"Killing" the Bible
Continuing back to my discussion on the Bible.
McLaren writes that the Bible can be "killed" by the way in which you
approach the Bible and how one reads it. He writes, "You can sanitize the
text of all evocative language, paradox, multiple perspectives, and
interesting, three-dimensional people to end up with cute little morals,
simple two-dimensional systems, and flat, boring prose that reads like a
legal code or assembly instructions. As a result, the Bible itself begins to
vaporize, to disappear, leaving the desired residue of systematic theology,
which is all you ever wanted anyways." Could it be that our modern mindset
have corrupted our thinking so much that we may need to retreat somewhat in
how we read scripture? Could we have created an individual that tries to
interpret scripture without the aid of the community or even the Holy
Spirit? Should we begin to read the Bible a story, a family story, that we
are apart of. It calls us to become part of the story, the story of a God
who wants us to become part of the story, complete with our many failures.
I find it interesting that the story has a great character called the
church. I found out that the church from the greek means, "the sent ones"
but is that what the church of today is... Maybe this is a whole other
topic...so I'll move on.
Just one example of the above...I remember hearing a preacher talk about
suffering in our lives and using the passage about "sharing in the
sufferings of Christ" and "becoming one with Christ...even death on a cross"
(sorry about the lose quotes) While I thought the message on dealing with
suffering was great, but it always made me feel uneasy on how the passage
was used. When Paul talks about sharing in the sufferings of Christ (I
believe its Phil 3) he is also talking about how everything on earth is
counted as rubbish. I dunno, maybe I am out to lunch here. Another example
that comes to mind is when people talk about Song of Solomon as all about
an analogy of Christ's love for the church. Just a few thoughts here...
Please feel free to correct me if I am messed up and comment please...
