mis·cel·la·ny (n.) a mixture of various things; a medley; a collection of writings on various subjects

God’s Grand Story

Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet, Chapter 5: The Plot of the Wiki-Stories

Next McKnight describes the five-part plot of the biblical Story.  This is the thematic Story that is continually reinterpreted and retold throughout the Bible.  This is also the Story that creates unity throughout the Bible as a whole.

Part 1: Creating Eikons

God creates humanity in his own image (Greek, “eikon“), but the way He goes about doing this is important.  He creates one entity called “the Adam” which is a plural “they” (Genesis 1:26).  Then God splits them apart to create man and woman only to have them come back together for togetherness in marriage.  McKnight’s point is to emphasize that humanity is made for relationship, especially for oneness.  It is most important to realize that creation is first and foremost about a place of oneness — with self, God, others, the world.  [It feels at this point that McKnight is trying too hard to set up his later discussion of women's roles in ministry.  It is like he is trying to negate Paul's argument that man was created first then woman (1 Timothy 2:13).  It is feeling more and more like he is writing this book as a set up for his egalitarian view on women's roles in ministry.  I am okay with that, but it feels a bit slick.]

Part 2: Cracked Eikons

Oneness quickly turns into otherness.  Adam and Eve sin and become ashamed of themselves, hiding from God.  They start to blame each other.  They are sent out into a frustrated world where life is harder.  Community and oneness is compromised and otherness is realized and all of this arises from their desire to rule/control their own destiny.  At its most basic level, the Gospel is about fixing this otherness and returning oneness, with self, God, others, and the fallen world.

Part 3: Covenant Community

This is the part people skip most often and create an individualized Christianity that misses the point that God always uses community to fix this world.  First this community was Israel then it was the Church.  However, God’s chosen communities never get the job done of returning the world to oneness.

Part 4: Christ Restores Oneness

Because of human inability to restore oneness, God does that through Jesus.  Of course this refers to the Cross, but it is deeper than that.  We find oneness again by being “in Christ.”  We are united by Christ’s death for all of us.  We are made new and whole by his resurrection.  We are united to Christ in baptism.

Part 5: Consummation

Restoring the eikon to complete oneness is a two-part job.  It started with Jesus but fulness comes with the New Heavens and New Earth at Jesus’ second coming when the world returns to a Eden-like state.

Altogether, the basic plot of the wiki-stories is a “oneness–otherness–oneness” Story.  The individual wiki-stories may not include each of the five elements, but over and over again in the Bible we find God telling the same basic Story.  Those familiar with a Creation–Fall–Redemption description of the biblical metanarrative will recognize McKnight’s plot as a re-labeling of this, however his description really emphasizes the community or relational side of the Story.

The Bible: A Book of Ever-Changing Constancy

Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet, Chapter 4: It’s A Story with Power

In this chapter, McKnight begins to answer the central question of the book: how should we read the Bible?  He starts by stating the number one rule of any good interpretation: we must pay attention to context.  He summarizes this with this slogan: “that was then and this is now.”  I suspect this idea will be very important later in the book.

God always speaks in the Bible in a new contextualized way.  He talked about covenant to Isaiah and the prophets different from how he talked to Abraham and Moses, a thousand years earlier.  Love is a common theme in most of the New Testament Letters, but God spoke through the letter-writers in the New Testament about love in unique ways. We must pay attention to context and acknowledge that God always speaks in fresh ways about constant ideas.  McKnight posits that likewise God is speaking today in our unique ways too.  In theory, this idea is spot on, of course how God speaks to us today and what exactly is God’s unique message is a hard idea to nail down with accuracy and widespread acceptance.

Wiki-stories & a universal Story

McKnight suggests the following analogy for how the continual recontextualization works.  He suggests the Bible is a “wiki-story.”  As you might have guessed, this is a neologism based on the idea of Wikipedia, the open source online encyclopedia that can change daily (Personal note: I generally think Wikipedia is a good source for quick research on big ideas about a topic; I am not a WikiHater).  Like Wikipedia, at any given time God can add, change, delete, or rewrite His words for a particular time and place.  At the same time, if someone is going to claim they have a message from God, there is foundational information that has to be included for an entry to have any credibility.  The technical term for this would be Jewish “midrash.”  These interpretive retellings are all part of a series of the one Story that God wants to tell.  Each author tells the big Story in his or her own way.  None of these wiki-stories are final or comprehensive, each tells a true story of the one true Story.

