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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Why should I read my Bible?
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GeorgeNZ
Apprentice
# 18672
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Posted
This is certainly not intended as a frivolous or smart arse question. I know the NT story reasonably well through admittedly piecemeal (at times) contact as an individual and in church settings. Even read a few books and done some study from time to time.
However sitting here quietly of an afternoon reading Mark's gospel, as usual I find myself questioning why I do so. I seem to generate for myself more questions than answers which frustrates me and because I think subconsciously if not consciously I equate the word to the Word and I find myself almost moving further apart than closer.
I want to know some peace and joy when I read my bible, even if I just stick to the Gospels. I am not looking for life lessons, I understand that it's not all literal, that while a whole each author had an agenda. I even accept that God had a hand in its writing and the canon as we have it.
I feel I am missing something and missing out on something and the problem is with me not the Bible.
I hope this is the right Board, and would appreciate any incite others may have. I don't intend giving up but it is a struggle sometimes but reading about the bible is easier than reading it, but I sense not as nourishing.
Posts: 40 | From: A land so far away | Registered: Sep 2016
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
Hi George
I can identify with a lot of your post. I think for a long time I would have thought of myself as having a bit of an antipathy to the Bible, despite having been immersed in it from a young age and knowing a lot of the stories. I remember it particularly annoying me when I was reading _about_ the Bible (thanks for that handy distinction) and the author put lots of close references in (Acts 98 v346-348) to justify (Mark 72 v1) their point (Zurphanizra 6 v3 - 8 v56).
BUT - after a long time, once I was middle aged (I'm 45 now) and firmly grumpy, and once I stopped thinking about sin as something naughty someone was accusing me of and started thinking about it as a f*cking great shitty sea in which all of us are, most of the time, immersed - then when people started trying to 'do one on me' in a religious context I started to think 'that's bollocks, what about the story where xxx goes to yyy and zzz...' And when folks not in a religious context started trying to do one on me, I thought much the same - though of course I didn't expect _them_ to think much of the bible which I suddenly found a lot more powerful and authoritative than I had previously given it credit for.
FWIW I find bible study with other people easier than on my own, and when I am on my own, I only look at fairly short bits. If you don't mind mainly sticking to the gospels (what I do) then www.sacredspace.ie might be useful to you, once you get into it. The readings are those from the lectionary, which seems a good (arbitrary) way of avoiding a personally-selected-arbitrary-ego-diet of readings.
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
FWIW I find bible study with other people easier than on my own, and when I am on my own, I only look at fairly short bits. .... The readings are those from the lectionary, which seems a good (arbitrary) way of avoiding a personally-selected-arbitrary-ego-diet of readings.
Interesting as that's the same for me. At the moment I am finding reading the Bible quite hard as it is all too easy just to skim across the passages and say, "I've done it; so what?" And, again, I have the problem of a lifetime's immersion in the Bible which often means that the story or passage I'm reading may well be pretty familiar.
Over the last few weeks the Lectionary passages too have been firmly stuck in Jeremiah which, to be honest, is not a bundle of delights nor immediately relevant to modern life. (Yes, I know there are Psalms and NT passages as well). I do read them prayerfully but God does not seem to be "speaking" to me directly as he seemed to do years ago - but perhaps that's not what I should be looking for anyway.
Things are a bit different when I'm preparing a sermon as I then have to start digging and thinking and analysing in order to have something to bring to the people. I don't tend to do that for myself, perhaps because it brings personal devotion into the realm of "work" - or possibly through sheer laziness!
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
FWIW I find bible study with other people easier than on my own, and when I am on my own...
I have been in various Bible study groups for many years, and for me they are invaluable. Other people can see things I can't, and vice versa. I am not thinking of a group with a leader who instructs everyone on the meaning of each passage. I am talking about a free sharing of understandings.
Such a group must have some people who are familiar with the Bible. Otherwise the group will flounder or mire themselves down in such difficult books as Judges and Revelation.
I have been lucky in finding such groups. I don't have any suggestions about how to find one, but I wish you luck.
Moo
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See you later, alligator.
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
<snip>Things are a bit different when I'm preparing a sermon as I then have to start digging and thinking and analysing in order to have something to bring to the people. I don't tend to do that for myself, perhaps because it brings personal devotion into the realm of "work" - or possibly through sheer laziness!
This! I should do this for myself - not just for my preaching. I should use the original language, or a couple of contrasting translations, look up cross references, look at a commentary - make myself dig into a text, not just skim the surface. The trouble is I'd have to give real time to it then, and abandon some romantic notions about it too.
