:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

There is one question you can ask while studying the Bible that will help you see more, learn more, and hopefully apply more than you ever could by just reading the stories.

The Bible is full of people who were just like us. It was written by people just like us. The details are there, tucked away in the spare prose and poetry. The trouble is how to unlock those details so that we can relate to the people in the Bible and sort out what it means for us.

We’re not used to reading books like the Bible. There are a lot of ways that’s true, but one obvious detail is that the Bible wasn’t typed on a computer with infinite pages. The writers of the Bible couldn’t pick up legal pads at Staples or drop off a manuscript at a printing press.

The Bible was written on scrolls—precious, limiting scrolls that could only hold so much. Long-winded writers need not apply for writing the Bible.

These authors were masterful in their economy of words. They distilled stories down to the most important details. If we see something in the Bible, no matter how small the detail, we need to ask, “Why is this here?”

This one question will help you dig into the backstory and the implied situations described in each story.

There are lots of other really good questions that will help you study Bible. However, this one question:

• Forces us to slow down
• Helps us read carefully
• Places us in the events recorded with new eyes

If we can answer the question, “Why is this here?” we may be able to figure out what the Bible has to say to us. We may find hidden treasures. We may even find out why we’re here.

The Only Item on My To-Do List

I used to have a Christian growth check list. It read something like this:

• Daily prayer time.
• Daily Bible study time.
• Sin-free day.

If I had a major revelation during my prayer or Bible study time, I added a star or a sticker to my Christian growth list. OK, maybe not, but you get the idea. I had a clear picture in my mind of what a successful Christian looks like.

Follow the list and grow as a Christian.

It was exhausting.

I knew lots of other Christians who really enjoyed their prayer time, even if they had to discipline themselves into making a habit of it.

I knew lots of other Christians who found life-changing truth in the Bible, even if they had to drag themselves out of bed at an indecent hour.

Why was I struggling? Why didn’t I know how to make it work? I had the information, but it wasn’t clicking.

A former pastor of mine used to say, “Keep Christianity simple.” I’m all for that. I mean, it’s not like I had a very extensive list, right?

The problem? I wasn’t keeping it simple enough.

It started with a prayer time, in which I confronted the reality that God loves me. It shocked me. My life was swallowed up into something more accepting and powerful than I could have ever imagined. As I opened myself up to God’s Spirit, his leading, and the love he gave to me, I found my desires changed and shifted.

I wanted more of God.

I wanted to spend time with him.

I wanted to listen.

I wanted to obey him.

The result? I began to grow as a disciple.

Prayer, obedience,  and scripture became sub-points under the single item on my new to-do list: fall in love with Jesus.

Love prompts me to seek the leading of the Spirit, toss aside my goals and priorities, and steer clear of sin. Love drives me to greater discipline in prayer and study of scripture.

A wise man once said, “If I do not have love… I am nothing.”

Without love all of the best intentions, all of the hardest work, and all of the to-do lists in the world will just wear us out. May we never grow weary because we rely on God’s unfailing love.

During our honeymoon I was terrified of being attacked by bears. Well, just for part of it at least. And really, the bears weren’t really after me, just the food in my backpack. The biggest problem with the bears was my silence.

I never told Julie, “I’m afraid of bears mauling me.”

We had a week at a lake house in the Adirondacks for our honeymoon, but for one night Julie wanted to go backpacking around Mount Marcy, the highest peak in New York state—yes, there is more to New York than that city. I packed my bag, but remained uneasy. I was new to this concept of hauling forty pounds around in the woods.

Julie knew I was a rookie, and she worked really hard to make it an enjoyable experience. However, she didn’t realize my nervous silence was the result of visions of bears running me down and pouncing on me. She planned out all kinds of fun food to bring along and tried to encourage me with the promise of a nice hot breakfast.

She even told me “funny” stories about the time that a bear found their food bag up in a tree and tore into the tin cans, leaving them a tangled mess on the ground. That made me feel even better…

The more she talked about the great food we were bringing, the more I thought of bears leaping onto me from behind trees.

Thankfully, my wife wasn’t naïve about the wiles of bears. She brought rope along so that we could hang our bag over a stream along with the other campers who thought it was hilarious to play this game of hide and seek with large, powerful creatures that could tear a person apart with their claws and vicious teeth.

Our food bag remained safe over the stream. We were unharmed in our tent. Our day hike the next day passed with many mentions of bears by amused hikers but no sightings. My wife was prepared, and we were safe.

