A New Pair of Glasses

Today I was under much scrutiny. And to my surprise, I held up.

What I mean was that in the past, I would have been shaking in my cliche boots. But today I was able to stand up (literally) and actually be grateful for the feedback on my project presentation and my writing. The feedback was definitely food for thought, and I’ll be chewing on it for a while.

With the presentation out of the way, I can get back to writing my paper on the genres of the Bible. I want to take a moment to praise and thank God that I have the freedom to talk about not only the Bible but about Christ in this liberal arts English class. I presented the Bible as a story to the class, one that can either be believed or chalked up to fiction. Of course I wholeheartedly believe that it is very real.

I didn’t see it until now, but this will be (and has been) a semester full of growth for me. I have not often been acquainted with differing positions on the Bible and Christianity, except for a few comment debates on Facebook, and being exposed to other perspectives is challenging in a very good way.

One question that has been coming up for me is:  Why do I believe the Bible? What may be a more accurate question is, How do I believe the Bible? I could say that it is the Holy Spirit in me that gives me faith, and I would be biblically correct. But how do you explain something like that to someone who doesn’t believe in the Holy Spirit? How do you explain what led you to believe the Bible in practical terms?

I guess you could start by saying that all of the narrative in the Bible can be backed up by historical evidence. But that’s not really my primary reason for believing the Bible. I think my primary reason for believing the Bible is that I’ve allowed it to envelop me and change my worldview. When the Bible gets inside of you and you allow it to change your perspective, by reading it, reflecting on it, and meditating on it, as I’ve done and been encouraged to do by my pastors and Christian friends, it’s easy to believe what the Bible says about life.

It’s simply (but not easily) taking off one pair of glasses and putting on a different pair (the Bible’s). Thus you begin to see all of life colored by the lenses you have on. The Bible’s glasses are not rose-colored, however. As a believer of the Bible, I can say that it “tells it like it is.” That’s where believing the Bible comes into play. Whatever pair of glasses you choose to wear depends on which pair of glasses you think will improve your vision the most. Obviously, Christians believe that the Bible is the best pair of glasses they could wear.

And glasses must be put on every day. When you go to sleep at night, you have to take them off. When you take a shower or go swimming, you also take them off. Just like with dirty clothes that have to be taken off and clean clothes that have to be put on anew, so are glasses. That’s why studying the Bible is important if you actually want to believe in it. It’s easy to choose not to believe in something if you don’t understand it. But I think that those who understand the Bible can’t help but to believe it. I know that is an incredibly bold statement, and I purposely write it.

If you don’t put something under scrutiny, you’ll never understand it. So questions about the Bible’s accuracy are not bad. But it would be better for them to lead you to actually taking the time to study the Bible and not take for granted what others say about it. This is my “read the Bible” plug.

And the reason I was able to stand under scrutiny today was because of, in short, the Bible. The Bible has taught me about the living God who loves me and takes care of me. It has taught me that nothing can stand between me and his love for me. The Bible has taught me that Christ fights for me and wins every time. Some of those things can be gleaned from reading one passage of the Bible, but this is where studying it is important. A lot of things that the Bible says are implicit. It takes some digging. And the most valuable nuggets are found deeper and deeper below the surface.

So if you’ve read the Bible before and thought that “it wasn’t for you,” maybe you weren’t putting on the glasses required to read it. I would encourage you to try again, this time putting on the prescribed glasses of Christ crucified for every kind of sinner. Of course, if you don’t believe that you’re a sinner, that might be a problem. But if you continue to read the Bible, even if you don’t believe it, you’ll at least understand it. And understanding can open up the door to belief. However, the Bible teaches that belief in God is the beginning of understanding.

You can look at it as a feedback loop. The more you believe, the more you understand, and the more you understand, the more you will believe. The Bible can certainly bear your scrutiny. So what are you waiting for?

On Reading the Bible

Yesterday we played a psychoanalysis game in my English class. On Tuesday, we had written in response to different prompts about being in a forest and coming across objects and obstacles and what we would do with them. Yesterday, the professor talked to us about analyzing what we had written as a text and pulling out symbols and imagery. We examined it partially through Freud’s psychosexual stages. Being a psychology major, I’ve known all about these. It was her “authoritative claim” that in each prompt of the forest game, we could get a glimpse into how we dealt with life and into our subconscious. As the game went on, I couldn’t help but laughing to myself. The professor was absolutely serious about this, saying that we could make all kinds of associations from simple words. What I noticed, though, was that you can make something say whatever you want it to say. I didn’t see the point of this, but this game did remind me about how I often see the Bible read (and have been guilty of reading it myself).

I’ve noticed a difference between reading “into” the Bible and taking “out” of it. Reading into the Bible is a dangerous practice because the Bible is meant to speak to you, but if you were to have a conversation with someone, they would be pretty annoyed with you if everything they said became an association to your own experience or belief or idea. True listening is hearing what the other person has to say to you and not interrupting with your own story. This is especially true of royalty. If you had the privilege of visiting the throne room of the queen of England and hearing what she had to say, would you dare constantly interrupt her with your own thoughts and opinions? No. That would be ridiculous and in the old days likely to get your head cut off.

 

In the same way, the Bible’s main author (who inspired all the human writers) wants to speak to you through it. It is tragic to read the Bible and not listen to what it says but to make it say what you want it to say. That’s like being in a conversation with someone and not even listening to them because you already assume you know what they’re going to say. Have you ever had anyone do that to you? Well, I have, and it’s crushing. They only respond to what they think you said but not to what you actually said. That leads to all kinds of miscommunication. When we read the Bible and make it say what we want it to say, we’re not even listening to the king who wrote it, who is trying to communicate with us. We assume we already know what he’s saying and then respond to what we want it to say.

 

I think a large part of the reason why we read our own experiences and beliefs into the Bible like this (instead of letting the Bible shape our experiences and beliefs) is because in literature that’s what you do. In literature you read into the text and make as many associations as you can, whether the writer of that text “consciously” meant them or not (often referred to as close reading). But the Bible should not be read that way. The Bible is not less than but so much more than literature. It is life, and it is the one book in existence that has a mind of its own. If you’re going to read the Bible, keep that in mind.