A Signpost & Compass (Part 3 of the Bible)

N.T. Wright is one of my favorite biblical scholars (certainly the one I've read the most from). (I realize that when I make that statement, it already puts me in the danger zone in the eyes of many of my brothers and sisters in Christ.) Wright talks about the signposts of scripture. I love this image and find it very useful in talking about what scripture is and does:

A sign along the road is something that points us in the right direction to get to a destination. It is not the destination in and of itself, but without it, we may never get to the destination. Once we've passed a road sign and arrive at our destination, we don't need the sign anymore.

So to flesh the image, the destination is to be "in Christ," with Christ, etc. The Bible is a signpost to get us there. We will always need the Bible in this lifetime. But in eternity, the Bible will be quite moot. It's not part of God's creation. It's of human hands, inspired by God.

(By the way, this is one thing that separates us from those who were directly given their scripture from God like Islam (via Mohammed) or Mormons (via Joseph Smith).)

At the same time, scripture is more like a compass than it is a roadmap. A roadmap tells us exactly where and when to turn, with every step along the way. A compass points us in a direction, and we often find we need to return to the compass to be re-aligned.

The destination is Jesus.
The point is Jesus.
The Bible tells us about the point and isn't in and of itself the point.
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This is Part 3 of a series on The Bible. I'll post the fourth tomorrow.
Part 1 - Chan, the Bible, & Jesus
Part 2 - I love the Bible. Really.
Part 4 - The Wild Goose

I love the Bible. Really. (Part 2 of The Bible)

I read, study, preach, and otherwise talk about the Bible for hours every week. It's kind of important to what I do as a pastor. I love scripture. I have dozens of Bibles and hundreds of biblical commentaries. The more I read scripture, the more I love it. I love the incredible melting pot of personalities, love, anger, creativity, emotion, narrative, power, weakness, divinity, humanity, poetry, art, inspiration, and so much more that the Bible is. I love reading about the people of the Bible. I'll never forget staying up late reading my children's bible as a kid (I particularly liked Joseph, David, and Daniel). Today, the gospels sit at the center for me, while Paul's description of the sacrifice of Christ and the community of his Body (the Church) continually inspire and challenge me.

But the Bible is not God, falls well short of God, is temporal, and should not be made more than it actually is. I even believe that the Church is above scripture, always has been, and always will be, even despite our whorish and schismatic brokenness today (a predicament that makes what I'm saying here challenging in orthopraxy, I know).

All by the grace and inspiration of God, the Bible was:
formed by the Church (the people of God),
selected by the Church,
has been maintained by the Church,
and is taught by the Church.

Unless one is part of a church that only reads from the original text in Hebrew, Greek, and the little bit of Aramaic and Latin (meaning no preaching, no teaching, or anything else other than reading verbatim from the original text), this is pretty much how everyone operates. Interpretation has begun the very moment that someone opens their mouth with words other than the text to explain the text.

I am glad that the Bible is the most printed book in all of history, and I am glad that it's so accessible and more accessible every day. I wish everyone in the world had a Bible. But...there is something to the concern that the RCC had about the Bible being in the hands of all during the Reformation. They were wrong in their monopolization and fist-grip, but they were partly right in their concern about what might happen. (As an aside, I loved how the movie The Book of Eli dealt in the slight with this.) Some of the greatest acts of history were inspired by the words of scripture. And some of the worst atrocities of history were supported by the same.

Don't get me wrong: I believe that God will use whatever vessel, means, path, or anything else to reveal Godself to people. If someone wants to begin with the Bible, I believe that God will honor that. But the Bible simply cannot become God, or the only source by which one finds God throughout the whole of life.

Tim Suttle discusses this wonderfully in his new book:

...the Bible is not self-explanatory. Just as the Ethiopian eunuch needed Philip to help him understand what he was reading, we need help as well. No one can read the Bible apart from community. For one thing it is a written document. You cannot read it unless you’ve been taught how to read. One has to know the language, and language is socially and culturally mediated. You have to be taught the meaning of words by someone else before you can read them. No one is born with the ability to read and understand words. For another thing, the Bible was written in languages hardly any of us can read. It has to be translated into a language which we can understand. This means as soon as we pick up an English translation, we are reading a text which has been mediated by someone else. Lastly, the Bible was never intended to be read apart from community. For the first fifteen hundred years of the Bible’s existence, until the invention of the printing press, it was read privately only in very rare cases. Our ability to read comes from community, as does the Bible itself. People love to point to the case of the addict who grabs the Gideon’s Bible from the hotel room and comes to faith in Christ as an individualistic event. But, who taught him to read? Who put the Bible there? Who translated it into English? Who authored it? Who decided what writings would be included and not included in the canon? Much of what we know about God has come to us through community and has been mediated by that community under the guidance of the Spirit. (An Evangelical Social Gospel?: Finding God's Story in the Midst of Extremes, Chapter 5)

That bold and underline emphasis is mine. The Bible is nothing without the Holy Spirit, which I'll deal with in the next post.

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This is Part 2 of a series on The Bible.
Part 1 - Chan, the Bible, & Jesus
Part 3 - A Signpost and a Compass
Part 4 - The Wild Goose

Chan, the Bible, & Jesus

So Francis Chan spoke tonight at Nazarene Youth Conference. The die-down on Twitter and Facebook of chatter piqued my curiosity a bit. People were excited about him being there. There's no doubt why: he's popular, catchy, cool, and has written what I've been told is a good book (sound familiar?, I mean really...look at those two pictures side-by-side again). But I don't see how Chan's very Wesleyan. I'm sure that he loves Jesus, Jesus loves him, and I could learn a lot from his incredible example. I hope and pray that people were changed tonight for eternity. I trust that it happened and is happening.

