The Authority and Inspiration 03-02-16

But when it’s all said and done, there must be something deeper and more significant about the story line of the Bible than choice of words and grammatical structures. One well-known pastor writes, “Many of the people who come to the church I serve don’t believe in the Bible when they come. They’re skeptical. I don’t tell them they have to believe it. I just try to present it. I try to be honest about the parts that confuse me. I try to focus on the parts that are abundantly clear and profitable (and I am quite certain that my lifetime will end before I reach the last of those things!). And over time, I notice that people come to share my respect for and trust in the Bible as a needed, dependable, enlightening, unique, challenging, fascinating resource for spiritual seekers … a book with God’s fingerprints all over it and his breath behind the words.”(McLaren 2003, p. 244)

What’s the authority behind the Bible? How could stories written by frail and faulty human beings about God and God’s dealing with the human family have authority? Maybe there’s something to be said for integrity and authenticity, being real with the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the successes and the failures, the faithfulnesses and betrayals, the ups and the downs. One thing is for sure, the Bible doesn’t gloss over much. It doesn’t whitewash the stories. It tells it all in its attempts to describe how God intersects with humanity, how the Creator attempts to reconcile with a rebellious family, how the Redeemer tirelessly and passionately and tenaciously works to bring about trust and hope and restoration to what God has always wanted for the world. Isn’t there a certain amount of authority that comes from this kind of transparency and honesty?

The Bible is a “book with God’s fingerprints all over it and his breath behind the words.” It has been one of the most revered and beloved and used resources for spiritual seekers down through the ages. It is a source of comfort and hope, of challenge and rebuke, of encouragement and support, a mirror for growth, a light to show the path. It refuses to let you sit still. It prods you to move forward, to take action, to engage dialogue, and to launch into adventure. It continually challenges your picture of God and your experience of life. And in the end, maybe all that is enough to find in it true authority and inspiration.

Interpreting the Story (part III 03-01-16)

Understand the Literary Context: In order to understand a specific statement or verse in the Bible, it is essential to see all of the other Bible verses related to that topic as well as to understand the reason the particular statement is included in the document or “book” of the Bible in which you are reading. “One of the most important aspects of the human side of the Bible is that to communicate His Word to all human conditions, God chose to use almost every available kind of cultural communication: narrative history, genealogies, chronicles, laws of all kinds, poetry of all kinds, proverbs, prophetic oracles, riddles, drama, biographical sketches, parables, letters, sermons, and apocalypses. To interpret properly the ‘then and there’ of the biblical texts, one must not only know some general rules that apply to all the words of the Bible, but one needs to learn the special rules that apply to each of these literary forms (genres). And the way God communicates His Word to us in the ‘here and now’ will often differ from one form to another. For example, we need to know how a psalm, a form that was often addressed to God, functions as God’s Word to us, and how psalms differ from ‘laws,’ which were often addressed to people in cultural situations no longer in existence. How do such ‘laws’ speak to us, and how do they differ from the moral ‘laws’ which are always valid in all circumstances?” (Fee and Stuart, p. 20) These are the questions Bible scholars have puzzled over for centuries and they are essential to interpreting Scripture.

Again, the way you get all the right kind of information about the texts and stories of Scripture is by utilizing the standard tools of Bible study: a good Bible dictionary (that defines the many different words in the Bible), a good Bible handbook (that gives much of the cultural context of the stories), a good translation of the Bible, and good Bible commentaries (verse-by-verse descriptions of the best scholarship relating to each Bible passage).

And there’s also no substitute for the discipline of simply asking good questions as you read the Bible. Two kinds of questions: who wrote this, when was it written, where was it written, what kind of document is it, and why was it written? These questions are attempting to get at the original meaning and setting. Literary context refers to the principle that words only have meaning in sentences and sentences only have meaning in relation to preceding and following sentences and paragraphs. How does the material before and after explain this statement? A good question to ask as your read the Bible: What’s the point? Careful observation is crucial; the choice and meaning of words, the grammatical relationships in sentences, why this particular description. What was the author trying to communicate?

Interpreting the Story (part II 02-29-16)

Understand the Historic Context: In order to understand the words we read in the Bible we must understand the history surrounding the particular document we are reading. This is the way Bible scholars describe this task: “In speaking through real persons, in a variety of circumstances, over a 1500-year period, God’s Word was expressed in the vocabulary and through patterns of those persons and conditioned by the culture of those times and circumstances. That is to say, God’s Word to us was first of all his Word to them. If they were going to hear it, it could only have come through events and in language they could have understood.” We need to know what the text said to its original readers before we can possibly understand what it means today. “Thus the task of interpreting involves the student/reader at two levels. First, one has to hear the Word they heard; he or she must try to understand what was said to them back then and there. Second, one must learn to hear that same Word in the here and now.“ (Fee and Stuart, p. 18; emphasis added)

How does someone who is not an archaeologist or historian get this context? There are a number of standard reference books which provide this information. They are called commentaries, Bible encyclopedias and Bible dictionaries. There are also versions of the Bible that include brief notes about this kind of information as footnotes and introductions to the Bible documents. These are called “helps” and often have been authored by well-known evangelists, preachers and scholars.