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Mark, ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
I think the first thing that was helpful for me was to realize that my interest (or lack thereof) in the Bible was going to depend a great deal on my personal state at the time. During the "desert" phases of my life the Bible does feel very dry and boring. But that's not a sign of anything bad, either in me or in the Bible--it's just a reality of living as a human being and a Christian, who is inevitably going to go through dry spells as well as the opposite. So we persevere (or try to).
As for me, the older I get the more I realize that the stuff in the Bible I thought was a bit over the top is actually a helluva lot brighter than I am. Right now I'm finding that out in the area of what the Bible says about money, and the people who put it first. For the first time in my life I'm working in the financial industry and among people who have about ten times as much money as I do, and I'm feeling rather "stranger in a strange land" because of some of the automatic assumptions that underlie every conversation and project. Awesome people--I really like them--but boy, do I feel weird among them. (and now that I'm feeling the pull of the god of money, I'm finally starting to understand at a gut level so much of what Jesus said.)
Anyway--
I read the Bible mainly because it's like taking my vitamins or brushing my teeth. It's a small thing that does me good in the long term. It isn't this fantabulous emotional spiritual experience most of the time--that's a rare case indeed!--but it stores up stuff in my memory that the Holy Spirit can call back to my mind when I really need it, as in times of crisis or testing. If I didn't read it, that stuff just wouldn't be there in my memory banks. And that would suck.
My husband has this great fabulous story about how God used the memory of various boring Bible readings from his childhood to speak to him during his escape from jail and impending execution. Most of us are never going to have that dramatic an interaction with Scripture (please God) but there's still plenty of less dramatic occasions where it is helpful. I fled like a frightened child back to John 17 this week after a Really.Scary. discussion with a coworker about the average amount of money needed for retirement (which is uncomfortably close, even overdue, for Mr. L). God knows, hearing Jesus' voice in that chapter was a comfort, and particularly because he was praying for his people's future protection.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Double posting, sorry!
When I find myself skimming over stuff because "I've heard it all before," the easiest cure is for me to read it in a different translation. That jolts me out of the half-memorized daze and makes me pay proper attention again. It's even better if you can do it in a different language.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Lay Christians for 1500 years managed to be Christians without having their own personal copy of the Bible at home for personal perusal. (Indeed so have monks and nuns.) What is different about us that we need this, or even should feel obligated (as some say; no-one here (yet)) to do personal Bible study? There are tons of things that could be good for me, but I can't do them all. And there is definitely hazard in reading the Scriptures on one's own; most of the great heretical movements of the 19th century* started that way. So why should I undertake this time-consuming, unnecessary, and potentially dangerous activity? Asking for a friend.
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*actually of virtually every century.
[ 15. October 2016, 16:53: Message edited by: mousethief ]
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
You aren't just whistling Dixie. I have just finished reading a book about the Oneida community, and wow. I didn't think it was possible, to fall into that many heresies at one time AND persuade a couple hundred people that you were right and let you have sex with their wife.
[ 15. October 2016, 16:57: Message edited by: Brenda Clough ]
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Most people have survived without toothbrushes, vitamins, or even toilet paper as well. Bible reading is certainly not necessary for salvation, anymore than the above-mentioned are necessary for life. But do you really want to do without them?
If you do, go for it. I'm rather crap at flossing, myself.
But I'll not give up Bible reading myself. It does me good, and for me to reject it would be similar to me telling my son, "Of course there are all sorts of extra study helps available at school, but no need to use them. Just come home and gut it out by yourself."
Whatever.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
As for heresies, well, duh. If you make ANYTHING available to the masses you're going to find a handful of unbalanced idiots who make a horrible misuse of it. See: medical knowledge, Google, vaccinations, the right to vote...
Doesn't mean the vast majority shouldn't use those things.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Most people have survived without toothbrushes, vitamins, or even toilet paper as well. Bible reading is certainly not necessary for salvation, anymore than the above-mentioned are necessary for life. But do you really want to do without them?
Huh? What does this have to do with anything? I don't want to live without a toothbrush therefore I shouldn't want to live without a personal Bible? That's not even an argument let alone a bizarre one.
quote:
But I'll not give up Bible reading myself. It does me good, and for me to reject it would be similar to me telling my son, "Of course there are all sorts of extra study helps available at school, but no need to use them. Just come home and gut it out by yourself."
Whatever.
