Edgework

It is time to bring this series on Rediscovering the Bible to a close. No doubt I will write more essays in the future on various biblical topics. However this series was designed to help us form a template through which to read the Bible faithfully in the 21st century, not write a comprehensive commentary. When I began this series I was convinced that many of us needed to find new perspectives on how to engage the biblical text. I feel that in the process of writing these essays I, at least, have gained a greater clarity about how to read the Bible in our time. I hope that has also been the case for my readers.

I know that some readers are not entirely comfortable with everything I have written, and I would be the first to suggest that this series is far from perfect or from being a final word on biblical interpretation. It is a snapshot of where my journey with the Bible has taken me over the past half century or so. And I would be pleased if these essays would become a starting point for on-going dialogue with fellow Bible readers.

All I have written will, in fact, be of little value if it doesn’t encourage people to read the Bible with renewed interest and passion. I must confess that for some years now I have not read the Bible as much and as intensely as I have in the past. I remember a time in the 1970s during my time in Bolivia when I used various translations of the Bible in three languages – English, Spanish and German – to prepare sermons to preach in Spanish and Low German. How stimulating it was to discover how each language brought its own nuances and insights to the text. During my years in seminary and while teaching Bible at Steinbach Bible College I found myself digging ever deeper into the biblical text. So I have spent many wonderful hours in the Bible. But more recently it has felt like I had reached a saturation point. All my well-worn and marked-up Bibles and commentaries mostly remained on the shelf. I needed new wind in my sails to keep exploring the Bible.

I know that I am not an exceptional, biblical scholar, yet some people I know seem to think that I have more or less mastered the biblical text. I admit that I have likely studied the Bible more than most of the people I know, but maybe that is precisely the reason I have disengaged from serious Bible study in recent years.  Often when I opened the Bible and began to read I had that sense of déjà vu – I have been here before, I thought to myself, and I know more or less where this will take me. You might say I had lost that sense of expectancy I once had. Or to say it another way, familiarity had dulled anticipation.

But at the same time there was usually a bevy of questions emerging in my mind about the whole process of biblical interpretation. How could I be confident in my interpretation when so many others understood the biblical text differently than I did? I was troubled by what Christian Smith terms “pervasive interpretive pluralism” that exists within the evangelical world, let alone the wider Christian context. Why did some people reject my interpretations so passionately and sometimes with a good deal of vitriol? Had I failed to take their honest questions into account in my interpretive process? And why was it that many of my Christian friends had never even begun the process of serious Bible study? Why were they content with a verse for the day, a short commentary, a two-lined poem and a sentence prayer like they found in their “Daily Bread” devotional guide? What would it take to really engage the average church member in serious, life-changing Bible study?

But always the questions came back to me. Why had I ceased being an enthusiastic Bible reader? Of course only time will tell, but I think over the past ten months I have found a renewed passion about getting back into the Bible.  Writing these essays has forced me to think seriously about issues related to biblical interpretation that I had been afraid to explore in depth. Perhaps the biggest push to get this series started came from the fact that the book study group of which I am a part studied The Bible Made Impossible (2011) by Christian Smith last year. I found that Smith faced difficult questions about biblical interpretation honestly and directly. When our study was done, I felt like we had just scratched the surface and so I used this book as somewhat of a template to explore the issues surrounding biblical interpretation in greater depth.

I think there may be another reason why I had become weary of much Bible reading. Perhaps I had been trying too hard to understand the meaning of the text. In an article in Mennonite Weekly Review, “Thinking Biblically” (October 14, 2013), Paul Schrag suggests that instead of us trying to master the text we should be focusing more on allowing the text to read us.  He quotes Rachel Miller Jacobs who suggests reversing our usual way of reading. “We have a habit of making the Bible ‘relevant to real life.’ It would be better to discover that the reign of God is the fundamental reality and that the task of the readers is to make themselves and their world relevant to it.”

That opens a new window for me. Not only do I ask how some favorite, underlined verses apply to me, but where and how do I fit into God’s story now in light of the biblical narrative we find in the biblical text. Check back with me a year from now to see where my journey has taken me.