"Taking the Bible Seriously"
By Dr. Mickey Anders
May
17, 2009
Text: Hebrews 4:12 "Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart."
I have had friends who proudly told me that they
were not
Disciples of Christ, like me. In fact,
they would not belong to any mainline denomination.
Instead, they attended a
"Bible-believing church."
I always found it odd that they say that phrase in such a way that it makes me uncomfortable. There is a tone in the phrase that seems to indicate that my denomination, my church, for some reason, does not believe the Bible; only they do. But I still find it a strange idea.
We use the Bible too. We have Bible studies all the time. The Bible is central in our Sunday School classes. Every sermon preached in this church uses the Bible. There is a text associated with every sermon, and verses from the Bible are used throughout every sermon. We are a people of the Book. We love the Bible; we study the Bible; we memorize the Bible. The Bible is our guide for faith and practice. It is the Word of God to us. I think if we took a survey among our congregation, almost every person would say they believe the Bible. I really can't imagine any of you saying you didn't believe the Bible. But somehow we are not considered by some a "Bible-believing church." Isn't that odd?
When we look closely at the beliefs of our friends
in
"Bible-believing churches," we find that they are
absolutely convinced that they are right
about every possible interpretation of the Bible. They
seem to believe that if I don't agree
with them in every detail of interpretation, in their political
persuasions, in
their positions on controversial moral issues, and even in their
Presidential
candidates, then clearly, I don't believe the Bible.
I find an incredible arrogance in that
position.
One teenage girl said to her very dogmatic pastor, "I wish I was as sure about anything as you are about everything."
I think it is highly unfair to suggest that only
people who
agree with them really believe the Bible.
In fact, it sounds to me a lot like the tactics that Joseph
McCarthy
used in the 1950s to accuse public figures of being secret Communists. They say, "You believe the Bible like
us, or you don't believe the Bible at all." It
was this kind of chicanery that stirred up
Alexander Campbell to decry the party spirit among Christians.
I want to suggest to you today that we are as much a Bible-believing church as any other church. We take the Bible very seriously, although we do not have the arrogance to claim that only our interpretations are right. Disciples approach the Bible with a measure of humility. This simply means that Disciples are a people who take the Bible seriously without beating you over the head with it.
I want to suggest to you a couple of images that
have been
very helpful to me in crafting my own understanding of the authority of
the
Bible. I discovered these images in a
book entitled, Disciples and the Bible
by Eugene Boring.
Boring suggests that we look to the world of modern nuclear energy to understand the power of the Bible. Atomic power is thought of as the ultimate power of the universe. Atomic fission and fusion can release incredible amounts of energy, which can be used for constructive purposes or destructive purposes. Sometimes atomic energy is used to produce atomic bombs; sometimes it is used to produce electricity.
The byproduct of a nuclear event is the
radioactivity, which
preserves some of the original energy in the rocks and soil. In the vicinity of a nuclear event, there
will be some rocks, those closer to "ground zero," that still mediate
the original burst of energy. As one
goes further from "ground zero," radiation diminishes.
One can't tell which rocks are charged with
radiation merely by looking at them, but only by a long-term
observation of their
effects, or by using a Geiger counter.
We can think of the Bible in terms of the Christ-event, which was the original release of primal energy, and left in its wake a number of documents. They all look like human documents, as indeed they are. Yet some of them bear the effects of the original release of energy in a way that can mediate the healing power of God.
In the course of a few generations, the church was
able to
recognize which of the documents do indeed mediate the original energy
in
sufficient force to be healing. The
church, of course, has no objective Geiger counter to which it can
point as
proof that it has the right documents.
Its only Geiger counter is its own experience of the Holy Spirit.
It is the Holy Spirit which makes the Bible dynamic as well as static. It has about it a great measure of stability, but it also has adaptability.
The book of Hebrews begins with these words, "Long
ago
God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets,
but in
these last days he has spoken to us by a Son…"
Both the Old and New Testaments were written
long ago.
The Bible is static in the sense that the canon is closed. The books in our Bible were agreed upon by the fourth century, and nothing has been added since.
The Bible is static, but it is also dynamic. The canon is closed, but God is still
speaking. God's word cannot be frozen in
the first century. We must allow for the
freedom of the Spirit to continue to speak to us today.
The Spirit has a fresh message for every
generation, but the static Bible can serve as a check and balance
against
radical ideas.
In one chapter in Matthew, chapter 5, Jesus indicates that the Bible is both static and dynamic. In verse 18, he says, "Not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass away." Then in verses 38 and following, he says, "You have heard that it was said... But I say to you..."
The Parthenon in
By contrast, there is the
Our text for today said, "Indeed, the word of God
is
living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it
divides
soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts
and
intentions of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12).
The Parthenon is static and crumbling. The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest is dynamic and alive. The Bible contains the best of the static text and the dynamic reinterpretation by the Holy Spirit. I love the ad campaign by the United Church of Christ, which says, "God is still speaking."
The second helpful image that Boring suggests is
that of a
family album. Most families have some
collection of documents: wedding photographs, snapshots of the kids,
drawings
that were once on the refrigerator door, newspaper clippings, school
report
cards, letters, stories; especially the letters and stories. They do not represent all that the family has
ever written, nor are they a conscious selection by specific criteria. They just were kept because they meant
something to the family, somehow expressed its identity and sense of
who it is
and how things are, and after a while there was a more-or-less firm
collection
of definitive family documents.
The New Testament is much more like such a collection than it is a "constitution," as Alexander Campbell suggested. The Bible is authoritative for us because it is this collection of documents from our own history to which we turn to learn who we are and what being a member of this family means.
This collection is analogous to the role of the
Bible in the
family of God. It did not get formed all
at once but came into being by a selective process over the course of
the
family's history. There was never an
official family council that decided which documents should be in and
which
out, but the collection simply grew spontaneously and after a while was
recognized
as "our story."
The collection has items and statements in it from the family's past history that may now be objectionable or embarrassing, items that we would now do differently, but we do not attempt to revise or censor the family story.
The documents are old, represent another time and
place, and
must be interpreted if they are to function in the present as vehicles
of the
family's story and commitments.
Especially, new and younger members need an explanation for
problematic
pictures and statements in the family's earlier story.
The Bible is prescriptive and descriptive. In the prescriptive sections, we find instructions on how we should live. The Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the last chapters of all of Paul's writings are prescriptive. But much of the Bible is descriptive in the sense that it merely describes what happened, or what the people at that particular time thought about God. Not all of Scripture is a mandate. Much of it consists of ancient stories that were passed from generation to generation.
Some of those stories are hard for us to
understand. Some of them mirror the
destructive and
detestable in life. When we were
studying the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we had to repeatedly
say that
the Bible was describing what happened, but not recommending that we do
the
same. Sometimes the Bible just describes
what happened and how people saw it.
We have the responsibility to discern scripture
for
ourselves. And the Bible itself
authorizes this right of discernment. In
the Temptations, Satan himself quoted the Bible, choosing a verse from
a psalm
to assure Jesus that God would protect him if he threw himself down
from the
pinnacle of the
This is our Book! It
is a vital treasure reflecting those cosmic moments when God became
flesh! It is our family album, with the
good and the
bad, with the positive advice and the negative warnings, and it points
the way
of salvation. It is the living, active Word of God.
A prison chaplain once gave an inmate a pocket New Testament. Some time later the prisoner said, "I took it because the pages were good for rolling cigarettes. I smoked Matthew, Mark and Luke, but when I got to John 3:16, I couldn't smoke it no more."
"Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart."