:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

What do we gain by explaining difficult Bible passages?

Yesterday I mentioned that I generally expect the Bible to provide comfort, guidance, and direction rather than challenging or disturbing me. Today I’d like to discuss what we gain by trying to figure out the disturbing passages of the Bible.

When I read the Psalms, I often run into difficult questions. Why are you far away God? Why do the wicked prosper? Why has calamity fallen upon me? Why do the righteous suffer? This reveals a complex picture of God that defies simple rules or our hope that the Bible fits together neatly.

The God of the Old Testament and the God revealed in the love and suffering of Jesus are the same. And this leaves us with an important question. What do we gain by trying to weave them together seamlessly?

Conservative and liberal Christians have tried to make them fit together and offer a series of scenarios to explain the tough, disturbing passages of the Bible. I’d like to ask, Should we do this?

I’m not saying that it can’t be done. I’m just saying that we may not be able to do it, and in fact, there are some good reasons to believe that our attempts are not necessarily grounded in good reasons.

Mistake #1: God Must Always Make Sense

If we want the Bible to fit together perfectly and to never disturb us, I think we reveal some presuppositions about God and the Bible. We presuppose that God will always act within our understanding. In fact, if God can’t act in ways that we understand, then he can’t be God or at least a good God.

Christians and atheists make this mistake. I’m at a place in my faith where I’ll certainly try to figure God out, but I’m leaning more toward faith and mystery when I can’t make sense of things in the Bible.

Mistake #2: The Bible Is Our Foundation

Many Christians also presuppose that the Bible can’t have unexplained mysteries in order to be the foundation for our faith. There are two problems here. First of all, our faith stands and falls on God himself and his revelation to us. The Bible is part of his essential revelation, but it does not make up the whole.

In fact, we read in the Bible that Jesus lamented how the teachers of the law searched the scriptures and missed the fact that the scriptures pointed to him—as in the person of Jesus. Paul also asserted that there is no other foundation than Jesus Christ. And therefore, our faith surely benefits tremendously with the Bible, but if every Bible was locked up, Christianity would still continue.

In addition, in order for the Bible to be God’s inspired message to us, we should expect it to baffle and confuse us sometimes. If we are dealing with a deity who is truly greater than us, I think it’s reasonable to expect some uncertainty in the Bible. In fact, I’d say that the Bible encourages hard questions and sometimes does not offer the simple, assuring solutions we crave.

What Do We Gain by Explaining the Bible’s Tough Passages?

I’m driving at this simple point: we don’t really gain all that much by trying to “solve” the passages in the Bible that disturb us. No matter where we land on the issues at hand, such as the conquest of Canaan, we’ll have a measure of uncertainty and dissatisfaction.

We can still try to understand the baffling and disturbing passages of the Bible, but we should expect to sometimes hit a number of possible turns that leave us confused and lost. A disturbing passage in the Bible may rattle our faith, but our faith can endure because God is alive today and calling us to follow him despite our doubts.

God can live with our doubts. Can we?

The Next Post: Do the Disturbing Passages Negate the Rest of the Bible?

We Don’t Expect the Bible to Disturb Us

I know this may sound hard to believe, but most days I’m not interested in waking up, opening the Bible, and running into questions about God’s relation to things like genocide or the way divine election works. Call me hopelessly idealistic, but I thought the Bible was supposed to just tell us how to love God and to love others, making it easier for me to follow Jesus in my everyday life.

We are told to read the Bible devotionally, for the purpose of “spiritual growth.” Preachers lament our lack of biblical literacy. Commentators posit that our problems would be solved if only we opened the good book more often.

Lost in this push to get our noses in “The Word” is any notion that the Bible may disturb us, feed our doubts, and possibly even push us further away from God sometimes. For all of the comfort and joy I find in the Bible, we can’t overlook the times, even if they are few and far between, that the Bible rattles us.

Disturbing passages in scripture throw a wrench into things.

We could mention the flood, the conquest of Canaan, or the particulars of divine election. All of them bring up potentially troubling issues for us and have divided Christians over the years. God’s relationship with violence has been especially controversial of late in some circles.

As a follower of Jesus, I believe that these are tough questions, but we ultimately have nothing to fear from them. I have no intention of messing with anyone’s faith here. The questions are out there, so we need to figure out how we should deal with them. I’m sure there will be some who walk away dissatisfied by my conclusions. However, when I wrap this series up on Wednesday, I hope we’ll arrive at a place where we find a healthy mix of logic, faith, and mystery.

