Saturday Post -- 16/05/15

My time last year at Cornhill Scotland yielded several benefits: practical tools to aid me as a preacher; deep and meaningful fellowship four days a week; a piece of paper with my name on it. But better than all of these was that at 32 years of age, I finally learned how to read the Bible.

Indeed, I was struck pretty early on by the realisation that, though I obviously regarded the Bible as a unique text, my approach to it was often uniquely stupid!

Behind any text, whether it be a WhatsApp message, a newspaper report, or a journal article, the writer is attempting to convey a meaning. I may come away from it with a range of thoughts as to what I may do with this information -- indeed, I may even disagree with it -- but I have no right to decide for myself the meaning that was being conveyed. So, if Amanda asks me to pick up some lettuce on the way home, I may have wished the message said 'ribeye steak', but if I turn up at home with aforementioned cow-cut, I won't get away with saying, "this is what lettuce means for me".

And yet, this is precisely what we as Christians so often do with a text we supposedly regard with such esteem as to consider it 'God's word'. "I think this means," or, "What this is saying to me", are phrases with which we have become all too comfortable in Bible study groups. As a young man, in evangelical circles, I was often encouraged to read the Bible "to find out what God was saying to me today". To which thinking, the venerable Dick Lucas has replied, "It wasn't written to you, stupid".

(to which I would also add, "It wasn't written about you"; if the Bible is God's self-revelation, then it follows that the enriching information we seek is primarily about him, and not me)

None of this, of course, is to say that the Bible is not 'living and active', or that all Scripture is not 'useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness'. Rather, what I learned at Cornhill is that, if anything, we blunt the Bible's message to us today by losing sight of what the likes of Moses, Isaiah, Mark and Paul were conveying, in the Spirit, to their original readers.

Respecting the Bible book and its author by, for example, investigating the cultural context, picking up on repeated words and phrases, giving consideration to the structure of the text as a whole, is an infinitely rewarding task. You will think again about asking to have 1 Corinthians 13 read out at your wedding when your realise that Paul was demonstrating how genuine love stood in stark contrast to the wretched behaviour of the supremely arrogant Christians at Corinth. 

And yet, I can well understand how we have come to such a point. For one thing, it demonstrates just how firm a grip post-modernism now has on our thinking. And, more practically speaking, such an approach necessarily demands of us time, effort and brain-power.

Which is why, though generally buoyed by my studies last year, I had some reservations at the back of my mind about helping people here to read the Bible in a more responsible way. This is not a culture which generally encourages people to engage with information; the range of material available for reading is limited and expensive anyway. And though Trinidad is relatively relaxed as a city, young people in particular are now armed with smartphones and assume that their gratification will be increasingly instantaneous; not exactly fertile ground for encouraging in-depth study.

However, I am becoming increasingly convinced that my supposedly well-founded doubts did not so much reflect my experience of life in Bolivia as my lack of faith in Scripture's trans-national sufficiency, and the Holy Spirit's 'translation' work across cultures.

Because, since coming back, having given these matters renewed emphasis in our preaching, teaching and other discipleship strands, we have seen a tremendously positive response from the church, with our brothers and sisters taking pleasure in attending to a need that they may not have realised existed (just like me last year); such enthusiasm is natural, as to do so is to begin to understand the meaning of the truth (John 17:17). 

This was evidenced on Thursday evening as I began the series of twice-monthly studies in the Spanish translation of 'Dig Deeper' (here's the Amazon link: it's well worth your time and your tenner) which, in a nutshell, teaches principles I learned at Cornhill in a concise and easy-to-read fashion. Each chapter furnishes the reader with a 'tool' to apply to their reading of a Biblical text (such as author's purpose, structure or genre), with a simple explanation as to its application. 

Thursday's session was very much introductory, as we began to consider the pitfalls of reading the Bible subjectively, and then think about what it means for us for the Bible to be both a divine and human book. And the turnout well exceeded my expectations, with double the numbers we would normally get at our Bible study (I would reiterate my suspicion of the numbers-game in church; I share such information to reflect the passion that exists in the church for this topic, something for which I am thankful). And judging by the several absentees who have approached me in the last couple of days asking for the relevant photocopies so that they can catch up, the response from the attendees has been very positive.

So we'd appreciate your continued prayers as we seek to establish such principles at the core of our Bible reading in church, and please give thanks with us, too, as in re-discovering Scripture's awesome sufficiency, we echo these fine words of Timothy Dudley-Smith:

Lord, for that word, the word of life which fires us,

speaks to our hearts and sets our souls ablaze,

teaches and trains, rebukes us and inspires us:

Lord of the word, receive your people's praise.

Prayer

• For Amanda, who tonight will be teaching the youth about Jacob, with a particular emphasis on what Hebrews 11 has to say about the old scallywag.

Praise

• Amanda has had another really encouraging week of staff interviews, with further opportunities to get to know the personnel better, disciple the believers, and share something of Jesus with the rest.

Finally, we will, God-willing, be in Cochabamba next weekend, visiting friends and enjoying a few days out of Trinidad. The blog, therefore, will be getting a well-earned rest (not so sure about its authors), but expect normal service to be resumed -- hopefully with pictures -- on the 30th.

¡Que Dios les bendiga!

Craig & Amanda