Actually you got that exactly backwards. It's trying to read the Bible and figure out God for yourself that is analogous to not using study helps.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
There's got to be a happy medium-- where you don't discount the centuries of discourse that our theological ancestors have provided-- why remake the wheel when people spent the forth century* arguing over various wheel designs? -- but you can also trust enough in the teachings you have been given to pick up a Bible on your own and see how it speaks to you.
Someone once said the Bible is a book that reads you. Sometimes a person has to approach the Bible in solitary contemplation to get there.
Having said that, I can't count how many times I have thought I have come up with some unique brilliant insight only to discover it was some wacky heresy that provoked a 3 day war in Hungary in 1089, or something.**
Having said that-- I'd still rather run the risk of occasionally tripping over heresy rather than feeling like I couldn't read the Bible on my own. The whole reason I escaped theological conservatism is that I was reading the Bible long before people started telling me what was in it.
* random century chosen
** again, made it up.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
It's quite fine to read science. It's quite another to have a science lab and do research, make discoveries etc. No-one seriously thinks people reading about the science can make scientific discoveries. You might learn something, or you might not understand, or you might misuse the knowledge. Is the bible so different?
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
It's quite fine to read science. It's quite another to have a science lab and do research, make discoveries etc. No-one seriously thinks people reading about the science can make scientific discoveries. You might learn something, or you might not understand, or you might misuse the knowledge. Is the bible so different?
Yes. Very few wars have been fought over varying interpretations of a science book.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Prester John
Shipmate
# 5502
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So why should I undertake this time-consuming, unnecessary, and potentially dangerous activity? Asking for a friend.
Below I've linked to a podcast from Ancient Faith ministries by Jeannie Constantiou that discusses Chrystostom's reasons why we should read the Scriptures at home. My summary won't do it justice but she provides a few reason such as the sacramental value in reading and the benefits of a greater knowledge of the Scriptures in combating heresy. As a forewarning, it is a little over 32 minutes long.
podcast
Posts: 884 | From: SF Bay Area | Registered: Feb 2004
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GeorgeNZ
Apprentice
# 18672
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Posted
Apart from the love, patience, and kindness I have been gifted by some Christians I don't know any other way to hear from God other than my bible. My problem is the discernment part as to whether I am hearing from God, my own self will/desire, or evil.
MT I guess this is why I understand your comments which I believe I have heard before that the Orthodox believe the Bible was given to the Church and therefore in some degree to take the Bible out of that context into the privacy of my own mind can be a dangerous thing (please correct me if I messed that up)
There is I feel (and maybe this is a western/protestant/evangelical - generalisations) a sense that we don't need anyone else to interpret the Bible, we have the 'right' to do it ourselves - no one is telling me what to do or believe. Just like we have Jesus as our High Priest so why should we place ourselves under anyone else's authority.
Lastly there is this sense of inadequacy (usually after listening to an NT Wiright podcast) that the Bible is so layered, there is so much going on within the cultural setting, with the original languages, with the agenda of the writers, with the intended recipients, that there is no 'simple' way to read it. That what I am reading is like a code and I have no idea what's really going on, especially if the scholars cant agree what it means. When that 'fear' comes over me I want to close the book and slide it away, as to hard if not even dangerous.
Kelly I have stumbled upon a new interpretation so many times, a new angle, that now I have learnt to slap myself upside the head and get a grip before I jump on the email and share it (sometimes). Yet I have heard so many times that I should read the Bible as if it is a letter or love letter from God to me!
Please excuse the 'stream of conciousness' style of writing, I do appreciate all your responses and they are very helpful in my internal dialogue.
Posts: 40 | From: A land so far away | Registered: Sep 2016
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Prester John:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So why should I undertake this time-consuming, unnecessary, and potentially dangerous activity? Asking for a friend.
Below I've linked to a podcast from Ancient Faith ministries by Jeannie Constantiou that discusses Chrystostom's reasons why we should read the Scriptures at home. My summary won't do it justice but she provides a few reason such as the sacramental value in reading and the benefits of a greater knowledge of the Scriptures in combating heresy. As a forewarning, it is a little over 32 minutes long.
podcast
Who in his day had access to scripture at home? Talk about preaching to the 1%.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by GeorgeNZ:
Kelly I have stumbled upon a new interpretation so many times, a new angle, that now I have learnt to slap myself upside the head and get a grip before I jump on the email and share it (sometimes). Yet I have heard so many times that I should read the Bible as if it is a letter or love letter from God to me!
Please excuse the 'stream of conciousness' style of writing, I do appreciate all your responses and they are very helpful in my internal dialogue.
