Don't Apply the Bible
We should apply the Bible – but my point in this post is that we should not focus on applying the Bible. Since the beginning of the year I’ve heard a lot about reading the Bible, starting a one-year Bible-reading plan, and so on – and the discussion usually includes a statement like, “Don’t just read the Bible, but let’s apply it to our lives!” But if your goal in Bible reading is to apply it to your life, then you’re missing the point.
I’m a married man. Sometimes my wife asks me to do something like take out the garbage or wash the dishes. I apply her words (usually). Does that mean I’ve achieved the highest goal in marriage? Hardly! Marriage includes taking out the garbage, washing the dishes, and doing other things that my wife asks me to do, but that’s just the tip of the marriage iceberg. Hopefully my marriage is much deeper, more intimate, and more relational than just taking out the garbage. Of course I should take out the garbage, but if that’s the best part of my marriage, then I’m in trouble and I don’t have a clue about how to relate to my wife.
My relationship with the Bible is similar. Of course I apply its words to my life, but if that’s the farthest that I go with the Bible, then I’m in trouble and I don’t have a clue about the nature of faith.
When I read the Bible I don’t try to apply it. I try to ingest it – assimilate it – absorb it – and allow it to permeate my life. I become part of the Bible and the Bible becomes part of me. I become one with the Bible. It’s the sponge analogy – the water is in the sponge, and the sponge is in the water. The Bible is in me, and I am in the Bible.
For example, I read the story of Jesus healing the blind man in Mark 8, which I wrote about in a previous blog post. A typical application of that passage might look this: “Jesus can open my spiritual eyes, and I have to follow him to find spiritual sight, and maybe I have to be a friend to others who are spiritually blind and try to bring them to Jesus too.” That’s all good, but it’s not much deeper than taking out the garbage. It can be productive but it’s shallow and superficial.
Allowing the Bible to become a part of me might look like this: “I am the blind man. Jesus is leading me away from my friends and my family to follow him. Jesus is smearing spit and mud on my eyes, violating accepted norms of propriety and cleanliness and making me really uncomfortable. Even after all that, I still can’t see much but now I’m stuck with Jesus. He’s my only hope.”
This is not application – it is identification. I am the blind man. His life becomes my life. His experience becomes my experience. When I read Mark 8, I am reading about myself; I am learning who I really am. The story permeates my life and redefines my identity. I thought I could see; I thought I could depend on my family; I thought I could depend on my religion; I thought I knew how to act in a socially acceptable way; but I now see that I am the blind man and I can depend only on Jesus. This is not a mystical experience; it is personal transformation by the renewing of my mind (Romans 12:2).
The difficulty is that this type of reading takes time and effort. It doesn’t take much intelligence – it’s more a matter of imagination and creativity than intellect. It’s easy to read a chapter, understand it (more or less), check it off the to-do list, and move on to more urgent things on my schedule. It takes time to sit down, read a passage, meditate on it, insert myself in God’s story, close my eyes, and see myself as the one to whom God is revealing himself. It’s an open-ended process. I used to exult in reading copious quantities of Biblical material, but now I’m lucky if I can get through a few verses a day. It’s the difference between swallowing a whole grape – and slowly chewing it, savoring it, feeling its texture in my mouth, looking for its subtleties of flavor, drawing out the experience of its sweetness, noticing its juiciness, enjoying its smell as I chew, and then finally swallowing. It doesn’t take intelligence – it takes time and focus.
We tend to treat the Bible as something that we can study and understand, and so we try to contain it within our comprehension. We try to put a box around it so that we can control it. Instead of submitting ourselves to it, we use it for our own purposes. How ludicrous that we try to take the living, powerful, infinite Word of God and try to reduce it to a “statement of faith.” How sacrilegious that we quote Bible verses to prove a point rather than worshiping its Author when we open it. How arrogant to think that the Bible supports our ideas or lifestyle when instead we should be humbly surrendering to it.
- The Bible does not reveal information – it reveals the personal God.
- The Bible is not a self-improvement text – it is intended to transform us.
- The Bible is not a rule book – it is the gateway into the throne room of God.
- The Bible is not a divine “Dear Abby” column for telling us how to handle our problems – it is the written version of the living Jesus.
- The Bible is not meant to make us better people – it is meant to make us new people.
- The Bible is not meant to help us – it is meant to enable us to experience, know, see, and hear God in a living relationship.
The problem is that all of these things that I say that the Bible is not … all of these uses and applications of the Bible … well, it actually is! This is exactly why applying the Bible is so dangerous – it’s an idea that has just enough good in it to make it attractive to Christians.
I’m glad that the Bible reveals information about God, man, and the world. The Bible can help us become a better person – Proverbs is full of great advice! The Bible has tons of rules to guide us to greater satisfaction and fulfillment. But that’s not the point of the Bible.
If we read the Bible as a history book, or as a source of information (even information about God), or as an authority, or as a rule book, or as a manual for good living, then we’re missing the point. The point is not that the Bible reveals information – the point is that the Bible reveals God himself. I don’t need insight when I read the Bible – I need inspiration – the kind that comes only from the Spirit of God – the same kind that the Biblical authors experienced when they wrote it.
As an aside, this perspective makes all the difference between a good, well-prepared sermon or Bible study … and one that is inspired. Has the preacher or teacher been gripped by the Word of God so that he cannot escape it? Has the Word of God captured him so that everywhere he looks, he sees it – and in everything he does, he experiences it? Is the Word of God a part of him? When he opens the Word, does he see himself? If so, then he won’t be preaching or teaching to an audience – he will be expressing his greatest passion, which flows from his very identity, and his message will flow not from his words but from his life. This is rare, like a breath of fresh air in smog-covered blight, or like a flower blooming in the crack of a sidewalk in the slums. This type of preacher or teacher is on a different wavelength than 99% of the church and therefore is unlikely to be ordained or assigned to a leadership position.