But if so, it was because he showed them Jesus and not just the Bible.

Several weeks ago someone posted this video on Facebook. I appreciate much of what Chan says (love the part about clay telling clay about the potter). I had to chuckle at the coupled warning to "be careful what we read" with the blatant "buy my forthcoming book" (on hell). And I find the reaction to Bell's book on hell predictable. Both Chan and Bell have ingenious marketing folk.

But the video has led me back to thinking about what I believe is the primary difference and divide amongst so many in evangelical, mainline, and other circles of the Body of Christ today.

We can list issues that vigorously separate Christians today: homosexuality, abortion, peace/war, atonement theories, the age-old Reformed/Arminian spectrum, and more. But it's more than likely that the position held by someone(s) boils down to one thing: how we read, use, and view scripture, its authority, revelation, and inspiration. That's a lot of words, but it boils down to: the Bible.

(By the way, in the time that I took to type this post out, some chatter has arisen on Twitter about NYC and how great Chan was tonight. Awesome!)
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This is Part 1 of a series on The Bible.
Part 2 - I love the Bible. Really.
Part 3 - A Signpost and a Compass
Part 4 - The Wild Goose

Some more thoughts on compassion

In the below video of Brene Brown (yeah, I'm a big fan) from Altar Video Magazine, she quotes Buddhist nun Pema Chodron who says, "Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals."

Part of her point is that we can only become truly com-passionate ("suffering with") once we have realized and actualized our own brokenness. I'm not sure I completely agree (it seems like Chodron is describing empathy more than "suffering with").

But it's likely that I'm drastically influenced by the compassion of Christ, who was both at the same time: equals ("man") and also healer ("God").  However, I definitely like how Chodron (and Brown as well) are challenging people to realize that compassion is hardly just the healthy helping the unhealthy and cannot be equated with charity.  It sounds familiar. The Incarnation is all about this.

Anyone else have thoughts?


Learning How To Sit In The Dark from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

Leaving [a] Church

I'm reading a great book right now by Tim Suttle, who I had a class or two with in seminary. Perhaps I'll write a review when I'm done, but probably not. I always say I'll do something on this blog and then don't, so don't count on it (I'm sure you were).

There are a lot of "take-homes" from this book. But this paragraph is particularly chewable:

I’ve noticed a pattern within this phenomenon. People who tell me they are leaving our church always begin the decision with the same three words: “We have decided.” By the time those words are uttered, faith has already been broken. These are some of the most painful words I ever have to hear. “We have decided to leave for this or that reason.” The reasons they give vary and they usually have at least some merit. Yet they pale in comparison to the egregious sin of breaking fellowship—read faith, fidelity, faithfulness, allegiance, pistis—with that part of the body of Christ to which they have been given. This is one of the most insidious forms of individualism. Why do people feel as though they can make the decision to leave their community of faith in private, without ever submitting this decision to the rest of the body? In truth this action violates the unity of the body. It runs counter to the notion that our worship runs much deeper than simply where we go to church on Sunday. Rather worship involves the whole of our lives. To “decide” privately to leave a church means we sever deep bonds of friendship and community that are meant to be reciprocal relationships. The phrase, “We have decided,” is a sign that individualism has so pervaded our lives and our Christian faith that we think we are fully justified in making decisions on behalf of everyone in our community without consulting them. This, I believe, is one of the most damaging effects of individualism on the church.

Ouch. What's often sensitively difficult about these situations is that these people most often try to demonstrate "concern" about hurting the feelings of the pastor (me). They'll make statements like, "We really like you, but..." or "It's not you, it's..." These statements only add to the disconnect between who the Church is perceived to be (largely pastor-driven, pastor-led) and who it should be (a community of people following Christ who have a pastor).*

But I also have a bit of a difficulty with what Tim's saying, as it assumes that this kind of reciprocal relationship was ever there in the first place. That's perhaps even more disturbing.

I Corinthians 12 continues to be formational for my ecclesiology (=theology of the Church). It's such a far cry from what the typical local church looks like today. For sure, we are a much more transient society than in Paul and Corinth's day. People are going to move geographically and as such, change local churches. And no one's saying that no one should ever leave a church body. But the flippancy with which it happens these days is whorish.

And if one does leave a church, let the church send you! What a beautiful way for the Body of Christ to participate in the on-going revelation of the Kingdom of God in the commissioning and sending of one another. If indeed it is right for an individual or family to move from one church to another (even if it's across the street), couldn't we all participate in that?

When a family or individual leaves a church, the most grievous moments are the ones when we remember such things as their marriage, or the baptism of their child, or the grief that we shared together in the death of a loved one.  It's these kinds of sacramental moments that make us responsible for one another in Christ and by the grace and love of Christ, can over-power the fickle temptation to run elsewhere in the moment of disagreement, misunderstanding, hurt, or offense.

(By the way, Tim does wonderfully in responding more to this issue in the book. Read it!)

*I do want to give some credit to those who would at least talk to a pastor or better yet, several people in their church community, before moving on rather than just simply moving on. But even then, as Tim says, the decision is usually already made. I also want to acknowledge that the last I knew, the average pastoral tenure in my own denomination (the Church of the Nazarene) was less than 4.5 years. Pastors apparently are no different, and perhaps even worse.