After that trip, I finally voiced my fears of the bears, and Julie finally understood why I’d been acting so strange. She’d taken all the proper precautions for the bears. Generally speaking, we’d have only been in trouble if we separated a mother from her cub or if we used our food bags as pillows.

My fear did nothing to help us. My wife’s preparation had everything to do with the safety of our camping trip.

Christian Survival

A friend once asked, “Who is the spiritual leader for Christians today?” I didn’t really know for sure, but he suggested Eugene Peterson, the long-time pastor and translator of THE MESSAGE.  Peterson had spent a lot of time meditating on scripture and putting it into practice throughout his lifetime of ministry.

The spiritual statue of a Christian such as Peterson is not an accident. Peterson has invested untold hours in spiritual preparation.

I had a revelation a little while ago when I felt frustrated and spiritually stuck. I wanted to know why I wasn’t progressing in my Christian walk, just hardly getting by. The answer? I wasn’t preparing myself to thrive, let alone survive.

Survival is not an accident. We don’t rise to spiritual maturity by mistake. We don’t stay on the path of discipleship by just hanging on. Survival as a Christian requires preparation.

Tomorrow’s Post: Christian Survival: Do we know what’s at stake?

Is the New Testament the Last Word on Worship?

Like many evangelicals, I’m a former Catholic. When the priests told me during my high school years that I shouldn’t read the Bible on my own, I had something to rebel over. All it took was a priest to warn me that reading the Bible on my own was dangerous.

It’s ironic. If he’d just encouraged me to read the Bible with a Catholic commentary or answered my questions, there’s a chance I could have remained Catholic. However, as I rebelled against the suffocating hand of the Roman Catholic Church, which is something of a sport here in New England, I found that many Catholic beliefs and practices didn’t originate from the Bible.

It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Mary’s assumption? Gone. Purgatory? Out! The Pope? Fabrication! A celibate priesthood? Oh, please! The mass? Not in there.

As I embraced the Protestant branch of the faith as an evangelical, I continued to play this Bible-based game. Growing dissatisfied with the typical church service, I searched the scriptures along with many others and found that many of our worship practices have no biblical basis.

I had this chip on my shoulder for a while because the only NT command regarding church is a flimsy statement by the author of Hebrews about not forsaking the gathering of fellow Christians. That’s not quite the same as going to a large building, singing four peppy songs, dropping a check in a dish, listening to a 45-minute sermon, and then singing a weepy closing song.

For a period of time I honestly believed that we needed to recover a biblical model for worshipping God, which amounted to using the New Testament as a blue print.

Did the early Christians meet in homes? Yes, so that settles it! Did they preach, sing, or pray? Well, sometimes, so that’s flexible. Did they share a meal together? Absolutely. It’s not a worship service without that!

If you come from an evangelical or conservative background, this game of being the most “biblical” can be quite fun for participants and rather tiring for everyone else in the general vicinity. It’s like we’re all picking out certain parts of the Bible, trying to follow them to the hilt, and completely missing a huge, gaping problem.

Worship has changed and evolved throughout the Bible and since the founding of the early church. Even the various early churches had different kinds of meetings in their homes. One of my seminary professors said, “If you want to model the early church, which one are you going to choose? The church in Corinth?”

As we look for guidance in the scriptures on how to worship God today, Catholics can get wrapped up in preserving their traditional means of worship while Protestants can drive themselves batty trying to be the most biblical and authentic. In reality, as Protestants such as myself strip away our traditions, we actually merge contemporary ways of worship with the Bible and mistake it for somehow being pure and biblically authentic.

While Catholics defend their worship services that are in some ways culturally out of touch because they preserve the worship forms of one particular time in history, Protestants have cut themselves off from the supposed barriers created by tradition in favor of the barriers we have with today’s culture.

Think about this, it has to mean something that many Christians worship in megachurches today, especially churches that used to be former movie theaters and shopping malls. When we incorporate these cultural spaces into our worship, we are not pursuing a pure form of New Testament worship. We are adapting the New Testament to worship practices associated with the entertainment and consumer worship of our time, just as the Catholic Church preserves the worship values of another cultural period.

I hope this disturbs you a little. It disturbs me. I’m not trying to say that worshipping God is a hopeless enterprise. Far from it. However, we need to realize that our forms of worship today are not as pure and biblical as we lead ourselves to believe.

