When The Bible Becomes An Idol

More and more Christian schools are having their students start their day by reciting a Bible pledge along with the Pledge of Allegiance and the Pledge to the Christian flag (this merits a whole other blog post!). Kids are being asked to put their hands on their hearts and to declare their faithfulness to the Good Book. In essence, they are promising "Thou shalt have no other book before the Bible."

Swearing our loyalty to the Bible, really?

Does anyone think it is possible for the Bible to become an idol? Can one believe in the Bible (the physical object) at the expense of or over against whom the Bible reveals? I believe that history has proven time and time again that this can and does happen.

Too many Christians, believe, think and act like having a Bible, memorizing it and opening it up now and again to quote a chapter or verse here or there is what it means to obey and follow God. They believe "in" the Bible but don't follow or wrestle with whom the Bible points to--the One who fulfills the Bible--the Word of God!

Once again, I declare that I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. I believe the Bible is the definitive and authoritative revelation of who God is, who we are and of what God has done, is doing and will do in this world. I believe the Bible but I don't believe "in" the Bible. 

I believe in Jesus Christ. I worship Jesus and not the Bible. Now, you might be wondering, "Okay, what informs your belief in Jesus Christ, if you don't believe in the Bible?" (Thank you by the way to my good friend Blake for asking this very question!)

What informs my belief in Jesus is the Bible but Jesus also informs how I read and understand the Bible. After all, Jesus is the Word of God. I believe in the Word of God rather than "in" the word of God. Put another way, I think you can believe in the Bible without having any belief in Jesus Christ. When you believe in Jesus Christ though, I think you look and read the Bible differently. You no longer believe "in" the Bible, you believe in the One to whom the Bible points to. 

Ask yourself what it meant for the Jews and early Christians to believe in the Bible. They didn't have a Bible in the sense that we do. For the first few centuries of the Church, neither did those believers either. What did they believe in?

Not a book they could hold or cherry pick verses from. They believed in the word of God transmitted orally--from person to person--from public readings--by word of mouth. They believed in the story--what the word of God revealed and pointed to--the whole word and not just the parts that they liked or fit their agenda.

More importantly, what informed their telling and hearing of the story was a shared, communal agreement as to the what the story was about. What defined the essential themes and message of the story came to be defined as "the rule of faith". The "rule of faith" was the boundary for telling the story rightly--for not leaving anything important out or adding things along the way.

This rubric was also the lens by which to interpret and understand the story. After all, how you tell the story informs how others hear and receive it. As the story was passed on, as it was written down and as certain details were challenged to the point of changing the story, creeds were established.

Creeds restate the essentials of the story--the non-negotiables. Creeds confess the heart of the story. Each person can interpret and live the story in different ways but these features of the story apply to all believers. If you don't believe these things, you're telling a different story. You are worshipping a different God.

Ironically, the early confessions of the Church don't mention mode of baptism, women in ministry, pre or post tribulation, what happens during communion, or a host if other things that we continue to fight about in the Church. This is not to say that these differences and disagreements are unimportant. What it does suggest is that these differences and disagreements are not essential to the story.

It is interesting that our early creeds don't profess to believe "in" the Bible either. For me, this implies that there is some room to agree to disagree in how we read and interpret our Bibles. This is encouraging at a time when so many want to use their Bibles as a weapon--their interpretation of the Bible as a litmus test of whether someone is saved.

Now you might argue, "Well, Jesus read the Scriptures! He believed in the Bible!" Yes, Jesud did read the Scriptures. He even quoted from the Bible. But then again, so did the religious leaders of his day who eventually condemned Him to death, so did the devil who tempted Him in the wilderness, so did Saul (Paul) who persecuted Christ's Body--the Church, after Pentecost. In response, Jesus didn't say, "Believe in your Bible." He did say, "Believe in me!"

Since Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures, I believe in Him. I can't help but think back to Charles Sheldon's book, "In His Steps". You know the heart of the book if you haven't even read it because that book birthed a slogan that has become the number #1 wristband that Christians everywhere love to wear: "WWJD?" Notice the letters don't stand for "What Does The Bible Say?" They stand for "What Would Jesus Do?" Believing in the Bible is not enough. We need to echo the ancient creeds in believing the contents of the Bible--the story--and the centerpiece of that story--is Jesus Christ.

Another way of putting this, is to say that in the history of the Church it has always been the Word and the Spirit together--not separate from each other or over and against each other--but complementary to and inseperable from each other. I believe in the Word and the Spirit together. That's what makes the Bible more than just a book. That's what makes the Bible the living word of God. 