No problem ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Love letter from God. Hm. I think of it more as opening a box of letters and newspaper clippings saved by long dead relatives. Still connected to me, by virtue of my baptism, but not about me. Enough there that is simply human to speak to me, but many things that I need the help of a history book or another, older relative to explain.
And if any of the clippings are from a Hearst publication, assume they are wildly exaggerated. ![[Biased]](wink.gif) ( See: Job, Jonah)
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Just to add: In most cases, think in term of personal meditation there is no harm in letting your mind wander through your own personal midrash ( reframing of Scripture), as long as you remain fully aware that is what you are doing, you don't build your doctrinal house on it without study and feedback, and you don't expect others to accept it as divine revelation.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Most people have survived without toothbrushes, vitamins, or even toilet paper as well. Bible reading is certainly not necessary for salvation, anymore than the above-mentioned are necessary for life. But do you really want to do without them?
Huh? What does this have to do with anything? I don't want to live without a toothbrush therefore I shouldn't want to live without a personal Bible? That's not even an argument let alone a bizarre one.
Seriously? Your argument boiled down to: It's not necessary, and some people have fucked up with it, therefore let's do without it. I merely reapplied your logic to other non-essential items, in the hope that you would spot the logical flaw.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
But I'll not give up Bible reading myself. It does me good, and for me to reject it would be similar to me telling my son, "Of course there are all sorts of extra study helps available at school, but no need to use them. Just come home and gut it out by yourself."
Whatever.
Actually you got that exactly backwards. It's trying to read the Bible and figure out God for yourself that is analogous to not using study helps.
Step back for a moment. I'm saying that
you-on-your-own,
with no study helps (in which I include the Bible),
trying to figure out God,
is similar to
you-on-your-own,
with no study helps,
trying to figure out math/science/German etc.
It's possible to do, certainly, but why?
Logically you appear to be sliding back and forth between God and the Bible in your argument's structure, using them as equivalents. Which they are not.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Your argument boiled down to: It's not necessary, and some people have fucked up with it, therefore let's do without it.
Wrong. I didn't have an argument. I said, here's how it looks to me, and I asked people to give me reasons for doing this thing. I don't have an argument one way or the other because I am not convinced one way or the other. The argument from Chrysostom is pretty heavy, because of the weight he has in my Church. Argumentum de toothbrushium, somewhat less so.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
There is no need to throw 2000 years of other Christians' insights and wisdom overboard simply because we have easy access to a Bible. For most of us, that is a straw man. I can think of precisely one person I've come across who relies so completely on her own supposed wisdom that she even refuses to use study notes. ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif) The debate between churches is rather on the proportion and weighting to be given to tradition vs. what an individual believes he/she is seeing in the Scriptures here and now.
The thing I can't get over is when people are so afraid of possible heresy that they refuse to read the Bible, or prevent others from doing so. Why would God even give it to us if it's likely to fuck us up that badly? He's not an idiot. And in fact the vast majority of Christians have not turned into three-headed howling heretics in the loony bin. Most of us lead reasonably sane lives.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
As for your second argument, I don't in the least understand what it has to do with me. I would never in 100 years say that an individual should try all on their own to figure out God.
I thought you were saying the Bible and the textbook were analogous. Which would make sense, inasmuch as they're both, well, books. Then one could argue textbook:math::bible:God. Which is okay as far as it goes. If I had to choose between figuring out math I don't know, and my only tool is a textbook, I'd use the textbook. But it could be that the textbook is difficult to understand and many people have ended up actually getting the math all wrong by misinterpreting the text. (I've taught and been taught from textbooks like that before.) Then it might behoove me to not trust myself to read the textbook, but find someone who already knows the topic, and especially the teacher, and ask them to explain the difficult parts.
I've had to work from textbooks so miserable that it was easier to create my own de facto textbook as I went along than to use the crap ones supplied by the district. Now the Bible is not crap, by any means. But it's not enough. The idea that it is underlies the "just me and the Bible" idea that has already been mentioned on this thread. That way danger lies.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
The thing I can't get over is when people are so afraid of possible heresy that they refuse to read the Bible, or prevent others from doing so.
If I find anybody like that, I'll send them your way.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Well, I'm not saying "just me and the Bible" (doubt anybody here is) and you're not saying "forget the Bible, use tradition" (again, nobody here is) so peace?
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Well, I'm not saying "just me and the Bible" (doubt anybody here is) and you're not saying "forget the Bible, use tradition" (again, nobody here is) so peace?
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
GeorgeNZ: quote:
Why should I read my Bible?