When we can see the forces at work and what is at stake, we’ll be ready to talk about the possibilities for worshipping God today.

Tomorrow’s Post: A Realistic Vision for Worshipping God Today

Do the Disturbing Passages Negate the Rest of the Bible?

I’ve read quite a lot about the disturbing passages in the Bible, and I know that many learned authors have tried their best to sort out the nature of God and possible explanations for events such as the conquest of Canaan. Some of us may accept their theories, but I’m going to guess that many of us are dissatisfied by them.

I’ll admit it. I don’t have satisfactory explanations for certain events in the Bible that I simply can’t match up with Jesus.

What now?

For me, 99.9% of the Bible fits together relatively well. There are just a few instances that are hard to stomach. I don’t want to set myself up as a judge of God, and therefore I have an important choice to make. We all do.

Do we let a few troubling passages overshadow everything else in the Bible and the experience of God in our midst today?

After spending so many years studying theology and wrestling with tough passages, I hit a point where I just needed to follow Jesus, worship him, and live in a daily loving relationship with him. There are some gaps in what I understand, but I take these gaps as further evidence that I am not God.

I’m sure my wife appreciates that.

What blows my mind is that God has created us with intelligence and the ability to discern moral choices. I believe he wants us to wrestle with these issues. He wants us to read about the conquest of Canaan and ask him, “What the hell?”

However, he doesn’t want us to stay there feeling bitter, self-righteous, or superior. We have to bring our honest questions to God, while also remembering that we aren’t in this to get 100% on the test, to prove the Bible is flawless, or to prove we are most clever with our theology.

We are committed to Jesus because he is passionate for his people. He doesn’t have to explain every single detail to us, even if we can’t quite understand why he’d leave us hanging sometimes when we bring questions to him.

At the end of the day, we can rest assured that we know quite a lot about God based on the Bible, Jesus is right Savior to follow, and we’ll have to rely on faith when we run into mysteries. I’m OK with that.

I don’t need to spend my time knowing every little thing in the Bible because I am fully known by God, and, despite this, God still wants to be with me.

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?

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

The last significant aspect of our vocabulary of the Holy Spirit concerns the ways in which the Holy Spirit speaks to and through us.

Many evangelicals such as myself have a hard time with this one since we’ve historically been rather fixated on the Bible as our source of revelation. Tossing the Holy Spirit into the mix complicates things.

However, even if we just try to read the Bible without acknowledging the role of the Spirit, we’ll keep bumping into verses that give the Spirit a prominent place in our lives.

Teaching Us

Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus frequently speaks of the Holy Spirit as a guide for his followers, leading them into the truth (John 14:17, 26; 15:26: 16:13, 15). The scripture itself came about originally through the work of the Holy Spirit.

The process of interpreting the scriptures and living with wisdom is just as connected to the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts (1:2, 6:10). Paul frequently alludes to the guidance of the Spirit in discerning a particular belief or application.

Therefore, as we study scripture we can also speak of the Spirit as a guide who teaches us. This isn’t a stretch of scripture, though we can certainly take this notion too far by creating individual bastions of interpretation and defying all who disagree with us. Though, we don’t need the Holy Spirit to do such a thing, we can abuse the leading of the Holy Spirit in heavy-handed ways.

Prophetic Words

We could choose several different ways to speak of prophetic words from the Holy Spirit, but I think it’s quite biblical to speak of the spiritual gift of prophecy as another way the Spirit guides and teaches us. According to 1 Corinthians 14 a prophetic word is a revelation from the Spirit that edifies the church.

Acts, Romans, and 1 Corinthians all speak of prophetic gifts being given to God’s people, and Paul even said that he wished all of the Corinthians would prophesy. Having said that, he also took a great deal of care to explain how to use their gifts in orderly, beneficial ways. Prophecy is intended, above all else, to help other Christians to grow.

We could debate whether Acts 2 makes prophecy a gift for all Christians or whether Paul’s spiritual gift lists make it one gift among many that we may not have. I’m not certain about this, but I do believe we should remain open to the possibility of God giving ourselves or someone else a specific word for our edification.

I mean, God spoke through Balaam’s mule (or ass if you want a laugh), so there’s no reason why his Spirit couldn’t speak through me, right?