Comments

[fairmack]

PRETRIB RAPTURE – HIDDEN FACTS !

How can the “rapture” be “imminent”? Acts 3:21 says that Jesus “must” stay in heaven (He is now there with the Father) “until the times of restitution of all things” which includes, says Scofield, “the restoration of the theocracy under David’s Son” which obviously can’t begin before or during Antichrist’s reign. Since Jesus must personally participate in the rapture, and since He can’t even leave heaven before the tribulation ends, the rapture therefore cannot take place before the end of the trib! Paul explains the “times and the seasons” (I Thess. 5:1) of the catching up (I Thess. 4:17) as the “day of the Lord” (5:2) which FOLLOWS the posttrib sun/moon darkening (Matt. 24:29; Acts 2:20) WHEN “sudden destruction” (5:3) of the wicked occurs! (If the wicked are destroyed before or during the trib, who would be left alive to serve the Antichrist?) Paul also ties the change-into-immortality “rapture” (I Cor. 15:52) to the posttrib end of “death” (15:54). (Will death be ended before or during the trib? Of course not! And vs. 54 is also tied to Isa. 25:8 which is Israel's posttrib resurrection!) If anyone wonders how long pretrib rapturism has been taught, he or she can Google “Pretrib Rapture Diehards.” Many are unaware that before 1830 all Christians had always viewed I Thess. 4’s “catching up” as an integral part of the final second coming to earth. In 1830 it was stretched forward and turned into a separate coming of Christ. To further strengthen their novel view, which the mass of evangelical scholars rejected throughout the 1800s, pretrib teachers in the early 1900s began to stretch forward the “day of the Lord” (what Darby and Scofield never dared to do) and hook it up with their already-stretched-forward “rapture.” Many leading evangelical scholars still weren’t convinced of pretrib, so pretrib teachers then began teaching that the “falling away” of II Thess. 2:3 is really a pretrib rapture (the same as saying that the “rapture” in 2:3 must happen before the “rapture” ["gathering"] in 2:1 can happen – the height of desperation!). Other Google articles throwing light on long-covered-up facts about the 180-year-old pretrib rapture view include “Famous Rapture Watchers,” “X-Raying Margaret,” "Edward Irving is Unnerving," “Thomas Ice (Bloopers),” “Wily Jeffrey,” “The Rapture Index (Mad Theology),” “America’s Pretrib Rapture Traffickers,” “Roots of (Warlike) Christian Zionism,” “Scholars Weigh My Research,” “Pretrib Hypocrisy,” "Pretrib Rapture Secrecy," and “Deceiving and Being Deceived” – all by the author of the bestselling book “The Rapture Plot” which is available at Armageddon Books online. Just my two cents’ worth.

[Jeff Johnson]

Hi Chris,
Your last couple of blogs have made me very uncomfortable, because you are encouraging me to make sure that my faith is honest, but if my faith is honest then I won't be ignorant of all the things that I am currently ignorant of, and if ignorance is bliss and if bliss is sort of like being in heaven then...well, don’t I want to be in heaven?

But seriously, I have no doubt that God’s Grace is greater than our own fallibility in how we each, as individuals, may have mistaken or perhaps even heretical misunderstandings of the Scriptures and how it relates to our lives. That said, I believe it should be the goal of every follower of Christ to preserve the integrity of the Scriptures so as to ensure their relevance to the world around us. By integrity, I don’t mean that we should declare every dotted “i” and crossed “t” in the Bible is correct, because that is clearly not the case. I do mean that when the “best” scholarship informs our understanding of Scripture (whether it be interpretation, understanding of the errors that have occurred in transmission or translation (Hebrew into Greek), etc.), then we should take that into account in an honest and open fashion. I find that many Christians (including myself from time to time) are nervous about wading into these potentially murky waters. However, if our faith is not honest, the very people that we are trying to point to Jesus will pick up on it often before we will. I know that asking these sorts of questions can be a potential mine field, it can get uncomfortable, and I would suggest it is the role of the pastor to help us deal with these questions honestly. I also firmly believe that our faith will be stronger and more relevant when it comes to sharing it with the rest of the world.

