II
Timothy 3:14-4:5
Why bother
with the Bible?
In many
cases, people’s first contact with its words comes in the snippets that we hear
read week by week. That’s if they go to
church. If they don’t – and most do not –
then they hear the Christmas story recited in the King James Version by Linus
every year, sponsored by Dolly Madison, and that’s about it. Occasionally they may hear the words of
Genesis recited by someone who is trying to convince them that the world was
created in six days and that modern science is evil. Perhaps they hear someone arguing that the
Ten Commandments should be in every courtroom, but they have no idea what those
commandments say. Their knowledge of the
exodus – depending on their age – comes from either a movie starring Charlton
Heston and Yul Brenner or Disney’s cartoon version, The Prince of Egypt. Maybe
they get the idea to read the Bible straight through, and get bogged down in
Leviticus or Numbers.
Then
there are the competing scriptures. Some
of them are ancient – the Hindu writings called the Upanishads were compiled between 800 and 500 B.C., around the time
that the prophets were speaking to Israel.
Muslims believe that the Koran was dictated to Muhammed in a series of
visions and revelations beginning in the year 609 and concluding in the year
632. Some scriptures are recent – the Mormons
claim that their Book of Mormon was
written by people living in the Americas between 2200 B.C. and 421 A.D. and
that a copy of it was written on gold plates in Egyptian and buried near the
Finger Lakes in New York where it was dug up in 1827 by Joseph Smith, to whom
an angel appeared and gave magic eyeglasses that enabled him to translate it
into English before taking both the plates and the glasses away into
heaven.
These
are not new problems for Christians to address.
From the beginning, we have spoken to people who have said, “I don’t get
all of this,” or, “This was written by and for people who are long dead and has
nothing to do with us,” or, “These writings may have a lot of good in them, but
so does Homer or Plato; what makes them so special?”
Paul
told Timothy to pay attention to the Bible for the value of its moral
instruction.
“All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God
may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” [II Timothy 3:16-17]
Let’s be honest, even though it is could be taken for
cultural arrogance. Different scriptures
authorize different codes of behavior.
Yes, it is true that you can find a version of the Golden Rule in
religious traditions worldwide. There is
a lot of good in the Buddha’s emphasis on compassion and in Muhammed’s
insistence on giving to charity.
However, Buddhism’s belief in reincarnation does mean that there are
times that Buddhist monks will protest political injustice by setting
themselves on fire, while Judaism and Christianity hold that the end of life is
properly in God’s hand alone. It is
wrong to kill yourself to make a point.
Again, the Koran insists on a strict separation between God and
creation, including humanity.
“Say, ‘He
is God, One:
God, the
Eternal,
not begetting
and not begotten,
and there
is no one like the One.’” [Sura 112]
That sets up a very different relationship with humankind
from what we meet in the Gospel of John:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God. …And the Word
became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a
father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
[John 1:1, 14]
That, in
turn, brings me to what, for a Christian, has to be the whole point of the
scriptures. It isn’t only that they
provide moral instruction (which they do).
It isn’t only that they provide us with a language of prayer (which they
do). It isn’t just that they provide a
philosophical framework for looking at “life, the universe, and everything”. All kinds of writing addresses questions like
why there is suffering and what happens when we die and how we should
live.
What matters about the Christian scriptures, in fact, is
that they talk about these things not in terms of ourselves, but of God. The people in the Bible come and go, along
with human nations and cultures that seemed, at the time, so permanent and
timeless. What is steady and constant
throughout is God.
And yet through
the Bible we learn that ours is a God who does not stay way out there,
compassionate but distant. Our God comes
to earth and is born as a crying baby, has differences with parents as a
teenager, goes to work in the family business, experiences grief and loss, makes
friends who turn on or abandoned him in his hour of need, gets arrested, is
convicted and sent to a gruesome death, in the course of which he undergoes his
own deep torment of soul as well as body.
Only we have that understanding of God, and it comes to us through the
witness of those who have gone before and found in it the strength to live and
the assurance of their eternal worth in God’s eyes, a strength and assurance
that they saw fit to share with others and on and on until it reaches us. Some of that witness they even wrote down.
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and
firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known
the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith
in Christ Jesus.” [II Timothy 3:14-15]
It is through the Bible that we come to understand or at
least sense what God had been preparing from the very beginning of time. Through all the struggles of a nomad family
looking back to Abraham and Sarah as their founders, God has been at work. Through the longing for freedom of enslaved
people and through the challenges of using well the freedom they were given,
God has been at work. Through the
intricacies of law and liturgy; through the experience of good government and
bad; through war and peace, victory and exile; through the endless proverbs of
those who sought wisdom in daily life and in the loving scolding of the
prophets – God has been at work laying a foundation.
For
what? For us to be able to hear a Word
that is spoken in a human life and human history, not just in letters on a
page, though without those letters we would never comprehend what was going on
and with them we still may be struck with wonder.
Why bother with the Bible? Bother with it, wrestle with it, be bored
with it or excited by it, but pay attention because it points beyond itself as
“sacred writings that are able to instruct you for
salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
There is nothing magic in its words, but there is
something of utter importance in its message about the living Word, Jesus. Albert Schweitzer put it well:
“He comes to
us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to
those who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow me!’ and sets us
to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who
obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils,
the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship,
and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He
is.”[1]
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