Desiring the Lord, Not Just the Gifts of the Lord

The work of the Holy Spirit is an incredible blessing that I sometimes wish I experienced on a more regular basis, but the trouble with such gifts as prophetic words is we can end up craving the gifts rather than the Lord we are called to love above all else.

And so while we should desire these important gifts that will empower us for ministry and help us contribute to the health of the church, our chief desire should be the Lord himself. As we draw near to him and remain open to the work of his Spirit, he is able to direct and empower us as he sees fit.

Much like my previous series on the book of Romans, I’ll be starting a series of devotions and reflections on the Gospel of Mark. While I’m at it I’ll also stick up the occasional post on theology or Christian living.

I like Mark because he begins with a bang, jumping right into his declaration that his work covers the Good News about the Messiah and then wastes little time in introducing us to John and Jesus. Jesus emerges as a miracle worker and preacher who immediately runs afoul of the religious authorities, and isn’t afraid to use complex imagery that alienates some listeners while conveying his deeper truths to those who wrestle with his words.

Throughout the Gospel of Mark Jesus follows a course that his followers and opponents generally don’t expect or can’t quite explain. If we step back from our familiarity with Jesus and his ministry and try to insert ourselves into the world Mark describes we will find in Jesus a challenging and unexpected Savior.

If the people who witnessed Jesus’ miracles found him puzzling, with many rejecting him outright, then any reading of the Gospels should be uncomfortable at some levels, stirring up some tough issues, confusing us, and leaving us with difficult choices to make. Jesus offers us salvation, communion with God, and the freedom of discipleship, but that path has a cost and will become quite difficult at times.

As we enter into this brief Gospel that dives right into the ministry of Jesus and shows his various actions and teachings receiving a variety of responses, let us pray that this account of Jesus will push us and pull us in good ways, showing what we must leave behind, and how we can take active steps toward greater intimacy with Christ in our daily lives. 

Last week we looked at why Christians typically don’t talk about war, but today I’d like to share a few reasons why we need to talk about war far more than is customary. It is my premise that much of the support Christians, in America especially, lend to war does not sit well with the biblical witness.

While I’m not willing to surmise that the Bible outlaws all use of military force or that armies are antithetical to Christianity, there is a strong biblical witness suggesting that our current reflections on war and military force in the American church are generally not adequate.

For starters, we have a picture of the future painted in the Old Testament where several prophets speak of swords being beaten into plowshares: Isaiah 2:4; Joel 3:10; and Micah 4:3. While the Old Testament chronicles a great deal of violence and warfare, it the Lord’s preference to save people from these violent ends. In the aftermath of the destruction brought by war the Lord longs to bring peace and restoration to the remnant. Therefore, in the words of the prophets we see God’s ideal future for humanity.

When the prophets speak of the coming Messiah, he is described as a prince of peace (Isaiah 9:6). In fact, Jesus came as the Messiah and he did in fact give peace. However, he distinguished the peace he gives from the peace given out in this world. I would surmise that Jesus was trying to distinguish himself from the kind of peace brought through military conquest and subjugation. He was bringing a peace far different from the “Pax Romana” brought by the Roman legions.

In a teaching that should make military conflict darn near impossible, Jesus commands his followers to love their enemies in Matthew 5:43-44, while also cautioning Peter that those who live by the sword will die by it in Matthew 26:52. In addition, as we take stock of our commission to preach the Gospel to all people and the desire of God that none should perish (1 Timothy 2:4), I think we should at the very least be extremely uneasy at the thought of killing our enemies. Are we failing to not only love our neighbors but to preach the Gospel when we resort to violence?

I’m not ready to suggest that we rid ourselves of armies altogether. We need to parse out the need for law and order with the tendency of nations to use their armies to advance national interests, to exploit other nations, and to offer this notion of security that is truly hard to pin down.

Is it disingenuous to ask whether we have more faith in Christ or in the United States military to bring about peace? I’m still working on that one…

That’s a tough, tough question. It sends me into all kinds of soul-searching, which clues me in that it’s just the kind of question we need to be discussing in our churches today. I’m very much open to the possibility that armies can be used to protect civilians, to keep the peace in regions of instability, and to protect commerce. However, once we start spending money on an army, link military spending to the health of our economy, and make support of our troops a shield for ill-advised military action, war can become a drug that nations find difficult to give up.

As Christians wrestle with these difficult issues we find a wealth of scriptures that should give us pause when considering our nation’s use of force. Will we risk offending the troops or offending God?