I will give a case and point of what I believe is an ongoing dishonest and intellectual catastrophe within (what I believe to be) a minor segment of the Church, but who sometimes sounds more like a vocal majority. Specifically, this is with regards to those with a fundamentalist interpretation of the Scriptures, and specifically with regards to the “debate” over the interpretation over Genesis 1. I would argue that most of us may not have a fundamentalist understanding of Scripture, but due to the ferocity of this debate many are still uncomfortable with at least some of the implications of a nonliteral interpretation of Genesis 1, and how those implications could inform our understanding of the rest of the Bible (e.g., if it isn’t “historically” true, then what do we need to cherry pick, and what other parts of the Bible fall by the wayside…of course, the answer is none, what will really need the cherry picking is our understanding of the intent of parts of the Bible). I believe that a prime example of biblical idolatry is that which is proclaimed by the young earth creationist movement, which slays intellectual curiousity and scientific reason with malicious and disingenuous propaganda regarding our origins, all in the name of Christ. My impression is that there is an anti-intellectual/anti-reason movement gaining fervor across the United States, and my fear and inclination is that some of its origin may stem from the impact that this movement has had on at least individual churches. One can imagine a variety of potential deleterious consequences of such a movement, if it does indeed exist.

The issue needs to be put to rest, so let it be clearly stated: humans did not just evolve from monkeys, we evolved from the very first primordial life forms that existed on the planet (with primates as our ancestors). Without going into great detail, to deny this supports invokes the logical fallacy that our chemical, physical, and biological understanding of the world (which we see and use in the technology/medicine/etc. that is all around us); all areas of investigation that fundamentally work in all regards as a process for understanding the world in which we live, suddenly come to a screeching halt when it comes to explaining the origins of our universe and of life on earth. When, in fact, volumes of independent lines of evidence do support evolution, and evolution very clearly unifies our chemical, physical, and biological scientific understanding of life in this world and the universe in which God has given us. Of course, it does nothing to give us a theological reason for our existence, it cannot nor need not do this.

I have seen on multiple occasions how an individual’s faith in Christ has been destroyed on this one issue alone once they realized the level of deceit that is undertaken to promote our 6 day origin story as historical (and scientific) fact. If our children our raised with a faith that is partially built upon subterfuge (of any kind, not just this issue), it is at risk of destruction or being reduced to irrelevance (to the world around us) once they encounter the intellectual enlightenment that comes especially during the college years. Raising our children honestly in God’s Word can spare them a lot of grief down the road, and maybe even their life.

Genesis 1 has zero scientific value, and we need to get over it. Our theological understanding of our origins by Genesis remains intact. I believe that if we are dishonest about the Scriptures God has given us, it will come at the Church’s peril. I am not willing to say that it will be alright or that this issue is in God’s hands, because it appears to me that, at least in the world I live in, He has left us with a lot of this responsibility (otherwise He need not have given us the Holy Spirit). I would implore the Body of Christ, as Chris suggests, to not idolize the Bible. Idols are statues, they are stagnant and they go nowhere and do nothing. The Bible is the Living Word of God who is larger than the box we try to fit squeeze Him into. In fact, the reality is that God will not go in that box even if our faith does. If Jesus Christ really died and rose again, then we do not need to fear an honest exploration outside of our boxes, because that is where the people who need to hear the Good News are waiting, and that is where the Community of Faith needs to live.

[Thechristianleader.blogspot.com]

P.S. the creeds ARE wonderful, but they are also timely, pointed at a specific heresy. So, if baptism isn't in them it doesn't mean that they aren't important nor does it mean they are less important (although I would think they are less important) than what was covered in the creed. It just means they aren't covered in the creed.

[Thechristianleader.blogspot.com]

"That's what makes the Bible more than just a book. That's what makes the Bible the living word of God. "

How can you write such a good article (although, I think the spot about the creeds was over stated) after just completing your article _I don't believe in the Bible_ where you state that the bible has errors?

I agreed with almost everything you wrote here, but yet in your last blog you seemed to be emphasizing the bible as a tool for "conversation" with God, yet after claiming the bible has errors, I'm not sure the bible can really speak for God at that point. How can we take this bible (without cherry-picking, or taking those points out that we disagree with) and know for sure that this is the word of God while still needing to negotiate the minefield of inaccuracies?

I agree, it IS ridiculous to see how some Christians are almost worshiping the bible (I just got back from working with Muslims, I've seen this kind of thing there too). But the answer is not to strip those Christians of their assurance of the word of God, rather it is to help them understand that this book is not holy in and of itself, rather it is holy because of what it describes and to whom it points.

Respectfully,

Zack Skrip