In so describing the message of the Bible this way, McKnight is talking about a “metanarrative” that ties all of the Bible, later retellings of biblical ideas, and really all of life together.  While the details may and do change, there is a core Story that is eternal and unchanging.

No Shortcuts

Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet, Chapter 3: Inkblots and Puzzles

With this chapter McKnight starts a new section devoted to answering the question: What is the Bible?  Of course, how one answers this question shapes how one reads the Bible.  I couldn’t help but feel like there was overlap between these first three chapters, but the book is anything but technical so it reads quickly.

The author posits that what we really want is for the Bible to come alive and transport us into a whole new world, as did the maritime picture in C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of The Dawn Treader into which Edmund, Lucy and Eustace “swim” back to Narnia.  This idea of world-constructing portal into a new kind of existence is an excellent one!

Unfortunately, like so many other things in our life, we take shortcuts instead.  McKnight lists six such shortcuts:

1. Reducing the Bible to nothing more than a lawbook.  The problem with this approach is that this tends to turn us into self-righteous, judgmental people who miss the bigger point.
2. Reducing the Bible to lists of blessings and promises.  The problem is that we expect life to always be pleasant and miss the character formation possible from hardships.
3. Reading the Bible like an inkblot or mirror which are really just ways to say something about yourself.  The problem here is that this casts the Bible in our own image to serve our own desires.  This approach isn’t redemptive, it is narcissistic.
4. Reading the Bible as if it is a puzzle that is intended to be put together piece by piece.  In this approach we are really trying to construct the “picture” of what was behind the Bible.  The problem is that we don’t know what that picture was and it is arrogant to think we can totally figure it out and master the Bible.  This is a shortcut because once we “put the puzzle together” we don’t think we ever have to again.
5. Reading the Bible through the lens of one master, usually Jesus or Paul.  The problem here is that we make everything fit with that one person’s theology and usually miss things in our reductionism.

In the next chapter McKnight will give us a better analogy to use to answer the question, “What is the Bible?”

Three Ways to Read the Bible

Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet, Chapter 2: The Birds and I

This chapter is where McKnight explains the analogy that produced the title of the book.  I’ll let you buy the book to get that explanation.  It is a helpful metaphor.

McKnight argues there are three main ways people read the Bible. He acknowledges his list is both reductionistic and strips apart methods some people put together.

1. Reading to retrieve:  We go “back to the Bible” in order to figure out how to live and believe today.  In whole or in part, we try to make a first century text fit our modern world.  The problem is that this is neither fully possible nor practical.  Also, everyone ends up with his own interpretation of what to bring forward to today and how to do this.  We do need to “adopt” the words of the Bible but we also need to “adapt” them to our unique world.
2. Reading through tradition:  We need to pay attention to the major traditions of the church down through time as we interpret the Bible.  This norms biblical interpretation and keeps us from everyone from having their own interpretations.  The problem is that it is very easy to “fossilize” these traditions, making them equal to the Bible and unable to be changed.
3. Reading with tradition:  We should not ignore church tradition but we also shouldn’t fossilize them either.  This gives us guidance as we read but we also must maintain freedom to understand the Bible in a new way.  The problem with this approach is hyper-innovation, that is, always changing how what we do and believe.  McKnight posits that we can fight that with a “profound respect” for tradition but resisting the urge to make it the final authority as only scripture can be that.  Still, we need to slow down long enough to ask what the Church has thought about what we are reading.  This last approach is the one McKnight favors.

He is right that his list is a simplified one.  I feel like there are approaches he has missed that do not fit his list, in particular a more principle-driven approach that goes back to the Bible looking for timeless principles apart from a literal understanding of their texts.  Or how about this one stated below that I am partial to, the four-part approach popular in the Wesleyan tradition?

God Says It, I Believe It, So That Settles It! Really?

Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet, Chapter 1: The Book and I

Like many of us, McKnight grew up hearing this mantra: “God says it, I believe it, so that settles it.”

Oh, if it could only be that easy!  McKnight quickly grew skeptical of this slogan.  Few actually practice straight literalism.  It seemed to him (and maybe to us too?) that really we all pick and choose how we will read and apply the Bible.  And we don’t treat all texts within the Bible the same way either.

