Missing the Point: Reading the Bible is Not for Sissies! (1)
Ch.1: Bible
Reading is Not for Sissies
“A strange new world within the Bible”[1]
Missing the Point?
Most us have been taught to treat
the Bible as an aid for living well, better, in our world, to making our world better
for others, for knowing and worshiping God truly. We believe God wants to make
a difference in our lives, and, after that, heaven. That’s what the whole
business of religion, faith, Christianity, Jesus, cross, resurrection, in
short, the whole apparatus of Christian faith is all about.
This has been the agenda of
Christian religion in the West for quite some time. Its forms and emphases have
changed. Some forms have debated whether other forms were genuinely Christian
or not. Wars have been fought over and with the aid of this religion. And it’s
all been about this world - being better, making it better, and pleasing God in
doing so.
And it’s all been a giant exercise
in missing the point! Whether it’s been conservative and evangelical
“soul-winning” or social gospel humanitarianism, or times when Christianity
stood on the top of the social and political heap and got to rule the world or
provided models of good, decent, bourgeois respectability or led crusades
against various social evils, as good, necessary, and salutary as much of that
was and is, it has also been a giant exercise in missing the point.
And
That Point Is?
Let me ask you a question, dear
reader. Don’t think me impudent or sophistical for posing such a simple query.
It really does get to the point we’ve missed. Here it is:
Does
Jesus intend, care about, or have any interest in making a difference in your
life and mine?
I believe the answer is “NO”! I do
not believe Jesus has any desire, none at all, not even one nanosecond of
interest in doing that. The rest of this study is my explanation why. It’s also
why we’ve so massively and regularly missed the point of what the triune God is
up to in and with us and his creation.
First, however, a bit of Bible
study. Let’s look at John’s account of Jesus’ resurrection. Each gospel writer
fashions their account of Jesus’ mission in their own way in accord with their
particular abilities and interests. John, in my opinion, is the most gifted
story-teller and theologian of the canonical four and those skills are no
better on display than in his story of Jesus’ resurrection.
Mary Magdalene goes to Jesus’ tomb
on the morn of the “first day of the week” (v.1; repeated for emphasis in v.19)
In the darkness before the dawn of that “first day” we can hear likely
deliberate echoes of the Genesis creation story where “darkness covered the face of the
deep,” before “spirit of God” began bringing order and light to a new world.[2]
Something new is afoot here! New creation, in fact.
The day crucifixion was Friday, the
sixth day of the creation week. The day of humanity’s creation, the
image-bearers of God, created to reflect his character, will, and way
throughout the new creation. Those image-bearers failed – we failed – but on
that Friday of Jesus’ crucifixion – Good Friday! – Pilate issues a highly
ironic declaration, “Behold, the man” (19:5). Meant by Pilate as a condemnation
in John’s symbolism the word is an affirmation that in this man, this one about
to be murdered, God’s image is on full display. Jesus has borne and healed and
restored the divine image for all of us! When he dies with the words “It is
finished (or completed)” (19:30) it is to this image-bearing, image-healing
work that he refers. His work of new creation has been achieved!
Mary goes to Jesus’ tomb this dawn
of new creation. And where does she meet him? In a garden, mistaking him for a
gardener. Can the allusion be any clearer? Adam and Eve placed in a garden by
God to “till and keep” it (Gen.2:15); Jesus, the new humanity, with Mary in a
garden? If this is not a picture of new
creation, I don’t know what is![3]
Nor is there a better picture of
why we miss the point of Christian faith. For this scene is the resurrection
message the church is to hear and believe and take to the world! Yet we barely
(if at all) get it ourselves much less take it to the world.
