, I look for the ones that were shaped by and agree with this truth. I can work with those.
Shalom
Dear Lil' Pecker,
To further mess with your mind I might suggest reading some of the classic liberal and/or liberation theology authors (Tillich, Hodgeson, etc) as you look at Scripture. I have found them to be incredibly insightful in helping me out of my conservative evangelical theology. I've found as long as I keep certain things grounded in my beliefs that they have helped me re-engage Scripture, the Church, and faith in a fresh way.
Just don't tell Jon Morrison you're doing this.
Love,
The Big Chucker
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