The Bible Says What??

People of many faiths have a holy book which they hold with very high regard. Christianity is no different with our scripture. We look on the holy words that have been passed down orally and in print from generation to generation and we marvel at the awe they inspire in us. We stand wordless in front of the text that is shaping and molding us and giving us life. They are the words of the very living God.



Yet, have you ever read something you wished wasn't there? Have you ever stumbled across a string of words that has tied itself around your heart and pulled? Have you ever paged through a story and then asked God why on earth that is in our tradition? Maybe you have read something and then found yourself reading it again, almost in disbelief, "the Bible says What?" Maybe this has never happened to you. But, I am not one of those people. This has happened to me on more than one occasion. The biblical witness is complex with tension and hard truths and things that seem to contradict one another. How do we deal with these things? How do we reconcile our deepest of urges with a text that we hold so highly?



I think of one passage in particular. In the gospel of John Jesus is talking to his disciples and says to them, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Now for a lot of people this passage is one of great comfort and joy. Jesus is the way that we connect with God. It is the way in which we have union with the creator. But consider yourself someone with no Christian memory. Consider yourself someone that might not believe. How then, do you see this passage? There is tension. There is conflict. There is hard truth. Scripture is full of these examples. It is full of the mystery and tension and complexity that we cannot even begin to fathom.



The comfort that I have when reading scripture is that it always leaves me in awe. I cannot finish reading a passage without considering all that scripture is. All that it has become, all that it communicates to me about who God is. Maybe we should take time to encourage the tension, to live in the complex, to dwell in awe. Maybe we will never have all the "right answers." Maybe we are not supposed to have all the right answers because that is not what is expected of us. We are not called by God to have the right answers, to have the correct postulations of God. Maybe we are just supposed to take scripture and love it. To see it for what it is, a testament of how much God loves the world and how much God is doing to reconcile the world to God's self. Maybe we just have to be faithful. Because after all, that is all theology is--faith seeking understanding. May we be faithful to God as we move forward with scripture, never searching for a right answer but a deeper relationship with our Creator.



Grace and Peace