“A
Strange New World within the Bible”
Karl Barth, widely acknowledged to
be the greatest theologian of the 20th century, learned this lesson
in a particularly painful way. He was educated in the best of the European
tradition of liberal theology in the late 19th century, which was
the best theology on offer at the time. For it,
“Christianity
was a religion of inner morality – of good people, in their local
congregations, who sought nothing more than personal transformation. They
respected the state and didn’t cause trouble. It was, to use the language
familiar today, religion as a private matter, equally suspicious of outward
forms of ritualism and popular superstition. Cultured and rational, it stayed
out of party politics and set its mind on higher things . . . Christianity was
fundamentally a religion of individual righteousness.”[4]
Barth began his career
as a pastor in Switzerland under this theology. Then war broke out between Britain and Germany (World War1)
and the Kaiser gave a speech to the assembled members of the Reichstag which
was in part written by Adolf Harnack, the most esteemed of German theologians
and one of Barth’s teachers. This speech presented the case for the rightness
of Germany entering this conflict and encouraging the support of the German
people for it. An open letter by 93 German intellectuals followed a couple of
months later to the same end. Signed by many luminaries, including Harnack, it
declared the war a sacred mission for the survival for a superior culture.
Karl Barth
was shattered. His world fell apart at his feet. He realized the theology he
was nurtured and educated in had missed the point! “Germany had sacralised the culture-state complex, and by so
doing, had come to worship something other than God: the military-industrial
complex. Something Barth called Woden, the Nordic God of war.”[5]
He had to
begin again from scratch if he was going to be faithful to God. So he did what
he had never before done. He turned to the Bible as if he had never read it before
and asked what is there. Here’s his own description of what he found and
experienced.
“But
in spite of all this danger of making embarrassing discoveries in ourselves, we
must yet trust ourselves to ask our question. Moreover, we must trust ourselves
to reach eagerly for an answer which is really much too large for us, for which
we really are not yet ready, and of which we do not seem worthy, since it is a
fruit which our own longing, striving, and inner labor have not planted. What
this fruit, this answer, is, is suggested by the title of my address: within the
Bible there is a strange, new world, the world of God. This answer is the same
as that which came to the first martyr, Stephen: Behold, I see the heavens
opened and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. Neither by the
earnestness of our belief nor by the depth and richness of our experience have
we deserved the right to this answer. What I shall have to say about it will be
only a small and unsatisfying part of it. We must openly confess that we are
reaching far beyond ourselves. But that is just the point: if we wish to come
to grips with the contents of the Bible, we must dare to reach far beyond
ourselves. The Book admits of nothing less. For, besides giving to every one of
us what he rightly deserves —to one, much, to another, something, to a third,
nothing—it leaves us no rest whatever, if we are in earnest, once with our
shortsighted eyes and awkward fingers we have found the answer in it that we deserve.
Such an answer is something but, as we soon realize, not everything. It may
satisfy us for a few years, but we simply cannot be content with it forever.
Ere long the Bible says to us, in a manner candid and friendly enough, with
regard to the ‘versions’ we make of it: ‘These may be you, but they are not I!
They may perhaps suit you, meeting the demands of your thought and temperament,
of your era and your 'circle,' of your religious or philosophical theories. You
wanted to be mirrored in me, and now you have really found in me your own
reflection. But now I bid you come seek me, as well. Seek what is here.’ It is
the Bible itself, it is the straight inexorable logic of its on-march which
drives us out beyond ourselves and invites us, without regard to our worthiness
or unworthiness, to reach for the last highest answer, in which all is said that
can be said, although we can hardly understand and only stammeringly express
it. And that answer is: A new world, the world of God. There is a spirit in the
Bible that allows us to stop awhile and play among secondary things as is our
wont — but presently it begins to press us on; and however we may object that
we are only weak, imperfect, and most average folk, it presses us on to the
primary fact, whether we will or no. There is a river in the Bible that carries
us away, once we have entrusted our destiny to it—away from ourselves to the
sea. The Holy Scriptures will interpret themselves in spite of all our human
limitations, ‘We need only dare to follow this drive, this spirit, this river,
to grow out beyond ourselves toward the highest answer. This daring is faith;
and we read the Bible rightly, not when we do so with false modesty, restraint,
and attempted sobriety, for these are passive qualities, but when we read it in
faith. And the invitation to dare and to reach toward the highest, even though we
do not deserve it, is the expression of grace in the Bible: the Bible unfolds
to us as we are met, guided, drawn on, and made to grow by the grace of God.”[6]
I’ve cited this rhetorically and
conceptually powerful passage[7]
because it is historically significant and, in my judgment, remains no less
important and urgent for the church today. I’ve tried to draw out here Barth’s
insights which are critical for us to consider.
