Books aren’t everything

What is so confusing about Christianity is that it cannot just be studied to be understood. Certainly there is a great tradition of scholarship associated with this faith of ours but it is so much more than that.

Christianity is a way of life. As we experience it, we come to understand it.

What is it that compelled Mother Teresa into the slums of Calcutta or Albert Schweitzer to spend most of his life in the jungle of Lambarene or you into a sanctuary on a Sunday morning? It certainly isn’t just a book of nice little sayings. It isn’t listening to a litany of moralistic proverbs.

It is a way of life that can only be understood from the inside. Only from the inside because the paradox of Christian living seems too absurd to be true.

In giving we receive.

In losing we win.

In dying we rise to new life.

How often people will say to me that they don’t think they are much of a Christian because they don’t know the Bible or they still have to read the words of the creed or they stumble over the ancient liturgy.

The mark of a Christian is not how much you understand but how you follow.

Being a good person, loving caring, compassionate, non-judgmental, honorable and humble is exactly what God asks us to be – Micah 6:8:

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

No books can do that, not even the Bible

Testimony

I believe in the Bible but it is a belief that is centered not in words but in The Word and The Word is a word of life and love, forgiveness and joy. I do not accept that every comma and period was placed on paper by a divine finger. There are a multitude of passages that either never did or at least no longer apply to our own spiritual journeys. They are passages that speak to other times and cultures and they are of no assistance on my religious pilgrimage.I judge the Bible by Christ and not Christ by the Bible. Where there is life, love, hope, joy, forgiveness and grace there is The Word and it is holy. Where there is hatred, exclusion, conditional clauses and legalizing limits there are only words and there is nothing holy about them.

 

I often compare my understanding of the Bible to my appreciation of a fine work of art. Do I believe in the Bible? Yes, of course I do but it is in a sense not unlike my belief that Van Gogh’s “A Starry Night” is more than just a canvas with splashes of cobalt blue, magenta and yellow #7 paint.

 

To limit our understanding of the Holy Bible to a literal and blind acceptance of scribbles on a page is to fail to see the beauty, the majesty, the wonder, the life. It is to fail to see what really makes this book holy.

 

Throughout the Bible God draws people to Him by encouragement, love and positive affirmation. The punishments presented for disobedience are nothing but natural consequences of willfully violating God’s direction. It is sad when people use the Bible to beat others into submission, threaten them and exclude them based on their limited interpretation of what the Bible says. Interpretations based in violence, fear, hatred and self-righteousness.

 

How can these people honestly believe that anyone will want to follow a God who are presented to them through the “testimony” of hateful, judgmental, hateful and self-righteous people? Perhaps they don’t see their own hatred, fear and self-righteousness?

 

Perhaps we all need to start every day humbly asking God to soften our step and our voices, and help us honestly trying to emulate God?
H