But again, notice that the focus of this oneness in the Bible is oneness with others. Once oneness is restored between God and the self, it begins to work itself out into oneness with others and this world. Love of God is joined with love of others. These words of Paul reveal the plan:
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:18)
It’s all right here: we (the self) are at one with God, and this leads to oneness (reconciliation) with others in this world.
CONSUMMATION: Oneness Forever
The Perfect Eikon’s work, however, is a two-stage work, not unlike the blind man who first saw what he thought were trees and then, once Jesus applied a second dressing of Deep Magic, could see fully. King Jesus’s first work, the accomplishment of oneness in his first coming, stands now as partial redemption as it moves us toward the Kingdom, the new heaven and the new earth. The fullness of that work, complete union and perfect oneness, when God once again opens the gates to Eden for Adams and Eves, will be consummated only when Christ returns to establish the new heaven and the new earth. When that happens, Mr. and Mrs. Eikon will bask in the glory of union with God, where they will themselves be so radiant as to draw attention to God’s oneness as the origin of it all.
This, or something quite close, is the plot of the story that Jesus expects everyone to use to tell their wiki-stories. I am tempted as a Bible teacher to work this out now for every book in the Bible, for each wiki-story of the Story. But this book is not an introduction to the Bible. Instead, it is about how we are to live the Bible out and how blue parakeets force us to rethink how we read the Bible. This means that we need an example, and I have chosen how women are gifted to perform ministries in the church as our example. This issue will reveal how reading the Bible’s General Plot (the King and His Kingdom) and its redemptive benefits as a oneness-otherness-oneness story gives us discernment for today. It will give us the desire to go back to the Bible with respect for the Great Tradition so we can have the courage to make the Story real in our world. But before we get to that discussion, we want to delve into an element of Bible reading that is nearly always neglected:
If the Bible is Story, how do we read it?
The answer: We listen to God.
Thus the question might better be stated: What is our relationship to the Bible?
Turn the page.
PART 2
LISTENING
What Do I Do with the Bible?
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Jesus, according to Matthew 7:24–27
He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”
Jesus, according to Matthew 13:52
Blessed Lord, who caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant me so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that I may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
“But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”
Jesus, according to John 16:13
CHAPTER 6
FROM PAPER TO PERSON
How Do We Read God’s Words?
A student of mine majoring in art brought a piece of her artwork to class. Before others had found the way to their seats, she brought it to me, placed it in front of me, and with a little flush in her face said, “I thought you might like to see this.”
Well, of course, I did, and because the artist was standing next to me and because I wanted to be sensitive to her personal creation, I took a good, long look at it and said, “I really like this.” Then I asked her the common question art students don’t want to answer: “What are you trying to say in this?”
Again, a little more flush in the face, and her response: “What do you see?” Two things were going on here. First, she cared deeply what I saw in that piece and wasn’t about to tell me what she was trying to say. Second, and even more important, this piece of art was deeply personal to her. It said something from the depth of her soul. It was a revelation of her heart. She put her soul on display in her piece of work in order to evoke response from others.
The Bible is like this. It is the creation of God, who is the Artist, and the Artist stands next to us as we read the Bible. I sometimes think we forget what we are reading. The Bible is God’s story. When I say this, I am making a claim so extraordinary we may be tempted to skip over it. The Bible, so we believe, is unlike all other books because these words are God’s words, this book is God’s book, and this story is God’s story. The overarching King and His Kingdom Story with its inner story of redemption is God’s story and God’s redemption.
Knowing that the Bible is God’s story and that God stands next to us as we read it leads to an important question: How do we read a story that we claim is God’s story? To dig deeper than these questions, we need to ask a better one: “What is my relationship to the Bible?” This question is one of the most important questions we can ask about reading the Bible, and I am a little startled that so many who talk about the Bible skip over the question. Too many stop short by asking only, “How can I learn to understand the Bible?”
But even that question is not good enough. The real question at the bottom of all of them is this: “What is my relationship to the God of the Bible?” Our relationship is not so much with the Bible but with the God of the Bible. There’s a difference that makes a big difference.
