ReThink the Bible (3)

Something has gone wrong. If it had not we would read the Bible and find it a certain shape and find that shape perfectly corresponds to the shape we are like hand and glove. As it is, parts of it poke and prod us. There is a tension like two puzzle pieces that don’t fit. And the true one must grind against the false one. The Bible must wear away at our ragged edges.

The question is what to do with it. To paraphrase Jerram Barrs, “It is exactly the places in the Bible which create in us the most tension that we must return to, meditate and pray over, study, and learn from.” The only thing to do with the Bible is to become a disciple of the Voice from Outside.

If that scares some part of you, then, in a sense, you are right. I just said that your happiness lies in not being in control, but in giving that control to a voice outside yourself. All that is well and good until that voice leads you away from your own self-protection, which it will, if Christ is to be any example.

There is a quote by Francis Schaeffer from True Spirituality that is appropriate here. He said, “We would be less than truthful, I think, if we failed to acknowledge that often we do not offer ourselves to God’s use for fear of what will come. But fear falls to the ground when we see before whom we are standing.”

Christianity is about Jesus, and that all the Bible is about. Christ is the Gospel. When the Bible grinds away at you, when it cuts you, when it makes your cultural presuppositions uncomfortable, it never does so apart from this. That is what Schaeffer is saying. All the other questions about the Bible are very important, but when come this far all the questions change. “Is the Bible true?” and “What will it’s truth cost?” fade, and this question rises: “Is Jesus good?”

If the fear of losing control comes when the Bible becomes an authority then we have come this far at least. If that same fear does not dissipate when we see before whom we are standing, then we still have not yet come far enough. We are standing before Jesus, and his heart for us is on display on the cross.

If that is true then in seeking to read the Bible is not following a book of arbitrary rules, but it is to seek the person behind the book, it is to encounter God there. And this is a God who is radically committed to your flourishing. This is a God who has sacrificed more for you then he will ever ask you to sacrifice. A God who knows you better than you know yourself, and as a result of this knowledge he will desire to change you in ways that you would not desire to change yourself. But there is no fear in this. Fear falls to the ground when you see before whom you are standing.

[Series: Rethink the Bible (1), Rethink the Bible (2)]