Edgework

Recently I heard of a version of the Bible in which all 31,103 verses had been printed in random order. Apparently it was printed to make the point that a lot of people read the Bible as a collection of random tidbits of information.

In his book, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How to Read the Bible (2008), Scott McKnight suggests that, “Somewhere we’ve gone astray and we’ve stopped reading the Bible as story” (43). He goes on to identify five shortcuts he has observed in church folk who hope to catch morsels of God’s truth without having to get involved in the story of the Bible (44-54).

Morsels of Law:  Highlighting all biblical laws creates a Law-God, usually ticked off and impatient, and distorts the message found in the biblical story.

Morsels of Blessings and Promises:  Focusing only on “blessings and promises” fosters an upbeat approach to life that often collapses when something bad happens.

Mirrors and Inkblots: Projecting our ideas and desires onto the Bible keeps us from being caught up in the story and letting it shape us.

Puzzling Pieces Together:  Puzzling bits and pieces of biblical truths together to map God’s mind has an unintended consequence. Once puzzlers “master” the puzzle there is no further compelling reason to keep on reading the story.

Maestros: Identifying one biblical hero, for example the Apostle Paul, and then filtering the rest of the Bible through his thought patterns can result in us missing the impact of the larger story.

I was introduced to all of these shortcuts to reading the Bible as story in my early years and it has taken nearly a lifetime to begin finding my way around them. I am still working at it. However, aside from these shortcuts, there was one story line that I did absorb early on in life which traumatized me to no end. Fortunately, I am beginning to leave it behind. In his book, A New Kind of Christianity (2010), Brian McLaren identifies that story line as a “six-line narrative” that is more Greco-Roman than biblical: Eden (a perfect place), the Fall (original sin), Condemnation (our dilemma), Salvation for a few (through faith in Christ), Heaven (a perfect eternal place for these few), and Hell (a place of eternal torment for the many).

According to this story line, God is furious that his perfect world is spoiled and so intends to destroy everything. The only hope for human salvation is for this wrath to be placated. This happens by God torturing his Son in our place. For all who do not believe this, this terrible wrath remains. Unable to destroy their immortal souls, God casts them into hell to be tortured for all eternity.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to this traditional narrative relates to the question of original sin. It seems to me that Christians have spent too much energy defending this doctrine when it is clear, according to  Steve Chalke and Allan Mann, in The Lost Message of Jesus (2003), that ”Jesus believed in ‘original goodness’! God declared that all his creation, including humankind, was very good. And it is this original goodness that Jesus seeks out in us” (67). That is not to say that there is no evil in the world, but that God sees evil as a rejection of the original vision he had for creation instead of a fall into total depravity deserving eternal punishment.

Brian D. McLaren offers a refreshing, alternative story line to the Bible in his book, The Story We Find Ourselves In (2003). Creation creates meaning in space and time and gives humankind a sacred role to play in the emerging world. Crisis follows as humankind goes beyond its proper limits, spoiling something that had been proclaimed to be “good.” In the Calling of Abraham, God chose a people for special blessing so that they could bless the whole world. This then takes us to Conversation or Cycles  which record how, while humans keep failing again and again, God remains faithful. Christ enters this story, not to fix up a Greco-Roman mess but to offer new hope for a restoration of God’s creative vision. He then calls a Community into being; followers of Christ who seek to live by the values of the “Kingdom of God”. The Consummation represents the future when all things have been restored and God will be all in all. In his book, A New Kind of Christianity (2010), McLaren summarizes this vision by saying “The wild, passionate, creative, liberating, hope-inspiring God whose image emerges in these…narratives is not the dread cosmic dictator of the six-line Greco-Roman framework” (65).

This narrative resonates well with how I now understand the grand story of the Bible through which we must read its various parts. It is a narrative of a good God who doesn’t give up on us in spite of all our failings and offers us hope for the future.

Scott McKnight offers another similar version of the main story line in the Bible which I find helpful as well. Creation (Genesis 1-2) speaks about oneness – oneness with God, with ourselves, with others, and with the world. Cracked Creation (Genesis 3-11) speaks of the move from oneness to otherness as sin takes a hold on the human race. Covenant Community (Genesis 12 – Malachi) speaks about how God attempts to work redemption through Israel, but also how Israel just won’t get the job done until the job is done for them. Christ (Matthew – Revelation 20) restores oneness through his incarnation, death, resurrection and Pentecost. Finally, in the Consummation (Revelation 21-22) Christ restores perfect oneness forever.

Personally I think these latter two story lines more accurately reflect the biblical narrative than the one I was handed as a youngster. But however we understand the story line, we must connect each part of Scripture in some way to it in order for it to make sense and meet us where we live in our stories.