This week I’m not aiming to explain away any particular problem in the Bible. Rather, I’d like to take a broader look at how we approach disturbing passages in the Bible, what’s at stake, and how Christians committed to following Jesus can live in the tension they create. 

Tomorrow’s Post: What do we gain by explaining disturbing passages?

Over the past two days we’ve established that Jesus defines faithfulness according to the ways we demonstrate our love for others, particularly how we serve the least of these by our words and deeds. This raises the matter of what we should do with our beliefs and theology.

If God wants us to love him and one another, basing our faithfulness on whether or not we have imitated his service to those who are most vulnerable, isn’t theology a waste of time?

For me, this creates a sort of chicken and the egg dilemma. We are making a deeply theological statement when we say that serving others is most important to God. We can’t escape the implications of Matthew 25, but we also understand Matthew 25 by putting theology to work for us.

In putting this another way, if we want to dismiss theology in order to only serve others, we are essentially destroying the foundation that gave us the perspective we needed to see the priorities of God clearly. If we decide to move into service without a foundation of theology, we’ll end up serving without God’s leading and power, eventually losing the perspective and insight that theology provides.

Service without theology is every bit as problematic as theology without service. The two are linked.  

Our problem isn’t theology. Our problem is theology that leans in close to God, but keeps him and others at arm’s length. In addition, theology can be used to build glass walls between ourselves and God so that we can look at him but remain untouched by him and his heart for others.

Good theology connects us with the heart of God and enables us to read Matthew 25 and James 1 with the result that we take these messages seriously and put them into action.

We can try a shortcut to the action that God calls us to without theology, but in a brief period of time we’ll lose our way if we aren’t grounded in the leading of God’s Spirit and the message of scripture.

May we remain immersed in the scriptures and Spirit of God.

May we discover ways we can put our theology into practice.

And may we be refreshed with the new things God teaches us and calls us to do for him.

Have you ever thought, “I wish God would just show himself. Then everything would be easier.” I’ve imagined meeting God for coffee, hashing out my plans for the day, taking my marching orders from him, and going to it.

Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to follow God that way?

And then there are the larger problems in life and the arguments leveled by atheists and agnostics about the terrible things happening in our world. Why doesn’t God show up? Why has he remained so distant from the pain and suffering in this world?

Here’s the chilling reality we learn from the Bible: God already came down to earth and the majority of the people who met him weren’t interested or actively opposed him. Humans, in other words, tend to think and act in ways that run counter to God.

The problem isn’t that God has removed himself from us. He came. He also stayed. The problem is that we have removed ourselves far from God. As we’ve moved away from God, our world has become distorted and depraved in its thought and actions.

Advent is the season where we celebrate the beginning or God’s solution: the birth of Jesus. God literally made our problems with sin, suffering, and injustice his own.

Beyond that, he left his Holy Spirit to live with us, continuing his presence among us after his initial coming at Advent. Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost are three holy days that celebrate the progression of God’s saving and restorative work among us.

This week I’d like to ponder the significance of the coming of Jesus.

The Next Post: How would we deal with evil and sin in the world? In other words, was Jesus’ coming at Christmas really the best plan?

When I sit down to read the Bible, it’s sometimes tough to jump into the world of the Bible after I’m thinking about doing the dishes, my to-do list, or cleaning out the rabbit’s litter box.

Other times I can read it perfectly well, but don’t get much out of it. I think to myself, was that really worth it?

Yesterday we looked at some good reasons to read the Bible, but how exactly do we make sure our Bible reading is doing what it’s supposed to do? I know why I need the Bible and the ways it can bring me closer to God, but what should I do when it doesn’t meet that goal?

There are plenty of different approaches, and some may feel quite different from each other, which is kind of how things work in a relationship with God. There are no magic formulas.

Sit with a Few Verses for a While

Whether you call it Lectio Divina, meditation, or plain old prayer, meditating on a verse of scripture for a while is a great way absorb it and to let God speak to you. Read a passage of one or two verses slowly, sit with it, read it again, and let it soak in for another 5-10 minutes. Ask God to speak through the passage and pay attention to any words or concepts that jump out at you.

If you want to learn more about praying the Bible, check out my friend Lisa Delay’s site.

Read Big Chunks and Reread Smaller Portions

My favorite way to read the Bible involves a quick overview reading (4-5 chapters per day) followed by a slow follow up reading (1 chapter per day) of a particular book. I just began an overview reading of the book of 1 Corinthians, and I hope to follow that with a closer reading that focuses on how Paul addresses conflict and false teaching.

This approach helps me to see both the forests and the trees and helps me absorb a lot more of the biblical narrative so that God can use it in my life either today or in the future.

