I'm done with "The Bible"

“Tradition is the democracy of the dead. It means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes: our ancestors.”

— Chesterton in his book "Orthodoxy"

David Ball - Original work

Like many Christians, I am a big fan of the Bible. It has it's flaws and it has its puzzles and a deep beauty that only can be described as sacred. However I am done with "The Bible". Not the actual sacred text of my faith tradition. Like I said, I am a fan of that. What I am done with is the phrase "The Bible".

Calling it "The Bible" while technically accurate leaves little to be desired theologically. What I mean by this is that when we hear "The Bible" we hear in our heads a dead set of stories. We hear a book. Or, putting it in the negative, when we hear "The Bible" we don't hear a living story. We don't hear lives of people. We don't hear this as a collection of stories giving witness to something indescribable that the characters do not fully understand but try to put words to because words are all we have.

Perhaps a better way to talk (and in turn think) about this collection of sacred stories is to shift talking about it as "The Bible" but as the "Biblical Witness". This collection of stories are the tradition of the people of faith and, as it has been said, tradition is the vote of the dead.

When we think about the Biblical Witness this begins to reshape the way we think about the sacred stories. We begin to think of these stories like that of a witness. And, like any witness, the Biblical witness has it's own biases and perspective and even errors. It is a valuable and powerful witness to God in the Christian faith tradition but, like I have argued before, it is not the ultimate revelation of God (that is reserved for Jesus). And so it is okay to admit that the Bible may have errors or inaccuracies or contradictions. It is a witness, it is not infallible nor inerrant.

And because the Biblical witness has the same biases and perspectives that other witnesses may have, it is important to know that the UMC affirms that there are other sources of authority that we use in conjunction with the Biblical witness to better discern the will and work of God. This is why the UMC holds fast to not only the Biblical witness but also, tradition, experience and reason. 

Taken together, these four sources (perhaps we could call them the four witnesses?) are the voices we listen to in order to find what God desires and hopes and dreams. These four witnesses give us direction on how to live in right relationship with one another and with God and with ourselves. 

It may not be helpful or reasonable to stop calling it "The Bible", but is it too much to expect that we can understand the Bible as bearing a living witness to the deep mysteries of God and not to understand the Bible as a set of dead stories of the past? 

Pete Rollins, WW II and Orthokardia

The following is a repost from September 2012 - I thought I would try a few repos to see if it is helpful.

Some time ago I wrote about moving away from the dichotomy of orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right action). Rather than placing emphasis on beliefs and actions, Christians are called to emphasis the heart. Thus to abandon orthodoxy and orthopraxy is to embrace orthokardia.

Peter Rollins shared a story about how the Prime Minister of England during WW II fearing defeat was told of two ways the war could end. The first is the "natural" end to the war which would entail 10,000 angles coming upon the earth and destroy the Nazi war machine with swords of fire. The second way the war could end was the "supernatural" end which would entail 50,000 Englishmen parachuting into the heat of battle and drive out the Germans.

The point that was made by Rollins in light of this story was that the angles are natural in that they would be measurable. Swords, fire and angels fall into the natural because you would be able to see them and measure them. We all know the war did not end this natural way. Rather it ended in the supernatural.

Thousands of Englishmen had a change of heart and courage swell up within them to provoke them to parachute into danger. This is supernatural because you cannot see a change of heart. You cannot measure courage. And yet this is what happened. It took the supernatural to end the war.

Likewise, orthodoxy and orthopraxy are natural. You can see "right beliefs" you can measure "right action". You cannot see a right heart. You cannot measure orthokardia. Orthokardia is supernatural.

Now Available (and FREE): Imprints Edition 2!

Imprints is free for download but I would ask that you share it with others!

In late September 2014 I released a new publication called Imprints (original post here). This is a magazine-type publication that compiles the "imprints" the the clergy of the Central Texas Conference are making in the world through the written word. 

I am pleased to release Imprints Edition #2!

You can always access Imprints by clicking the link in the menu bar. But more than that, I encourage you to take a look at those highlighted in Imprints because these clergy are not only gifted but also God serving and loving people.

Jeopardy champions should lead the Church

The Church is a place where people often seek out answers to lifes great mysteries. What is often forgotten is that life's great mysteries are mysteries because no one knows the answer. Not even the church. However, that has not stopped us in the Church from giving answers. This may be why people come to the Church, we have given answers in the past. 

What is obvious to many is the answers the Church has provided no longer are sufficient. And they are not sufficient in that the answers are incorrect. Let us remember we are talking about "answers" to mysteries so who is to say if they are right or wrong or both!. What makes the answers no longer sufficient is that answers are now a dime a dozen.

A simple internet search will provide you a million answers to even the deepest mysteries of the world. Again, these answers may be right, may be wrong or may be both right and wrong, we are all grasping at straws here. But that does not diminish the fact that there are millions of answers. 

We can begin to see the sunseting on the age of the answer when you attend a trivia night at a local pub. What makes these nights so interesting is the fact that everyone knows that the answers can all be found online. The draw to trivia night is part nostalgia and part novelty. Nostalgia for the age when answers were power and novelty to the reality that answers are much easier to come by than once was the case.

And so with the age of answers coming to an end, we are here to witness the age of the question. One might be able to see now why the Church, which has set ourselves up for so long as a place for answers, is in trouble. The Church if it is going to be helpful for people into this new age, we need to put down the answers and pick up the question. Move from Trivia Night to Jeopardy. 

As you know, the point of Jeopardy is to craft the question to the given answer. This really is what Jesus did all the time. When someone came to him with a situation (an answer) Jesus gave them a question. The parables are nothing if not questions in story form. The question "who is my neighbor" is asked in the parable of the 'Good Samaritan'. "How we should forgive" can be found in the parable of the 'Prodigal'. Jesus would have been a Jeopardy champ. 

When answers are easy to come by, it is the question that begins to have greater importance. Have you ever wanted to know something and knew that it had to be out there but did not know what to type into the search bar in order to call up the answer? The answers are in search of the questions. We in the Church need to remember that all it is a trivial pursuit to give answers to a world that already "knows". Can we recapture the ability of the Jesus (the original champion of Jeopardy), to find the questions?