Something About the Way...
| There’s something about the way you use the bible, something about the way you use it as a tool, as a weapon, as a fulcrum, as a means, as an end, as a trump card. There’s something about the way you see the bible as a thing to be used at all. There’s something about your intensity and your urgency and the way you have your eyes locked on some distant prize. There’s something about the energy you are putting into this. It’s making you frantic and in a hurry. You will not be present in a sacred moment. You will not wait. You will not keep silence. You will not admit that you are weak. You will not let things unfold. You cannot abide, so you will not abide. You will not abide the journey. Arriving is all you want, and the bible is some kind of shortcut for you. You seem to be cutting corners and covering your tracks with memorized verses. You enter every room with a blast of pretty Jesus words and a lot of fast talking. Somehow you have come to think that the bible is like everything else in your life. You think it is something to master and something you can own. The more you know about the bible, the more power you hope to gain. The more verses you can quote, the closer to God you hope to be. The bible is your prop and your flag. You wave it around and make sure that it is seen. You highlight it and talk about it and make wild claims about its truth and fight over it and win with it and boast about how you believe every word of it. It is your way and your truth and your life. Behold, your sacred battle cry: “The Word of the Lord is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart." But that verse isn’t about the bible. It’s about Christ, whom you serve, and whose spirit you are called to carry in your heart. It is only He who is your way and your truth and your life. That old man that you brushed aside? The one you called a liberal and a wishy-washy Christian? He spent the last fifty years with his hands and his heart in the pages of that sacred book. He has wept over it and searched for truth in its stories. His unanswered questions have increased every year until finally he knows nothing at all but the love of God and neighbor. He knows something that you do not know. (You can read the rest of it here) |
posted by andrew at 8:29 a.m.
2 Comments:
The Bible is just another book whose importance has been blown beyond proportion.
Loving life and marvelling in its myriad manifestations is enough to make me happy. No holy book is needed for that.
hey man - i totally feel what you're saying. the love of life, of beauty of all that is and that has been created gives me incredible pleasure on a daily basis.
i fear, however, that you dismiss the bible too readily. having taken a chance to read your blog, in the face of your dissent of religion, i will freely and openly admit that i believe its story of God-become-man, of God-come-to-earth to bring salvation to an otherwise corrupt world.
if the bible were merely about religion, or a feel-good analogy of how to live life; if the story of Christ merely about some human person, i would accept your point fully and wholeheartedly. there is much beauty in life. there is much at which we can (and, i believe, must) marvel.
but if Jesus Christ is who he says he is, if this same one who died on a cross two-thousand years past is one and the same Son of God, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, then I have no choice but to bow in reverence before this divine Creator - not because it's a nice or reverent idea.
in response to the eternal grace and mercy of a loving God, what else am i to do?
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