Try a Different Translation

The New Living Translation has helped me jump into my daily Bible reading much easier due to its readable style. I still use the New Revised Standard for serious study, but for daily reading, the right translation can launch you on your way.

Invest in Background Reading

This is the more academic part of Bible study, but really, anyone can do it in small chunks and enjoy the benefits. There may be dry moments when you’re reading a book or article about the background of a passage, but the more familiar you become with the biblical world, the more it will make sense.

How many other ancient books do we read on a regular basis? Would it really be a good idea to read ancient literature without some knowledge of the context and time?

To that end, we need Bible dictionaries, articles, introductions, and other books to set us straight. In addition, the Old Testament is critical background reading for the New Testament. Unless you understand the Old Testament Law, you won’t have an inkling of how revolutionary and controversial the actions of Jesus were.

While the background reading may put you to sleep, you’ll eventually read the Bible with your eyes wide open as you realize that these stories are about people just like us who wrestled with God and took leaps of faith.

For a little more on this, check out my brief E-book: How to Study the New Testament Like a Pro. You can download it as a PDF for free and will discover some simple free and low-cost ways to get more out of your Bible study time.

Still hungry for more? if you’re interested in New Testament background, dig into NT Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God and Jesus and The Victory of God.

Do you have a favorite book or resource for your own Bible study? What’s a must-have?

“God has not given us a Spirit of fear” is one of those snippets of scripture that I passed over throughout high school, college, and even seminary. Yeah, yeah, God is good. While we should have a healthy fear of him, the normal Christian life is characterized by peace and hope and love and blue skies and daisies. I knew it.

Meanwhile I lived as a captive to fear—namely a spirit of fear.

So I had my anxiety attacks, I began each day trying to catch my breath, and drove other people nuts with my anxiety about toasters catching on fire, losing my keys, or dying from high cholesterol.

When receiving prayer one day, that verse from Romans 8:15 worked like a real sword that the Spirit used to hack at the spirit of fear that had taken hold in my life. It’s something I’ve written about often because in that moment a passage of scripture did what it’s supposed to do: freed me to know God in a deeper way.

The Bible was unchained, and God’s Kingdom became a reality that made my seminary classes seem a puddle in sandbox in comparison to the wind and waves that crashed onto a beach.

Yesterday I looked into some reasons why we shouldn’t read the Bible. Today, I want to give some good reasons why we should read the Bible.

Storing Up

The daily work of reading the Bible may not yield fantastic results immediately. I read that verse from Romans many times without anything happening. However, at just the right time God used that verse to break me free. What are we storing up today for God’s work tomorrow?

Reorienting

Scripture reconnects us with God’s plans, methods, and hope for us. The Bible tells us how things were, how they are, and how they will become. We have every reason to expect the world of the Bible to become our world—it was written to be taken seriously rather than partially explained away.

That means there will be some cultural changes, but God is still actively involved in his creation and through his people. The Bible keeps us on the same page with God’s counter-narrative that challenges the twisted values of our culture’s narrative that seep into our lives and into the Church. The Bible keeps us moving into God’s Kingdom.

While the Bible is about God, it is very much a story written for us today.

Worshipping

Yesterday I mentioned that God is not found in the pages of the Bible per se, but the Bible does lead us to God—it testifies concerning the God we long to meet. To that point, using scripture in our personal and corporate worship is a way to take our focus away from ourselves and our problems.

I’m sure I’m missing some other reasons to read the Bible, but these are the big three in my experience. Anything else to add?

Tomorrow’s Post: OK, we know why we should read the Bible, but how should we do it? I’ll share a few thoughts on how to keep the same old 66 books fresh and relevant.

When I started attending a Baptist church for the first time, I noticed that everyone had a large Bible tucked under their arms. While I found the Bible a bore, everyone read it, talked about what they were learning, and opened the wrinkled pages of their leather-bound Bibles to reveal highlighting and squiggly underlining.

Reading the Bible seemed to be the thing that set me apart from these Christians, and so I worked on getting my devotional time up to snuff. I bought highlighters, a fancy cover as their holster, and even dared to underline and make notes in my Bible.

Over the years the Bible served at times as a text book and at other times as a source of validation for everything I did and believed. Either way, I continued reading the Bible because that’s what real Christians do. As I separated myself from my Catholic past during my high school and college years, the Bible became my badge of honor.

The Bible became my Christian street cred.

