Day 38

A few months ago I threw out boxes full of books, mostly prescribed religious books I bought while studying. Over time I realised that these books are just gathering dust, their content and the content of my life are miles apart. To read it is to stand on one planet and listen to an alien on the other planet babbling on about the meaning of life on your planet.

It’s funny how quickly the world changes from one generation to the other.

I can imagine my grandkids reading this blog, thinking: “What was grandpa up to going on and on about God, Jesus, seasons, junk, boxes, life and related stuff. No wonder grandma looks so old...”

That’s the tricky thing with an ancient text like the Bible. Things did change. The world is not the same anymore. We’ve evolved, although sometimes I am not sure whether it was for the better. Over time the subtleties, the humour, the meaning, the language, the symbols and the metaphors faded into the massive changes the world made since then.

Between us and the text is a gap, so big, wide and deep that very few find the relevancy for their own lives to really try and cross it.

But still the Text had an original intention. A power behind it that changed and influenced a specific community in a specific time and place.

To discover this first intention(s) of the Text, we need to get on the other side.

Why did Paul write to Timothy? What did Luke hope for in telling the story of Jesus to his friend? What did Mark wished would happen to his friends after they read his version of the life, death and (re)life of Jesus? What was the longing behind the dreams of John on the island Patmos?

Behind these stories lie a prayer, a wish, a longing and a hopeful dream. An idea of the Way life can be, waiting to become a flesh and bone reality.

The idea is to keep on reading, keep on listening and keep on bridging the gap until the intention of the story happens with us.

If this does not take place in the lives of the readers of the Text, then it’s just another old book, gathering dust.

Day 36

I had a professor who used to say: "We don’t read the Bible, the Bible reads us."

I always wondered what the heck that means.

Let me attempt an explanation:

I think what my old proffie meant was that the stories of the Bible play out in the lives of ordinary people all over the world.

The Spirit inspired truths that carry with them the potential to shape lives, change paths and cultivate good moral characters, need to be lived.

For most of us, that’s like third base.

Modern Religion got stuck at first.

The church I grew up in taught me that a clever Christian is a good Christian. The end in mind of the faith journey is to know everything there is to know about Christianity. The goal is knowledge that we can test, measure and evaluate.

Obviously, it is good to know what the Bible says and to have that knowledge we need to read it again and again and again, because humans tend to forget.

But the “knowledge” found in the Ancient Hebrew Faith that inspired and shaped the theology of Jesus, is way different from our modern understanding of “knowing stuff”.

The Hebrew word for knowledge is called “Yada”. Sometimes they used it to describe the knowledge about some or other subject. Other times they used it to when people really got to know each other, like friends. Most of the times “yada” was used to describe the intimate relationship between God and humans. But then there’s also the odd now and then when they used it to describe sex between two lovers.

Huh?

Sex?

Bet I got your attention now...

Relax.

For the Old Believers to have knowledge of something were always a spiritual and intimate affair. It concerned your brain and your heart, your spirit, body and your soul.

To know the Bible in a modernistic sense will only score big in the eyes of the Sunday school teacher, but to let the stories, told by the ancient prophets, poets, dreamers and writers shape your soul, lift your heart and move your feet in the direction of The Big Story Guru, until your whole life is so enmeshed in his massive story that it becomes difficult to see where the stories of the Bible end and where your story starts, that’s the kind of knowledge “Yada” is all about.

Happy reading.

Day 35

People look for the truth in the stories of the Bible with the question: “Did it happen?” Take the classic cases of Noah and the Ark; and Jonah and the whale. There are books and websites dedicated to the search for explanations on how this could happen so that the stories can be true. Or take the big debate between Creation and Evolution, behind the struggle of some Christians to embrace the realities behind theories of modern day science lies this way of thinking: If it did not happen like the Bible say it did, then it’s not the Truth anymore.

So we need to find proof of Eden, or the ark, or the virgin birth and especially the empty tomb. We need evidence like Thomas, otherwise Faith will always be wishful thinking.

