The first
conversation that shocked me occurred at breakfast with another couple. As we
were catching up with our friends whom we had not seen since our move a few
years ago, they told us about the church they were attending. One of the things
that excited them about the church was the way the pastor preached, he taught
the Bible verse-by-verse and did “exegesis.” They were quite impressed with
exegesis, with a certain way in which to study the Bible and to teach the
Bible.
Now I’m about to
go down a road which you may not understand, but I need to do it. For sure, it
is a road that you can understand, but this will be easier for some than
for others. And please, remember this, I am writing to myself as well as to
you. Believe me when I write that I’d love to go back and do many things over
again, I truly would.
Over the past
few years, I have thought much about what I’m writing in this series, and the
clearer it becomes to more, the more angst I have and the more regret wells up
within me. The three conversations I’m sharing, and the shock they gave me,
have crystalized my vision and thinking, and yet I still have many questions.
Our friends at
breakfast have been quite active in church for many years – they are not pew
warmers. When we first met them, they were leaders in their congregation. They
care about people; they care about outreach – both in terms of sharing the
Gospel and in terms of helping folks with physical needs.
When they spoke
of the way the pastor preached it was as if they’d never read the Bible before,
it was as if the Bible had been a closed book that only the pastor and his
methodology could open – even though they had been Christians for decades, not
sit-on-the-bench Christians but a truly engaged husband and wife in the Kingdom
of God.
That was the
first element of my shock.
The second
element was, “Have I done what this pastor is doing? Have I led people to think
that they cannot approach the Bible without doing so in a certain way, with a
certain methodology?”
Have we so
hedged the Biblical text with methodology and tradition and doctrine (which is
often imperfect at best) that people can no longer encounter Jesus Christ in
the Bible?
I think the
answer is “Yes.”
Have I done so?
I know the
answer is “Yes.”
Now I am not
saying that the pastor was doing this deliberately, of course not, anymore than
I would have done it deliberately (I hope not). What I am saying is that we can
become so enamored with methodology, with the way we approach the Bible, that
we make that our focus and forget two things; we forget the Living Jesus Christ,
and we forget what the Bible itself says about how we should read it.
There is a
difference between knowing the Bible and knowing Jesus. There is a difference between
believing “the right things,” whatever they may be, and actually knowing Jesus –
being in a relationship with Him.
I once knew a
man who insisted, “Right behavior follows right belief.” I knew that was a lie because of the way he
lived and treated other people – he could be nasty.
A dilemma is
that if we know the Bible as the revelation of Jesus Christ to our souls, then
to know the Bible is indeed to know Jesus and to know Jesus is to know the
Bible. If we have “right belief” in the sense that we have entrusted ourselves
to Jesus as the Source of our life, then we will live godly lives in Him.
Do you see how
these things can be difficult to ponder? (At least to me!)
Regarding our
friends at breakfast; what did their new perspective say about the decades they
had been reading the Bible? Was it a waste? How could it have been different?
What had other pastors and teachers they had known been doing when they
preached and taught? From what I knew of our friends, their previous pastors
all believed the Bible to be the Word of God.
Was their
current perspective healthy? I don’t think so, not if it meant that they were
focused on methodology rather than Jesus Christ being revealed by the Holy
Spirit in and through Scripture. Not if it meant that they thought there was a
superior knowledge required to understand the Bible, a superior intellectual method
that required specialized academic training. Not if it meant that they were
dependent on “professionals” to teach them the Bible.
As with study Bibles,
to focus on methodology is to necessarily not focus on the revelation of Jesus
Christ because we can only serve one master, only one North Star, we can only
have one primary filter. What should be a tool, such as an exegetical approach,
can become the alpha and omega, the first and the last – thus replacing Jesus
Christ.
People talk
about what is in their hearts, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth
speaks, at least this is what Jesus teaches. When pastors are together, or
theologians for that matter, it is not unusual for them not to talk about
Jesus. This was a surprise to me as a teenager, today it is a challenge. We can
get so caught up in the intellectual side of life, in the business of doing
church, in the craft of preaching…in so many things, that it is like a group of
KFC franchisees meeting back in the day when Harlan Sanders was still alive; he
may have been alive but he was a thousand miles away, he wasn’t in the room
with them.
If Jesus isn’t
in the room with us, we ought to call it a day and go home and play solitaire.
I need to wrap
this up because this is a blog and you don’t have all day. Before I tell you a
story let me say that I am very much thinking out loud in this series. I am
saying things I’ve said before, and yet I am also attempting to articulate some
things that I haven’t said before – things that are a result of the shock of
three conversations over the past year.
I hope that you
will read and reread and learn two passages of Scripture, John 16:12 – 15 and 1
Corinthians 1:17 – 2:16. These passages, in Christ, can become our center of
gravity when we read the Bible, reminding us that in Christ Jesus are “hidden
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:1 – 3).
A few years ago,
Vickie and I were attending a large church in the Richmond, VA. area. At a
church dinner it happened that the pastor sat at our table. My conversation with
the pastor turned to his background and academic training, at which point he
talked about the seminary he attended. The pastor was in his 50s.
The pastor spoke
of a particular method of education employed by his alma mater, making a point
of saying, “Other seminaries don’t do this, but mine did,” implying that his
school is far better than other schools. He was quite proud of his seminary and
its methodology.
Of course, the
pastor did not know my background, and I was amused as he went on and on about
how his school was superior to other divinity schools.
Now I’m not
saying that we shouldn’t have affection for institutions that have been a
blessing to us, though we ought to recall the people who blessed us and remember
that most (all?) institutions are mythical – often images without substance, and
that they change over the years. Also, not everyone experiences an institution
the same way. An institution’s “narrative” is often not reality – whether in
academia, in business, or within a nation.
I am saying that
we can become so fixated on things other than Jesus, good things, maybe even “godly”
things, that we forget to love Jesus with all that we have and all that we are –
and isn’t that our calling? To love Him with all of our heart and soul and mind
and strength and to love others as ourselves?
And when forget
to love Jesus and others, when loving Jesus and others is not our focus, then
other things which could be good for us become bad for us – our exegesis, our methodologies,
our education and training – all of these things become Nehushtans (Num. 21:9; 2
Kings 18:4). I have had many Nehushtans
in my life, and likely still have them.
We are helpless
without the Holy Spirit, yes, I think we are helpless.
“Knowledge makes
arrogant, but love edifies” (1 Cor. 8:1).
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