Christians should read the Bible, but we shouldn’t read the Bible just because that’s what Christians do. When it comes to many of our misguided reasons for reading the Bible, we often end up doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. It looks good on the outside, but we may bankrupt our spirits and ruin the Bible for ourselves by disconnecting it from a relationship with God and his leading Spirit.

In fact, reading the Bible as a Christian badge, a text book on religion, or even as a source for life runs the risk of misconstruing the more complex and true nature of Christianity. The righteousness of Christ becomes our badge, the Spirit our teacher, and Jesus himself our source of life, but we are pointed to these by the Bible.

The Bible, then, becomes an exhausting dead end when we make too much of it. The Bible wasn’t supposed to enable us to live the right way. The Bible tells us how to live, points us to the Holy Spirit, and then the Spirit works with and in us.

The Bible is an essential part for Christian living, but we must remember that it is a part. If we ask too much of the Bible, we run the risk of making the same mistakes as the Jewish leaders (John 5:39) or even falling flat on our faces when the Bible can’t do what only God himself is able to accomplish in us.

Tomorrow’s Post: I’ll discuss a few of the reasons why Christians should read the Bible, developing and adding to some of the ideas hinted at here.

This week I’m adding another installment of my Christian Survival Guide series: Reading the Bible.

I roll out of bed, feed the rabbits, start the coffee, pour tea for my wife, set up the French press, make a small breakfast, drink a glass of OJ, turn on my computer, sit to eat breakfast with my Bible open, and stare. That’s how my day usually begins.

Some days I snap out of it and read the Bible for a little while. Some days I read the same chapter over and over again wondering what all of the words mean when read together as sentences. I wake up slowly.

However, once I’ve hit the shower and dressed, I start to think about my to do list. Editing, queries, freelance gig searches, blogging, social media, e-mails, and book projects flood my mind. I can feel the tidal wave of my day coming, and once it hits, there’s no turning back to focus on the Bible and to listen for God’s whisper in the silence.

The noise has come.

Distractions, a busy schedule, and exhaustion are just a few of the reasons why I fail to read the Bible some days, or at least fail to read it closely. But there are other reasons lurking beneath my self-importance and drive to get things done.

I also avoid the Bible because I’m pretty sure I can handle my day without touching base with God. To a certain degree, I don’t need to read the Bible every day in order to live in fellowship with God, to pray, or to live as a disciple of Jesus.

However, the Bible reorients me toward God, helps me live in obedience, and guides me into his presence during times of meditation. Without idolizing the Bible or saying that God = Bible, it’s safe to say that reading the Bible is an integral part of connecting with God. That is what I tend to forget when my work calls me at the start of each day.

Every day I bump into values, actions, feelings, advertisements, and words that challenge the place of God. The Bible provides a counter-narrative that I desperately need, lest I become lost in my own flawed designs or the whims of our culture.

Why don’t I read the Bible? When I fail to read the Bible, it’s typically because I don’t see how integral it is in enabling me to cling to God each day when there are a thousand things trying to pry me away from him.

Tomorrow’s Post: Why We Shouldn’t Read the Bible

Yesterday I suggested that the book of Revelation is a Christian version of Jewish apocalyptic literature. This kind of literature is written during times of persecution as a means of encouraging the faithful to persevere.

Apocalyptic literature tells a spiritualized version of current events and also speaks of a future when God will intervene and bring justice. Given what we know of Revelation, I think such a reading is quite fitting.

However, we also have a lot of books (such as the Left Behind series), radio shows, and Bible teachers who say that Revelation gives us a blow-by-blow prediction of what will happen in the future. Can such a perspective be correct? Or is this the end of the end as we know it?

I’d like to look at Revelation in two very broad senses as I compare the apocalyptic view to the popular Left Behind view.

Revelation as Prophecy

Prophecy in the Bible tends more toward discerning the will of God and calling people to repentance. When people called Jesus a prophet (eg. John 4), it was because of his knowledge of God and God-given insight, not necessarily because he could predict the future. In fact, Jesus didn’t know how the world would end exactly.

Though the prophetic books do sometimes predict future events or warn of possible consequences for sinful behavior, they are primarily concerned with calling God’s people to repentance. There are predictions that accompany their warnings, but the emphasis is not on granting secret, insider knowledge. The goal is repentance.

In light of the general trend in scripture, a reading of Revelation that leads us to repentance and Godly living is much more consistent and likely than a coded message about the future that we need to figure out. We profit little by arguing over when the millennium will take place because it’s far more important to remember that Jesus is Lord today and that Revelation promises he will be Lord of all in a more complete sense one day. Reading Revelation as apocalyptic literature makes the latter interpretation far more likely.