Don’t apply the Bible. Don’t even think about applying it! The Living Word told us that unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we have no part in him. Similarly, we need to ingest the written Word rather than just dallying on the fringes of faith. Don’t allow the good things about the Bible to rob you of what is best. Don’t allow the information in the Bible to overshadow the Person who is behind it all.
For more thoughts along these lines, read “Eat this Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading,” by Eugene Peterson, 2006.
I have a couple bones to pick on this one.
ReplyDelete1. I cannot take the bullet items at face value because then they would be false. The Bible does contain info and the law of God are rules to live by. What I discern your intent to be is what effect these have on our psychology. However, Bible history is one of the main means by which God (YHWH) is revealed to us. Without divine revelation, we would only know about God what we could infer from the creation, which is something, but not sufficient if the goal is to have a deeper knowledge of God. I suspect that what lies at the heart of the problem you are addressing is that the Bible is simply not inspiring or motivating to most Evangelical American Christians (EACs) nowadays. Actually, these bullet items sound too much like marketing hype. For instance, are "new" people "better" people? Presumably so.
2. If pew-sitters are motivated to plunge deeper into the study of scripture, largely on a historical path while noting the significance of that history, then they will be drawn closer to the God who reveals himself in history. To know who we are today, we must do this, for the present is but the sum of the past. We can only know who we are as God's people by knowing our own history. Rabbi Greg Hershberg demonstrates this well enough. When the talk about "knowing God" in a more impacting, Kierkegardian, existential way and examine what the substance of it is, it leads us to the foundation of Christian belief in history. History then begins to "come alive", with real people to whom we can relate, including especially God himself.
Today, the Christian church is dying. It doesn't understand the times in which we live and cannot relate them to the guidance and insightfulness of scripture. It lives in what I call Bible World - a different dualistic reality to the "real world". The way to break through this impasse - well, I wrote The Grand Deception to start the activity of rediscovering and recovering a fuller grasp on reality as the people of God. The first step is for EACs to tear up their membership cards in the Five Foolish Virgins Society and start thinking about what God has already said to us. Then God will become more "real" to us within our own minds.
Now look what you did, Dan; you "got me going"!
1. The bullet items are mostly a matter of perspective. In fact, the sentence right after the bullet points admits that the bullet points are false. You can think of the bullet points as marketing hype - I wouldn't say that, but I can see how they could be viewed that way. It's like "fighting extremes with extremes," which I think we see in the Bible quite a bit. Consider OT statements like, "You do not delight in sacrifice" (Ps. 51:16) followed three verses later with the phrase "You will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous." Verse 16, like my bullet points, are hyperbole - over-statements for the sake of getting a point across.
Delete2. Amen!
3. "Tear up their membership cards in the Five Foolish Virgins Society" - well stated - I like it. We have our different perspectives, but I think we're on the same page, Dennis. Thanks again for your comments. I have more fellowship with you through these blog posts than I do on Sunday mornings at church.
I suspected some hyperbole but didn't want to presume it. Anyone else who might have taken your bullet-point intros at face value would be relieved by your comments on them.
DeleteMuslims have, in my observation, a stronger identity in Islam than EACs often have in Christ. As a consequence, American Muslims who attend, for instance, state-ed school-board meetings in Michigan, will speak out in a way that Christians can appreciate but were too timid to say themselves. Why? Because the "world-system" - the conflicting worldview as expressed in the American idiom, has neutralized much of American Christianity while Muslims have not be ill-effected (yet, at least) in the same way.
I suspect that Muslims are still respected, admired, and given a lot of latitude by the liberal elites that run our educational systems because Muslims are a minority. Christians are not respected because they're the "patriarchal majority oppressors." It's a matter of perception. This state of affairs will continue for a long time to come. When and if Muslims begin to be beaten down by popular culture like Christians, they too will become more timid.
DeleteMuslims culturally - at least from the Middle East more so than from Indonesia - are also more apt to be outspoken and supportive of their beliefs when in an apostate environment. The Adventists believe (or at least have posited the notion) that God's purpose for Islam is to bring his judgement on apostate Christianity. That fits the history, at least. Perhaps American Christians will see Muslims in America as allies in bringing judgement on American apostasy.
DeleteI do not know where those suitcase-sized nuclear bombs are that the Muslims might have acquired from the USSR when it crumbled, but according to General Alexander Lebed, Alexei Yablokov, and Stanislav Lunev some of them are unaccounted for.
nuclearweaponarchive.org/News/Lebedbomb.html
Like soda pop, nukes lose their fizz (finite uranium half-life) over time, and I suspect that those bombs, which could easily be smuggled into major U.S. cities, would need to be set off soon if they are to be used at all.
Well said, Dan, and a very refreshing perspective about identity. "I am the blind man." I especially like the paragraph prior to the bullets... "We tend to treat the Bible as something that we can study and understand, and so... How arrogant to think that the Bible supports our ideas or lifestyle when instead we should be humbly surrendering to it."
ReplyDeleteThanks Dave - I've been convicted that I've spent my whole life using the Bible as a sledgehammer to try to win debates or pound my theological opponents into submission. Oops .... I'm thankful that God is forgiving and that he's gracious enough to continue to patiently teach me.
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