But the Truth of the Gospel evolved in a different paradigm, a time way before modern man and his endless experiments on the mysteries of Life. Before the written word, before Galileo, before Darwin, before Microsoft and Wikipedia, this Truth grew out of a community of storytellers. On camelback, through desert plains, over rocky mountains, around camp fires, beside Babylon rivers, under Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman and Barbaric oppression, underneath the rubble of a destroyed Temple and city walls and among families, friends, lovers and former enemies the Truth became flesh and bone.

The Truth of the Jesus Way is not to be found in checks and balances, in scientific proof and in a modern understanding of facts and figures.

The truthfulness of the stories of Eden, Noah and Jonah lies not with the question whether it happened or not, but rather in the reality that it happens... today.

Everywhere.

Whenever I pass the buck on to someone else without taking ownership of my own stuff-ups, the story of Adam happens in me.

Whenever I am part of change and hope, the story of Noah happens in me.

Whenever I sulk when Mercy takes the place of Judgment, the story of Jonah happens in me.

And whenever I allow God to let the Kingdom happen in me, the story of a young girl called Mary, happens in me.

Unlike the X-files, the truth of the Bible is not out there waiting to be proven right of wrong.

No, the Truth is a Way waiting to be walked. It is found in the everyday, ordinary lives of human beings living a life of Faith, Hope and Love before the Face of the Ultimate Truthful One.

Day 34

Last night I asked the question whether we are missing the point when it comes to the role the Bible plays in the lives of (doubtful) believers. Let’s try to unpack this question.

Are we missing the point?

Yes...

Yes we are missing the point when the Bible is seen as the one and only truth about God. That only those who read and believe it can know God. It is as if the Bible becomes God and God becomes the Bible.

Yes we are missing the point when we read it as if the context and paradigm gaps between us and the text don’t apply.

Yes we are missing the point when the Bible is used as a sword in human hands to divide, hurt, offend and separate.

Yes we are missing the point when words written to groups of people for the benefit and growth of a whole community, is turned into a book called: “My Bible” where I, the individual, or we a specific group of people can claim exclusive rights to the Truth(s) we get out of it.

Yes we are missing the point when reading the Bible becomes the goal of our faith journey. When we think that this is the only thing God asks of us: To read a very old book.

Yes we are missing the point when we constantly feel guilty about not reading it.

And of course no...

No we are not missing the point when the Bible is part of an integrated spiritual journey defined by an honest longing to know God. On this journey the Bible is a conversation friend, a space where old stories come to life in the lives of those who are reading it. Together with other voices the Bible can help shape our own story towards the Big Story we call God.

How this “shaping of stories” takes place, I am going to need a few more posts to figure out. Stay tuned...

Day 33

Jesus once said that we should first seek the kingdom of God and the rest will follow. Through the centuries the friends of Jesus did this by listening intently to the silent whispers of the Spirit of Jesus in the stories of the ancient prophets, poets and writers; in the witnesses of the men and women at the empty tomb; in the way all of creation fits together; in the lives of the dead and the living and in the sacred spaces all over the place.

For the first 5000 thousand years the community of God-seekers did not have a Bible. The stories, prophecies, poems, songs, letters and sermons that most Christians today read as God’s untouchable Word, were back then, also understood as Moses’ sermons, Israel’s history, David’s prayers, Solomon’s wisdom, Jeremiah’s hope, Amos’ convictions and Daniel’s dreams. They believed that these written words helped them to understand themselves and God better. For them the words were dead unless they read it, engaged with it, discussed it, confronted it, believed it and lived it.

A few generations after Jesus, some of them started to see that these ancient texts helped them to see the Truth behind the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. With the help of Paul, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Peter and a few others they came to see how this historical event(s) were connected with all of creation, how this ordinary human being was “God-with-us” and how this new understanding changed their lives in this life and the next.

It was only 300 and something years after Jesus that the community of Jesus-followers thought it handy to give more structure to the literature they read as a community. It took another 1200 years before a part of the community felt compelled to make this ancient Library of God-stories available in ordinary, common and easy-to-read language for everyone who wants to take part in the movement of Jesus.

So if the Bible, like we know it today, is only 500 years old, while the movement of Jesus has been around for way longer than that, can it then be that modern Christianity is missing the point when it comes to the Ancient Word(s) of Faith?

Something to the think about as another week in the lives of doubtful believers unfolds.