Spiritual Hiccups - Fast-Fowarding the Bible

All deacons, ruling elders, and teaching elders (our term for pastors) in the Presbyterian Church (USA) answer a number of questions as part of their ordination.  The second of those questions asks, "Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to you?"

There is some wonderfully nuanced theology in that question, but it still speaks to the "unique and authoritative witness" of the Bible.  It is where we go to discover who God is and what God wishes for us.  Yet for all this status we accord Scripture, we find it easy to live in ways that undermine our claim that it is "unique and authoritative."  For that matter even biblical literalists, with much less nuanced theology, still find it easy to skirt the authority of Scripture.

The first paragraph of today's reading from Hebrews is an easy case in point.  When I read these words I am tempted to fling some of them at those who seem to hate immigrants or condone the torture of other human beings in order to protect us.  "See, it says right there in the Bible to show hospitality to strangers and to remember those being tortured as though you yourselves were being tortured."

But many like myself with  more "progressive" leanings hit the fast-forward button when we get to words about adultery and fornication, in a hurry to get past them.  A lot of us on the left and the right find money very enticing, and we rarely are content with what we have.  So we rush past these words but linger with those that challenge us less.

Now I'm not suggesting that we could solve this problem if we all just took every single Bible verse literally.  The Bible is a remarkably complex work that resists most simplistic attempts to embrace or apply it.  But it seems to me that all Christians, regardless of the theological or political camps we inhabit, need to ask ourselves whether or not the Bible can change how we view things.  Does the Bible have any capacity to transform us, or do we hear it in such a way that it always agrees with our current stances on everything?  I'm reasonably certain that if we think all our beliefs, priorities, political positions, social norms, measures of good or bad, etc. are in line with God and the Bible, we've fallen into John Calvin's grand-prize-winner in the hit parade of sins, idolatry.

Author Anne Lamott says much the same thing in oft repeated quote.  “You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

Most all of us enjoy those passages of Scripture that resonate with who we are and what's important to us.  But even the most faithful of Christians surely need occasionally to slow down and spend some quality time with those passages we prefer to fast-forward.

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