Liberals who watch FOXNews - uncomfortable on purpose

Scripture is often a source of great comfort for many people. When there is a funeral you can but there will be a reading from Psalm 23. When you hear 1 Corinthians 13 is read, 93.6% of the time you are at a wedding. When there is tragedy in real life or in a play, you can find scripture be a source of strength and comfort.

In the same breath, scripture is also the source of great discomfort. When Jesus tells the people to sell all they have and give it to the poor. When we read about God destroying people and nations. Where there is a difficult teaching for which there is no simple answer, you can find scripture to be a source of discomfort.

We watch the news to be comforted. This is why conservatives will watch FOXNews and liberals watch MSNBC. We watch the news in order to hear others tell us that our worldview is correct. We love to hear our side is correct and the other side is wrong and idiotic.

For many Christians, we tend to read scripture like we watch the news. We choose the places that we like that affirm our worldview. We choose the places that provide us comfort and provide discomfort for others. We choose our own canon which we feel is "truer" or "more in line with God" than other scripture.

Do yourself and the world a favor - read the discomforting scripture. Watch the "other" news channel. Allow for the possibility that you may be wrong. The irony is that by listening to only the sources that bring us comfort, we actually harden our hearts through the phenomena of expectation confirmation.

Why most devotionals lead us astray

The last post commented on a desire for preachers, when it comes to how we use scripture, to shift from diving to swimming.

Not everyone is a preacher. But many of us have a devotional reading which might be diving boards.

I am not a huge fan of most daily devotionals. Most of them are set up so that you have a line or two of scripture and then a little reflection written about those lines. The reflection generally includes some sort of "moral" or "life application" that we can "gain" or "take" from the scripture. Devotionals are assumed to be "quick" so that we can get our fix and move on.

This is all well and fine but it may be sapping us of the richness of the scripture.

The challenge is that when we read just a line or two, we miss the much larger picture. Just like in a movie.

We watch movie clips and know that these clips are a part of a much larger story. So while we can watch a classic clip, we know that there are a number of motivations and plot twits going on up to and beyond this point.

  

So to with scripture. We can quote it and say it, but if we are unaware of the larger story going on then we are just a bunch of people sharing movie clips of a movie that not everyone has seen.

Scripture as a diving board or the water in which we swim

One of the things that comes with being a preacher is that you are asked to listen to a lot of other preachers. I am not sure why this is the case, but people tend to tell me of a preacher they like and one that I "must listen to".

There are a sorts of preachers out there. In school we learned about a number of styles and archetypes. I can argue the theological underpinning of a 'dialogical sermon' until the cows come home. I can tell you about the "Lowry loop" and the difference between inductive and deductive preaching. 

No matter how many preachers I hear I continue to find there are two types. There are those who use scripture as a diving board and those who understand scripture as the water in which we swim. 

You can spot a diving board preacher rather easily. This is the person who reads scripture and then jumps to the point they want to make. They are found in the mainline and are most prominent in the "Bible Churches" I hear. Anytime someone gives you a dozen of verses from a half-dozen books over the course of a sermon, you are dealing with a diving board preacher. Anytime you hear a preacher who uses scripture as a jumping off point, they are diving.

Those who preach and understand scripture is not a jumping off point to deliver "keys to a healthy marriage" or "three steps to your best life now", these preachers understand scripture is the pool we swim in.

These are the preachers who are more story driven, more interested in delving into the richness of the scripture that they are not really interested in overlaying moralistic or "practical advice" on the scripture. They are far more interested in swimming in the text, even willing to tread in the water and not go anywhere. These preachers sometimes do not have a "point" because the verses read do not have a direction (see the end of Jonah).

Perhaps the church could use a little more swimmers and a lot less divers.