Interpreting the Story (part I 02-26-16)

So how should one go about reading this story? How do we understand the Bible? Is it possible to know if what we understand is the correct understanding? Why is it that so many people come up with so many different interpretations of Scripture? And everyone thinks they’re right.

Think about the contrasting ways people approach the Bible. Some say, just read it, believe it, and obey it. Nothing else matters beyond that. Whatever it says, that’s God’s truth. This is a very literal approach and many people engage in it. Reading the Bible is very simple to them. No interpretation required other than reading the words and applying them.

The problem with this approach is that it ignores the fact when there is a document, such as the Bible, the reader has to interpret those words. Interpretation cannot be ignored. Human language requires interpretation. This is particularly true when the reader does not know the language in which the Bible was written—which is about 99 percent of readers—and must read a translation. So the issue isn’t whether or not scripture should be interpreted but what the quality of the interpretation is; good or bad.

The point is, when we sit down to read the Bible, we invariably bring to those texts all that we are, with all our experiences, culture, and prior biases toward various words and ideas. We can’t read in a vacuum. So that reality raises questions about whether or not we are reading and understanding what the authors intended to convey. The most strictly literal approach is not good enough to get to that heart.

Because God chose to speak His word through human words in history, every book and story recorded in the Bible has historical particularity and context. In other words, each document is conditioned by the language, time, and culture in which it was originally written (and in some cases also by the oral history it had before it was written down). This necessitates the need to interpret as accurately as possible. We can’t simply read the words and think that we will understand the points of the story unless we engage with the integrity of all that was brought to that story in the first place.

The Story Line of the Bible (part IX 02-26-16)

Still Unfolding Today: If Jesus was right, the one true God wasn’t just for the descendants of Abraham anymore. Belief in, relationship with, and experience of the one true God was to permeate the whole world, like yeast slowly rising in bread, or like seeds subtly planted in the soil. The time had come to open the doors to everyone. There would be a thousand problems, Jesus said. It would be messy, with plenty of mistakes and no shortage of opposition. It would take time, a long time. But they should not give up until every person hears the “good news” that God loves them all, wants to welcome them into His family, and wants to involve them in the ongoing spiritual story of the human race.

The New Testament concludes with the story of the spread of that message and the creation of faith communities all over the Mediterranean world. And that story continues to unfold today.

The Story Line of the Bible (part VII 02-24-16)

Surprises: Three days later, reports began to spread that the grave was empty, and that Jesus had risen from the dead. At first, not one of the disciples believed these rumors, but in the coming days, one by one and in larger groups, they claimed to have encounters with the risen Jesus. Then occurred perhaps the strangest event of all.

Remember, for two thousand years the descendants of Abraham had guarded their faith, kept their distinctiveness, monitored their faithfulness, resisted all pressures to intermarry or adopt the religious practices of other nations or in any way allow their unique commitment to monotheism to be polluted or diluted. Isolation, separation, distinction were at the core of their being. And now, the disciples report, Jesus is telling them to bring the good news of this new kingdom to the entire world, to every nation, every religion, every culture, every language. Further, they came to understand that Jesus’ death had not been a colossal accident, but rather was part of God’s plan: in some mysterious way, as Jesus suffered and died, he was absorbing and paying for the wrongs of the whole human race. Now, the whole human race could receive forgiveness and reconciliation to God: it would be as simple as asking, seeking, and entering an open door.

The Story Line of the Bible (part VI 02-23-16)

Upside Down: Everything about this kingdom was upside down. In it, the poor and meek were the winners, not the rich and aggressive. In it, some prostitutes and tax collectors were far ahead of many priest and Pharisees. Children and women were given unheard-of status, and God was brought nearer than ever before: Jesus said that in this new era of the kingdom of God, God could be known as a loving, caring, compassionate father and that even rebellious runaways would be warmly welcomed home.

The crowds flocked to hear this message. Reports of miraculous healings were commonplace, although Jesus himself tried to keep them quiet. Naturally, the religious establishment felt threatened, and so they conspired with the Roman authorities to have Jesus arrested and killed. Their plot succeeded through the help of an insider, one of Jesus’ twelve prime students (called disciples or followers), and one Friday afternoon, Jesus was crucified and buried.