Today, I want to quote a couple women whose writings have inspired me.
First, Barbara Brown Taylor:
For all the human handiwork it displays, the Bible remains a peculiarly holy book. I cannot think of any other text that has such authority over me, interpreting me faster than I can interpret it. It speaks to me not with the stuffy voice of some mummified sage but with the fresh, lively tones of someone who knows what happened to me an hour ago. Familiar passages accumulate meaning as I return to them again and again. They seem to grow during my absences from them; I am always finding something new in them I never found before, something designed to meet me where I am at this particular moment in time.
This is, I believe, why we call the Bible God’s “living” word. When I think about consulting a medical book thousands of years old for some insight into my health, or an equally ancient physics book for some help with my cosmology, I understand what a strange and unparalleled claim the Bible has on me. Age does not diminish its power but increases it. . . .
The word of God turned out to be plenty strong enough to withstand my curiosity. Every time I poked it, it poked me back. Every time I wrenched it around so I could see inside, it sprang back into shape the moment I was through. In short, the Bible turned out not to be a fossil under glass but a thousand different things — a mirror, a scythe, a hammock, a lantern, a pair of binoculars, a high diving board, a bridge, a goad — all of them offering themselves to me to be touched and handled and used.
And then this wonderful story from Kathleen Norris’s Amazing Grace. She tells of a Saturday evening when she and her husband were eating at a local steakhouse and struck up a conversation with “an old-timer, a tough, self-made man in the classic American sense.” They had known him casually (”he knew us as oddball writers, misfits in the region”), but this evening, probably because he was about to enter chemotherapy, he was more talkative.
Out of the blue, Arlo began talking about his grandfather, who had been a deeply religious man, or as Arlo put it, “a damn good Presbyterian.” His wedding present to Arlo and his bride had been a Bible, which he admitted he had admired mostly because it was an expensive gift, bound in white leather with their names and the date of their wedding set in gold lettering on the cover. “I left it in its box and it ended up in our bedroom closet,” Arlo told us. “But,” he said, “for months afterward, every time we saw grandpa he would ask me how I liked that Bible. The wife had written a thank-you note, and we’d thanked him in person, but somehow he couldn’t let it lie, he’d always ask about it.” Finally, Arlo grew curious as to why the old man kept after him. “Well,” he said, “the joke was on me. I finally took that Bible out of the closet and I found that granddad had placed a twenty-dollar bill at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, and at the beginning of every book . . . over thirteen hundred dollars in all. And he knew I’d never find it.”
We laughed over this with Arlo, and he began talking about the interest he could have made had he found that money sooner. “Thirteen hundred bucks was a lot of money in them days,” he said, shaking his head.
I heard someone once say, “I have no doubt that we can interrogate scripture. The question is, will we allow it to interrogate us.”
Joel:
That second phrase is crucial. It also depends on how we use Mike’s previous posts (”The B-I-B-L-E #1 through 4″). I think sometimes we manage to interpret Scripture or at least apply it in ways which affirm our current practices and understandings, and don’t require much change on our part.
Wade Hodges shared a quote on his blog last year that really stuck with me. It’s part of why I don’t want to be a preacher (apart from the fact that I would make a lousy preacher). The quote was something along the lines of, “Churches today want affirmation, not transformation.”
Sort of makes church seem more like a country club than a place where disciples are formed for following the radical way of Jesus.
First, new site is now officially really cool as I can comment from my Blackberry! Second, how many shocking discovery’s are we going to get. Can’t stand the suspense and not sure how many more I can absorb. I’m overwhelmed!
Greg, the quote from Wade reminds me of a sermon by John Ortberg in which he spoke of this idea of living the life we’ve always wanted. Basically, it was a challenge to live transformationally. It’s interesting we now have to qualify the word Christian with transformational,or missional, etc.
My shocking discovery about the Bible: Mine has no 20 dollar bills in it! I’ve search and shook. Nothing but old church bulletins and scribbled on attendance cards. Perhaps I have bought the wrong Study Bible. Are the 20 dollar bills apart of some new “Health and Wealth Jabez” study Bible?
My wife has an old, pale blue KJV Bible that she got from her church.
Inside is written an old gem from her youth minister:
“Only this book can keep you from sin. Only sin can keep you from this book.”
A timeless truth, indeed.
This ‘little series’ is so rich on many levels. Thanks, Mike, for helping us peel back the layers!
Recently, upon the recommend of one of your Blog posts, I looked up the info for the TNIV. Today’s commercialisation of the Bible, together with how each publishing house markets their translations/various interpretations, is just astounding – so many trendy renditions. All this dressing up just to have to coax people to open the covers — it’s kinda like dousing Brussels sprouts in a ton of cheese sauce to force a kid like me to eat them! I’m just as spoiled, though, because I was so bummed not to find the Study Bible version (I found out it will be available Sept 2006.) I guess that one is too scary to be popular? That said, I will never forget how wonderful my white leather (with a zipper) King James smelled – my very first Bible given to me on Christmas when I was six years old.
It is so amazing that you are doing this series, because one of the recent books that has had such a profound affect on me is Brian Moynahan’s ‘If God Spare My Life: William Tyndale, the English Bible and Sir Thomas More – a Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal’ (Little, Brown). We have come such a long way from the Bible smuggling times of Tyndale’s days. One of the most painful stories I have ever read has to do with Tyndale’s journey to Hamburg, where he hoped to complete his work on the Septuagint. His disastrous shipwreck on the Dutch coast cost him, among most of his resources and precious funds, his just-completed translation of Deuteronomy. Of all books to have to duplicate and do over again – the thought just exhausts me!
The TNIV might be, in our day and time, a vast improvement over Tyndale’s hard spiritual graft of a lifetime. I am sad that when, as a child in the C of C, I asked questions like ‘Where did my Bible come from? If Jesus spoke Aramaic, then why can I read this in English?’ no one told me the stories of such early erudite Believers as Wycliffe or Tyndale. They were certainly not popular or considered successful in their time. Indeed, for all Tyndale’s arduous work, Sir Thomas More would condemn him as ‘a hell-hound in the kennel of the devil’. With More’s obsession for making Tyndales’s life the thorniest of trials, Tyndale’s passion for communicating the personality of Jesus to the English masses could only be buoyed by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Sorry to write so much … this stuff is just so exciting! Awaiting the B-I-B-L-E #6.
The twenty-dollar bills reminded me. When we lived in Portland TX, our preacher was (the late) Holland Boring, Jr. He loved for someone to ask, “Which translation should I use?”.
He replied, “The one you’ll READ.”
Michael
I don’t know what is next, but thanks, Mike, for this series on the B-I-B-L-E. It’s just been wonderful. In its entirety.
Thanks.
I am sure there is a treasure worth more than $20 in every book. God obviously knows me better than I know myself and the mystery of that holy living word is awesome!
I love that story..
“This is my Bible: I am what it says I am; I have what it says I have; I can do what it says I can do.
Today, I will be taught the Word of God.
I boldly confess: My mind is alert; my heart is receptive; I will never be the same.
I am about to receive the incorruptible, indestructible, ever-living Seed of the Word of God.
I’ll never be the same — never, never, never! I’ll never be the same, in Jesus’ Name. Amen.”
— recited by the Lakewood CC before the message is presented by Joel Osteen
Yeah, but where in Joel Osteen’s Bible did he find this gem:
“God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us.”
Greg, listened to what he is saying” TODAYI WILL BE TAUGHT THE WORD OF GOD” He is not saying it is in the WORD of God…He is just directing to the WORD. You go there and read the WORD and you will find the answers…and when you receive God’s truth. I assure you …you will never be the same!
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