Contented Nomad

Is my bible really an idol?

There is a phenomenon that exists around the scriptures.

It is the placement of the scriptures “in between” us and God and it results in a one dimensional understanding of a holistic God.

This bothers me.

It reduces God/Jesus to a way of life rather than a person that we relate to and a Who that relates to us while we walk the journey of life. He lives only on the pages of our bibles, but not in our daily expression. He is rules and principles and nothing else. We don’t ask Him to be the source of our life, (despite the many things that the bible is silent about and we need help with), but we try to make the bible and its precepts be the end-all of our faith. For many, many years people had active, living, breathing relationships with Holy God that didn’t reside in their bibles because they didn’t own any. Printing presses didn’t exist and no one had personal bibles. It is as we have had a/our bibles in our hands that we have reduced its pages to either a textbook  or a sacred icon. Both of which rob the beauty, majesty and the relational dynamic of the faith-walk that God has designed for us.   We turn it (our relationship with God) into the Kay Arthur  (although she has great stuff) concept of “precept on precept”.  A formulaic approach to living that takes the life and mystery out of our relationship with Jesus. Just follow the plan and it all works.  Live by the standards that someone tells us that are the right ones and everything will work out.  I don’t think that is what the bible was intended for, but that seems to be what we have done to the Love Letters of the God of the universe.

Jesus promises to send the Comforter to teach more than what he taught.  To reveal more.  We have limited God to just the printed words and that is where we are – living in a post-printing-press, post-Reformation understanding. Peter, in the book of Acts choses another disciple from a Psalm that had nothing to do with that. How does that work?  Did Pete alone have special insight into that Psalm?   How do we filter that into our theology of the scripture.   All scripture is God-breathed and “useful”, “profitable” for divine instruction, but it doesn’t say that it is the fullness of God nor does it say that God is only that (just a set of thoughts, concepts, principles and precepts). These are all “good” things but truly only a “one dimensional” view of who God is what He is capable of.  We have successfully put Gpod in a box and the box is the size of our King James bible.

For me I see that the equation has become….

Me —— scripture—–God

A scenario in which the Word of God has become the stumbling block/sacred icon in between us and the GOD of the Word.

Word became flesh and dwelt among us because Word on page was insufficient?   Needed more “filling-out”?  Needed “flesh” wrapped onto the words?

Does that mean that the word of God is not sufficient ?  No. I only want to give it the sufficiency that it seems to give itself.  We have made the “sufficiency” be a limitation rather than a entrance  point to the relationship.  God is now defined exclusively by the individual words.  Romans seems very that  clear mankind can know God from the created world around them and that knowledge has nothing to do with the written word.   I go back to my Peter example – How did he get that instruction to cast lots to choose Mathias from that Psalm? Is there more to the bible than just the words? I would say yes. Many godly, faithful men have for thousands of years “found” differing truths concerning the “Word of God”. Vastly differing.  Each person holds it in their hands and says “this is what it says”. Are all wrong? No. What gets us skewed (IMO) is that we take our understanding and apply it to all things and people.

The Psalm that Peter used to choose Mathias may have a totally different understanding for someone today just like it probably had nothing to do with Mathias when it was written.

We also have to remember that the bible is NOT a proof text for our chosen set of beliefs, it is a description of what God wants us to know about Him and how we relate to one another IN CHRIST.

I love all this dialogue – it sharpens us and makes us think through what Jesus has called us to be and do. If we get lost in the meaning and the words of the “WORD” as the main thing, then we get to a place where Jesus confronted the religious leaders of the day and said to them “you search the scriptures and they testify about me”. I hope that ALL of us would see Jesus in the words and our relationship with Him would grow more and more intimate.  Not just a set of facts and some data points for discussion.

Many godly men and women over the years have struggled and groped for understanding of what God has said, revealed and intended with His Word. We should have a very high view of the of God’s word and its importance in the experience of our daily life. My quest is to know God in deeper ways through a complete relational experience and experience the Kingdom of God as I walk in grace, hope and joy.

But, I do however think that many of us have inadvertently inserted the Bible in between ourselves and the Father and in so doing have limited the full expression of God (as promised in the Comforter) to just what is written on the pages. John tells us that there was so much more that could have been written in the gospels that the word could not have contained all the books.

I am cautiously suggesting that we allow God to speak in the “now”. Not in a weird/crazy foolish way, but in a way that doesn’t have God being silent since the writing of Revelation. If that is true – if God has been silent since then- then the only need for the Comforter has only been behavioral training.