The Bible is the living voice of God which
draws us into relation with God. This is perilous because this living voice is
not in our control and may, indeed, will at some point, turn on us to reveal
who and what we are.
In relation to this God, everything is of
grace. We will be drawn into a reality “much too large for us, for which we
really are not yet ready, and of which we do not seem worthy.”
That reality is that “within the Bible
there is a strange, new world, the world of God” into which the Spirit draws us
into from beyond our comfort zones.
Faith is the willingness, the
perseverance, the guts to be drawn beyond or comfort zones into this strange,
new world within the Bible.
Finally, faith must heed the ultimate
reason for reading the Bible – to meet God! “But now I bid you come seek me as
well. Seek what is there.”
If we can summon the courage to
seek God in the Bible in this way, we will see at some point why we have missed
the point and to some degree will always miss least some of the point of the
Bible. That’s why we need each other. To help us see what we might have missed
and fill in the some of the blanks in our own understanding.
Not
for Sissies
And courage it will take as Barth
indicated. For in missing the point of the biblical story, that is, in missing
God, in missing the strange, new world within the Bible, we miss the drama, the
pathos, and yes, the danger this strange, new world entails for those who
enter. In Dante’s Divine Comedy the words “abandon hope all ye who enter
here” is inscribed above the entrance to hell. Barth might well say that
“Discover hope all ye who enter here” is written over the gates into the
Bible’s strange new world. Hope only emerges when God’s people are in distress,
oppressed, troubled, or out of their depth. And in God’s strange, new world
distress, oppression, trouble, and being thrown into the deep end of the pool
are regular fare for its inhabitants.
And that’s because God’s new world
is embedded within the “real” world (so-called) where we are taught to live by
ourselves, for ourselves, and in our own wisdom and power. In opposition to the
will and ways of God this “real” world contests and opposes everything God’s
strange, new world is about. In short, to enter into and participate in this
world is to sign on for a fight! And where we join this struggle, there we
discover the gift of hope. And that it makes it possible even for sissies like
me to be a part of God’s strange, new world.
To read the Bible under the
conditions of the “real” world (so-called) is to miss the point of what God is
up to and wants from us. It is to be a sissy because by doing so we settle for
what Dietrich Bonhoeffer perceptively called “cheap grace” (what I am calling
“missing the point”). One writer describes it as a mash-up of illusion,
self-deception, and acceptance of the way things are.[8]
Reading the Bible under the conditions
of the “real” world removes the reader from the conditions and reality of God’s
new world. It costs them nothing. Calls on them for nothing. Cheapens faith to
religion. Reduces the spiritual to the inner and immaterial. Diminishes the
physical and material (including the body) and the material conditions of life
to a provisional and inferior status to be transcended and left behind as we go
to heaven to enjoy our eternal reward.
As Barth said God allows us to
enjoy such illusory, self-deceptive, and status quo affirming readings for a
while, if we are serious readers seeking faithfulness, or forever, perhaps, if
we are not. But what makes the Bible, the Bible, God’s presence in its words
and stories, will sooner or later call us on beyond such immature and
self-serving readings to ones that thrill us beyond measure and terrify us
beyond imagining. And then we will not miss the point. Novelist Franz Kafka
knew this kind of book:
“I think
we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book
we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading
for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy
precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the
kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us
like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more
than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a
suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my
belief.”[9]
Mine too. And, I think, Barth’s as well.
And
That Point Is? (2)
And that point we American
Christians have largely missed is . . . well, just about everything. The only
way I can think to communicate this adequately is to go step by step, assuming
nothing, and attempt to reconstruct a more faithful reading of the Bible than
the one that has manifestly deconstructed and discredited itself in these days
since the election of Donald Trump.