Callen (on the Jack Chick Hell thread): quote:
In one of Chick's Tracts he suggests the faithful should ensure that they read all the Bible on the grounds that it would be dead embarrassing in the life to come, if one should bump into the Prophet Habbakuk and have to confess that one had never read his book.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) ![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif)
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I find it extremely unrewarding to read the Bible. Except to deconstruct where others are going wrong with it. I've done that recently in Purgatory and here with Isaiah 7-12. That was good. I find ALL sermons, God slots (where someone reads something with their evangelical agenda to a bunch of broken people) problematic: 'hearing the word'. Because there is no conversation in the sermon. No dialectic. No first among equals. At least in God slots one can bring ones beholders share in response to include the broken.
I haven't read the gospels for a while. A good year. Two ... Them I can cope with. There is nothing in the Old Testament apart from a few, sparse old favourites that transcend the Bronze Age. I know them and don't feel the need to 'study' them.
When I had my cancer scare two months ago I read multiple versions of Psalm 23 and other verses from the little booklet in my wallet. A follow up test tomorrow may trigger that again
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
I find it extremely unrewarding to read the Bible. Except to deconstruct where others are going wrong with it.
Oh Lord, thank you that I am not like that exegete over there.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I've been that exegete and embrace him. Awkwardly. As John Clees' Sir Lancelot. And of course, mousethief, it is no wilful sin, no felt moral failure, not against conscience to be trapped by a primitive, ignorant, irrational hermeneutic. Body of sin though it be. I remain the worst of conscious sinners in the meantime in my own front room.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
Frederick Buechner sums up well my own love/hate relationship to the Bible:
quote:
“There are good reasons for not reading it. Its format is almost supernaturally forbidding: the binding rusty black like an undertaker’s cutaway, the double columns of a timetable, the print of a phone book, cluttered margins, and a text so overloaded with guides to pronunciation… and so befouled with inexplicable italics… that reading it is like listening to somebody with a bad stutter… The often fanatical nationalism… The self-righteousness and self-pity of many of the Psalms, plus their frequent vindictiveness. The way the sublime and the unspeakable are always jostling each other…
In short, one way to describe the Bible, written by many different people over a period of three thousand years and more, would be to say that it is a disorderly collection of sixty-odd books which are often tedious, barbaric, obscure, and teem with contradictions and inconsistencies… And yet—
And yet just because it is a book re both the sublime & the unspeakable, it is a book also re life the way it really is…& it is also a book about God. If it is not about the God we believe in, then it is about the God we do not believe in. One way or another, the story we find in the Bible is our own story…
If you look at a window, you see flyspecks, dust, the crack where Junior’s Frisbee hit it. If you look through a window, you see the world beyond.
Something like this is the difference between those who see the Bible as a Holy Bore and those who see it as the Word of God, which speaks out of the depths of an almost unimaginable past into the depths of ourselves.”
[ 05. November 2016, 04:34: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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GeorgeNZ
Apprentice
# 18672
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Posted
I wonder if I have been 'indoctrinated' to turn to the Bible to find the answers to life's questions, but what I find instead is God. It seems to me that God is more about asking questions than answering them, hence the confusion and frustration.
God is essentially saying you can look for answers in this Book all you want but your never going to be happy, they are never going to give you peace of mind. What you really need to do is realise that all the questions and all the answers find fulfilment in Me . . . . so let the rest of that crap go and look for Me, each and every moment.
Posts: 40 | From: A land so far away | Registered: Sep 2016
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Zappa
Ship's Wake
# 8433
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Posted
I wouldn't jettison the bible, but I would be (and am) very careful how to read it. It's such a vast collection of different writings in different styles from different times. On the whole I want to set the Reformation back centuries by saying we should read it without a licence - without commentators and interpreters because it raise an impenetrable wall of projections, misconceptions, distortions and misapplications, especially if we read it as something God jotted down in some creation down time.
But it came together as a collection precisely because it can inspire, when we break open its words and find its stories of the flawed people of God and the relationship they struggle to maintain with God and creation. In fact the very question of why bothering to read, observe, break open is one that the Hebrew people wrestled with .. why bother with the stories and rites of our forebears? And the answers are fascinating, but often hard to find. When we do find them they are a wonderful life-giving nudge along our journey.
[ 16. November 2016, 01:04: Message edited by: Zappa ]
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shameless self promotion - because I think it's worth it
and mayhap this too: http://broken-moments.blogspot.co.nz/
Posts: 18917 | From: "Central" is all they call it | Registered: Sep 2004
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