Deep Inside
I grew up with a specific kind of approach to the Bible, and it has taken me a long time to develop a more complete understanding of the Bible. I grew up with what might be called the “authority approach” to the Bible. Simply put, it works with these words: God, revelation, inspiration, inerrancy, authority, and submission. Let me summarize: God revealed himself in the Bible. To make sure the Bible’s authors got things right, God’s Spirit was at work inspiring what they wrote. Because God, who is always true, produced the Bible, it is inerrant (without error). As God’s true Word, therefore, it is our final authority, and our response to the Bible must be one of submission. I believe this is an approach that fosters a specific but inadequate kind of relationship with the Bible.
Deep inside I knew there was something wrong with framing our view of the Bible like this. It took me years to put my finger on it. Perhaps I can say it like this: When I read my Bible, the words “authority” and “submission” don’t describe the dynamic I experience. It is not that I think these words are wrong, but I know there is far more to reading the Bible than submitting to authority.
As a college student, one of my favorite chapters of the Bible was Psalm 119. Why? Because the psalmist and I shared something: we both loved God’s Word, and we both loved to study its words. But the psalmist’s approach to his Bible—and you can just sit down and read it—is not expressed like this: “Your words are authoritative, and I am called to submit to them.” Instead, his approach is more like this: “Your words are delightful, and I love to do what you ask.” The difference between these two approaches is enormous. One of them is a relationship to the Bible; the other is a relationship with God.
Here are some of my favorite lines from Psalm 119, and it is out of words like these that a “relational approach” to the Bible can be formed:
• I deligh
t in your decrees; I will not neglect your word (v. 16).
• My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times (v. 20).
• Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors (v. 24).
• Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight (v. 35).
• I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts (v. 45).
• For I delight in your commands because I love them (v. 47).
• Your decrees are the theme of my song wherever I lodge (v. 54).
• You are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees (v. 68).
• The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold (v. 72).
• How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! (v. 103).
• Your statutes are wonderful; therefore I obey them (v. 129).
Here is perhaps the entire psalm in one line: “I have sought your face with all my heart” (v. 58). God’s face! How cool is that? A relational approach to the Bible finds room for words like “delight” and “my soul is consumed” and “counselors” and “freedom” and “love” and the “theme of my song” and “good” and “precious” and “sweet” and “wonderful.” The view of Scripture I grew up with didn’t have room for such words. Deep inside I knew there was more.
What I learned about the authority approach to the Bible was that it is not personal enough or relational enough. It does not express enough of why it is that God gave us the Bible.
What Do You Teach?
I’m a professor, and every November, Bible and religion professors gather together for an academic conference. Truth be told, the best thing about this conference is that we get to see our academic friends. Gathering with friends introduces us to our friends’ friends. Such casual conversation leads to a common question: “What do you teach?” I’ve been asked this question hundreds of times. We wear name tags, but they have only our name and the school we teach at.
One time, as a young professor, I asked the common professorial question to a wise and gentle professor: “What do you teach?” His response stunned me: “I teach students. What do you teach?” He made me realize in a new way what I am actually called to do. I wager that about 99 percent of professors who have been asked that question will give you the subject matter they teach—Old Testament, New Testament, Judaism, church history, systematic theology, and the like. That wise professor’s answer and question changed how I approach what I do. I need to remind myself of this as I enter the class: I’m not teaching a subject (Jesus’s temptations) but students who need to come into contact with the subject matter (Jesus’s temptations).
The standard approach, where the focus is teaching a subject, is not relational and personal enough. Teachers are teaching students a particular subject matter. They are not teaching a subject matter to students. The difference is a big difference.
What I’m saying is that the authority approach to the Bible is not enough. There is more to the Bible than its subject matter. In fact, the dynamic involved is earth-shattering and ought to revolutionize how we approach the Bible. It is, as noted above, the relational approach. So let me build a relational approach to the Bible, one that finds resonance with the delightful obedience of the psalmist, one that sees God’s words as personal words, and you can see what you think. I will focus on five ideas that will fill out what we mean by reading the Bible as Story so we can learn to live it out. The relational approach turns the Bible from facts-only to facts-that-lead-to-engagement with the God of the Bible.
The Relational Approach to the Bible
God and the Bible
The relational approach distinguishes God from the Bible. God existed before the Bible existed; God exists independently of the Bible now. God is a person; the Bible is words on paper or on a screen. God gave us this papered Bible to lead us to love his person. But the person and the paper are not the same.
The distinction between a person’s words and the person is an important one, but I am not sure we Christians have always made that distinction. Perhaps this will make it clear: I love my wife, Kris; I do not love Kris’s words. I encounter Kris through her words, but I am summoned to love her, not her words. Sometimes I say to her, “I love what you say to me,” but that is a form of expression. What I’m really saying is, “I love you, and your words communicate your love for me.”
We need to see the same distinction with the Bible. If we don’t, we set ourselves up for problems. Even when the psalmist says he loves God’s commands, the larger context shows that it is God whom he loves, and God’s words extend the person onto paper. Notice how often the psalmist says “you” in Psalm 119; my NIV has forty-one such occurrences, as in “You are my portion, LORD” (Psalm 119:57). Notice also how often he says “I” (109 times). This combination of “you” and “I” is a revelation of the relational approach. A relational approach seeks a relationship with the person behind the paper words “I” and “you” in Psalm 119.
Missing the difference between God and the Bible is a bit like the person who reads Jonah and spends hours and hours figuring out if a human can live inside a whale—and what kind of whale it was—but never encounters God. The book is about Jonah’s God, not Jonah’s whale. Or it is like the athlete who becomes enamored with her soccer uniform and forgets that she’s got a game to play regardless of what the uniform looks like. Or perhaps it is like a college student who, like, forgets that the point of college is, like, studying and learning and not (only) finding a wonderful social life. Or it is like the person who is obsessed with the appearance of the church building and misses the point that the building is facilitation of worship and fellowship, of loving God and loving others.
True, you can’t have Jonah’s prophecy without the whale, you can’t have a soccer game without some uniforms, you can’t have college without social relations, and it is harder to conduct a worship service without some sacred space; but the first element is distinguishable from the second. So it is with God and the Bible. Once again, God speaks to us in words, but God is more than the Bible.
Here, then, is our first step in a proper relationship with the Bible: we must distinguish God from the Bible.
God ≠ Bible
The Bible as God’s Written Communication
A relational approach also focuses on the Bible as God’s written communication with us. The Bible is like a spoken message or a letter from God addressed to God’s people, not unlike the words we might speak or write in order to communicate something to someone we love. Once again, we must pause briefly to consider what we are saying. God is not the Bible. To make the Bible into God is idolatrous.
The Bible is God’s communication—in the form of words—with us. We can trot out all the important words about the Bible—inspiration, revelation, truth, etc. But those are not enough. Behind all of these words is the astounding claim we Christians make: the Bible is God’s communication with us in the form of words. For the papered book to be what it is intended to be, God’s communication with us, we need to receive those words as God’s words addressed to God’s people.
God communicates Bible with God’s people
Listening
If we are invited to love God by reading the Bible as God’s communication with us, then a relational approach to the Bible invites us to listen to God (the person) speak in the Bible and to engage God as we listen. The relational approach knows the Bible is filled with wiki-stories—timely stories of the Story by human authors. But our approach believes the Bible is more than human wiki-stories. These authors are divinely guided so that their wiki-stories tell God’s story. If we once admit this, we are summoned to stand in front of the Bible as those listening to God’s story. (We may argue with God and the Bible and we may ask questions, but that all comes after we listen. Our next chapter will explore the theme of listening.)
God communicates Bible with God’s listening people
T
he Bible and the Big Conversation
One of my favorite discoveries about the relational approach is that we enter into the Bible’s own conversation and the conversation the church has had about the Bible. The Bible is a lively conversation of one author or prophet or apostle with another as each listens to God speaking. If you read Deuteronomy and then read Job—I know, that is not a typical evening’s reading—you observe that Job is engaging Deuteronomy in a serious conversation. Yes, Job says to Moses, there is a correlation between obedience and blessing, but there is more to it than that. Job learned, and God reveals to us, that sometimes God is at work outside the correlation of obedience and blessing.
Another example: Most of us, after reading James, say that we are justified not by faith alone but also by works (James 2:24). We recognize that James is in conversation with Paul, with someone like Paul, or with someone who is distorting Paul. Paul emphasizes justification by faith and James emphasizes works, and reading these two in the web of an ongoing conversation puts each in its proper context.
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