Is it our job to differentiate between the divine and human aspects/nature of scripture? Some think this is NOT our job; I think it IS our job! Some might even ask, “Why would God ask us to do that?” I’d simply say because God must! It – the differentiation – is an unavoidable part of the Incarnation, and thus an unavoidable characteristic of our expressions of faith and God. When we then choose to record these expressions of faith and God that result from our real-time engagement of the Incarnation, then we literally become characters in the drama and bring all of our character traits with us into the story. This creates the very real need for those who will enter the story in the future to actually differentiate between all that the people from the past have brought to the story and the revelation of God. This is all about the Incarnation. The Incarnation is not a one time even in history; it is a perpetual state of existence for those of us who believe in the living Christ. The Incarnation is something each of us as followers of Christ engage and enter every single day of our lives. The really interesting thing in all of this is that the the Incarnation is something offered to each of us right where we are immediately living in time, space, and history. In other words, God meets us right where we are, culturally. And we express this event in language and understanding shaped and nearly limited to our cultural setting. And by grace, God meets us all there and lovingly guides us and accepts our worship in spite of our seriously limited and culturally informed expressions of God’s self. Amazing!
Said differently, we – humanity – have been changing and trading cultures for thousands of years while we simultaneously go on learning more about the physical reality in which we live while God – at the same time – has been busy meeting us all right where we are immediately living with his immutable story of redemption. And it is right there that we each receive the invitation to enter God’s story! If we don’t think that within this whole process our personal and corporate expressions of this amazing meeting with God is not informed by our immediate relationship with immediate culture, and that our ultimate expression is not reflective of our lives lived within these immediate situations and settings, we are simply fooling – possibly even deluding ourselves. In fact, we all are such products of our immediate culture and our immediate settings that complete objectivity is not possible (a truth I finally faced and realized recently). We all have a lens through which we read the world around us and through which we discover and express God. The hard work that I’ve been calling for in our local community/setting is simply this: To acknowledge this truth and move towards a kingdom expression wherein this hard work is not only engaged, but also celebrated as true and living faith. Honestly, this is as alive as faith gets and that is the overarching message of all of the complied stories in our Bible. That is the spiritual message of our ancestors!
That’s a lot, but I hope it makes sense. Spend some time with it all and think about it deeply.
What does this all do to the Bible? Everything! As much as I believe that the Bible represents the complete revelation of God – which I do believe – that statement has nothing to do – zero – with the actual application of what the revelation itself is perpetually pointing towards. The Bible is like a hand – or more specifically a pointer finger – pointing towards something huge on the horizon. We would do well to quit gazing mindlessly at the pointer finger and actually look towards and catch a glimpse of what it’s actually pointing towards so that we can begin to actually move towards it! The Bible’s revelation is only as useful as our willingness to actually move towards that which it is revealing. If we do not make that move, and instead choose to numbingly stare at the pointer finger – or that towards which the Bible’s revelation points towards – then we have embraced a subtle, pious sounding, and absolutely devastating form of idolatry. The continued stare at the pointer will reduce us to little more than a community of people who unfortunately and misguidedly worship the Bible and it’s revelation over and above and instead of that towards which it all points. And in spite of how some may feel about me and my personal efforts to openly talk about this and communicate it, the aforementioned idolatry is way more dangerous than the mere pointing out of human/divine aspects of the compiled story in a prayerful effort to make a point concerning the Bible’s ultimate purpose in the life of the Christ follower. The Bible points towards something greater than itself. That’s what it is for! The Bible is not the fourth member of the trinity, as one of my dear friends recently proclaimed! The elevation of it’s status beyond what it is was/is meant for actually gives rise to odd ideas that suggest things like “There is no humanity in the Bible, only divinity. It’s all (read: completely or exclusively) divine, God-breathed, and dropped from the heavens via some sort of magical tube that produces cultural vacuums.” Christians, seriously, we need to come to grips with the truth and move on.
So, “authoritative” as the Bible may be (and I am seriously working hard to re-define the word “authoritative” because it is packed with huge connotations that are neither helpful, nor necessary given the nature of Jesus’ Kingdom of God and our place within it), that authority is null and void if it is not meet face to face within our own time and space and setting and culture and wrestled with in real time and applied prayerfully. When we do this – when we engage the incarnation in such a serious and intentional way – we literally become a part of the story that began with the Bible and we consequently become enmeshed its framework too. So, for example, if we began writing down our own personal reflections of this ongoing event with God, and a group of people discovered our writings 2000 years into the future, they too would see the living God at work, revealing God’s-self to a people living in a particular place within a particular time, and they would also see a particular people expressing this ongoing event in terms that they understand and within terms of a knowledge limited to their collected and cumulative and progressing empirical data. That’s how this whole thing we call the Judeo-Christian faith has operated since Abraham! I’m not sure why we Western Christians have such a problem with it all. Perhaps our problems here in the West have origins elsewhere? Personally, I think it’s – the way God meets us and reveals God’s-self to us – beautiful and awe inspiring.
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