Revelation and the Gospel

I look at the Gospel as God’s invasion into our world. Think of Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia where Aslan is thawing the long winter and bringing new life and Spring. Aslan didn’t come to torch Narnia. I think the same holds true to God and the biblical story.

The cross and Resurrection are the turning points of salvation history, and Jesus sent his followers out to make disciples. However, if we take the whole scope of Jesus’ ministry into view, we can see that he didn’t just come to save souls before God blows up the earth. There is something much more complex going on that I don’t have time to fully flesh out here.

In brief, God is bringing his Kingdom in both physical and spiritual ways. There is a judgment to come, but we should be slow to claim knowledge of what it will look like. Keep in mind that the key enemies of Jesus were the religious leaders and scholars. The Gospels tell stories that should give academics, seminary students, and pastors nightmares. Many of those who knew the scriptures best missed God.

When we turn to Revelation, we need to make sure our interpretations aren’t interfering with the larger call of the Gospel to go into the world, to join the present coming of the Kingdom. The Gospel isn’t about how to get us out of the world or how to separate us from the world, but how God’s Kingdom can shape the church in such a way that it brings the Kingdom INTO the world. Reading Revelation as apocalyptic literature fits better into the calling and work of God’s people as developed throughout scripture.

A New Beginning for the End

Therefore, in the broadest of terms, Left Behind theology doesn’t do justice to the Gospel and to the biblical picture of prophecy. While I believe it has bits and pieces correct, the overall scheme raises some problems for this view as an interpretation of Revelation, even if it’s still a fun read for those into books about the apocalypse.

Tomorrow I’ll wrap up this series with some specific ways that reading Revelation as Jewish apocalyptic literature unfolds a relevant message for us today.

Can you imagine what would happen if your pastor began his sermon on God’s covenant with Abraham by comparing a modern business contract? We’d learn hardly anything of value about the ancient story from such a contemporary example.

In fact, we run the risk of misunderstanding the significance of certain elements of the story. There is much more value in comparing God’s covenant with Abraham to ancient Suzerainty covenants from the same time. In studying these ancient documents we discover the unique significance of what God promised Abraham.

By the same token, most scholars and teachers study Paul’s epistles by comparing them to letters written by Paul’s contemporaries. I doubt a comparison to a “Dear Abby” letter would provide the illumination we seek. The same goes for comparing the Gospels to ancient works of history.

Revelation as Literature

When it comes to Revelation, many read it as a blow-by-blow account of future history. They turn it into a prophetic and predictive mash up, seeing it as a highly symbolic chronicle of the future that can be matched up piece by piece with certain events and people.

However, there are a number of books quite similar to the book of Revelation that stand out as contemporaries and demand our attention. To ignore them would cut us off from the best sources we have for understanding a very confusing and symbolic book.

Many scholars agree that Revelation is undeniably a Christian form of apocalyptic literature. In doing this we are also affirming the Jewish roots of the New Testament that are easy to overlook 2,000 years after these books were written.

Revelation as Apocalyptic Literature

When I first read Jewish apocalyptic literature, my mind almost exploded. I kept thinking to myself, “This is just like the book of Revelation!” There were heavenly visions, angelic guides, symbolic beasts and horns, battles between good and evil, and God’s triumph and judgment of evil.

For example, have a look at 2 Esdras 16 and consider if any of that sounds familiar. Chapter 15 should sound familiar too for that matter. For more info, see: Esdras.

In short, Revelation utilizes many of the existing literary elements of a particular genre. The original audience of Revelation would have known how these elements worked and interpreted them accordingly.

This means we need to understand how apocalyptic literature functioned within the Jewish context and how the author of Revelation used this form to communicate with his audience. It is quite possible that the author of Revelation was John the apostle and he did in fact have a heavenly vision. However, whether or not that actually happened, he certainly used a very familiar form to communicate a particular message.

This is quite different from the Gospels, which are documenting historical events that truly do matter. The Gospels hinge on the historicity of what they say about Jesus, but Revelation is performing a different function as apocalyptic literature.

Apocalyptic literature was written during times of persecution as a way to encourage the faithful to endure to the end, to trust that God is fighting evil, and that God will triumph in the end. The symbolism and other-worldly nature of the writings may have been particularly helpful in avoiding the notice of authorities.

Therefore, if Revelation was a form of apocalyptic literature written during a time of persecution, which is most likely the case, what does this mean for our interpretations? Is this the end of the end as we know it? Should we toss our end times charts and the theology of the Left Behind Series? That’s where we’re going tomorrow.