We’ve already started with these
reflections on the Bible. Where do we go from here?
Ch.1: We have missed the point of God (Eschatology)
Ch.2: We have missed the point of creation (Protology)
Ch.3: We have missed the point of Israel
(Covenant)
Ch.4: We have missed the point of Jesus
Messiah (Christology)
Ch.5: We have missed the point of the Spirit
and the Church (Pneumatology and Ecclesiology)
Ch.6: We have missed the point of the End
(Consummation)
This basic scheme (with
corresponding theological terminology for any nerds reading this) is the
biblical story. All this overlaps and interlocks in myriad of complex ways that
exceed our space and my ability to trace. So we’ll follow this plan to get at
the main points of what we are missing and have missed in Christianity: we’ll
start at the end of the Bible!
This violates the rule of reading
for mystery stories, I know. It spoils the fun to read the end first. Then you
know how it all works out and it makes reading the earlier material
anti-climactic. However, since we have so badly missed the point of the Bible
so far, we cannot afford to remain ignorant of that point and it is found at
the end of the biblical story, in the last two chapters in fact, in which John
pictures for us the creation as God intended it and has achieved it through the
long story of his relation to the world in creation, Israel, Messiah, Spirit,
and church.
What makes these chapters so important is that they are two
of only four chapters in the Bible not affected by sin! The other two are
Gen.1-2, the creation stories. And it to those we turn next. Biblical scholar
Gary Anderson summarizes this rationale:
“Everything needs a purpose or a goal, even a
good story. And somewhat paradoxically
to understand how a good story begins we need to have some knowledge of the
whole comes to closure. Because the end
configures the beginning, there is a sense in which we can say the end comes
first. This idea has some rather
dramatic consequences for how Jews and Christians have interpreted Genesis. They do not so much read it as it stands as
re-read it in light of its proper end or goal.”[10]
If you’re a mystery fan and are
worried or bummed out by reading the end first, I can offer this consolation.
Mystery remains even when we know the point of the story! In the Bible a
mystery is not a puzzle we can finally figure out with enough ingenuity, clues,
and time. It’s a reality human beings would never infer or deduce not matter
how much of the above they had. A mystery is something God must tell us if we
are to know it at all. So to learn the end of this story first will not lessen
the drama or impact of them starting at the beginning and reading forward. For
we still won’t know enough about this reality to guess or predict how it
unfolds. That remains a mystery (in the biblical sense) as well. So stating at
the end gets us headed in the right direction but guarantees nothing about how
well we follow the unfolding of this mystery or not. That involves a host of
other factors Barth has already alerted us to.
So off to the End we go, eschatology
as theologians call it.
[1] Karl Barth, “The Strange New World within the
Bible,” https://jochenteuffel.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/barth-the-strange-new-world-within-the-bible.pdf.
[2]
Remember, John begins his gospel with an allusion
to Gen.1:1: “In the beginning was the Word.”
[3] I depend here on N. T. Wright, John for Everyone, Part Two (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 117-118.
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2015/dec/31/karl-barth-religion-stench-war-germany-first-world-war.
[5] Ibid.
[6] https://jochenteuffel.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/barth-the-strange-new-world-within-the-bible.pdf.
[7] N. T. Wright offers his own much briefer but still powerful image in Paul: A Biography: “Perhaps this is what ‘holy scripture’ really is—not a calm, serene list of truths to be learned or commands to be obeyed, but a jagged book that forces you to grow up in your thinking as you grapple with it.” https://www.scribd.com/read/370917156/Paul-A-Biography#y_search-menu_410654, 174.
[8] Michael Hardin, Knowing God?: Consumer Christianity
and the Gospel of Jesus (Cascade Books). Kindle Loc.99-100).
[9] Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors (Schocken, 1990), 15-16.
[10]
Gary A. Anderson, The Genesis of
Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and
Christian Imagination. Westminster
John Knox Press, 2002, 1.
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