McKnight (who really seems to like lists) gave the following five explanations he has heard from the “God-says-it-that-settles-it” people for why that same slogan doesn’t always apply and why they pick and choose instead.

1. Some commands are no longer binding on Christians, like Sabbath-keeping
2. Some commands have morphed, such as tithing to the Temple and to the poor now has become giving to church
3. Some commands are about timeless principles not actual words, such as foot washing which is really about serving others’ needs
4. Some commands were time bound and are no longer in effect today, such as miraculous spiritual gifts
5. Some commands only apply to specific groups, for instance only the apostles were expected to sell all of their possessions

So how do we read the Bible?  Simple literalism isn’t the answer.

How to Read the Bible Series

How should we read and apply the words of an ancient Bible to our modern world?

That is one big question and certainly a foundational one. There is rarely a month that goes by when I don’t end up in a conversation–sometimes contentious–that doesn’t essentially come down to a basic disagreement on how to read the Bible. Sure, on the surface the topics are diverse: music in the church, baptism, church finances and spending, the standard of living Christians are to have, or — the two that are now occupying my mind — female leadership in the church, and acceptance of active homosexuals in the church.  However, when you get below the surface it becomes apparent we are really disagreeing over how best to read and apply the Bible to our world today.

This summer I have set forth to read three relatively recent books addressing this topic: Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read The Bible; N. T. Wright, Scripture and The Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today; and Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture.  If I can stay on track with this project I will blog what I am discovering as I read.

Book Review: Tim Keller, “The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness”

Why do people do bad things? Is it because of a lack of self-esteem that causes them to hold too low a view of themselves?  That is the dominant view in our society. Or is it because of personal pride and too high a view of themselves?  This was what was traditionally thought; think of the concept of hubris to the ancient Greeks. This is the question Tim Keller takes up in his new, tiny book The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness: The Path to True Christian Joy.

The ego is normally competitive. Pride is achieved at the expense of others and remains inflated only as long as one’s performance is better than others. This comparison game is a hard one to constantly win.

Usually we bolster our self-esteem by living up to other’s high expectations. But these shift and our ability to meet those expectations fluctuates, leaving us in a trap of frustration. The self-help industry tells us that the way out of that trap is to set our own standards and judge ourselves only by those. We can feel good about ourselves when we meet our own standards. But that is a trap too because we rarely meet those either. Or we set our goals so low they evoke little in the way of pride.  So Paul looks elsewhere.

The goal is to take oneself out of the equation, to stop judging ourselves by our failures and successes, to simply think about yourself less. Keller calls this “gospel-humility.”

Gospel-humility is not needing to think about myself.  Not needing to connect things with myself. . . . True gospel-humility means I stop connecting every experience, every conversation, with myself.  In fact, I stop thinking about myself.  The freedom of self-forgetfulness. (p.32)

As C. S. Lewis once stated, a truly humble person doesn’t talk about how bad they are because they are still focusing on themselves. They focus on others instead.  Then they have the freedom to “perform” or act because of God’s gracious “verdict” instead of performing to get a verdict.  One should recognize that Keller has stripped down the issue of self-esteem to the level of gospel.  Our goodness derives from God’s grace, not our own actions.  This applies to salvation, but also self-esteem.

Nonetheless, Keller’s description of a truly self-forgetful person seems very idealistic and out of reach.

Wouldn’t you like to be the skater who wins the silver, and yet is thrilled about those three triple jumps that the gold medal winner did?  To love it the way you love a sunrise?  Just to love the fact that it was done?  For it not to matter whether it was their success or your success.  Not to care if they did it or you did it. You are as happy that they did it as if you had done it yourself — because you are just so happy to see it. (p.35)

This will take a great amount of emotional control to attain. God will have to be at least as real to a person as other humans are. Keller realizes this and ends with the encouragement that reminding ourselves of the redemptive truth of the gospel has to come each new day.

For $5 one gets 45 pages of sound, focused teaching that is extremely gospel-centered. This is an excellent example of how we can let the good news infuse all topics of human concern.  Given the size of the book, this is also a very good choice for an e-reader, if you have converted. Personally for the price, I would have liked a bit more practical advice on how to let these concepts change my way of thinking and living.

Three Types of Church Dropouts

The Sunday school class I co-teach at church is working through David Kinnaman’s “You Lost Me,” a good research-based survey of the faith of Christian 18-29 year-olds (see my thoughts on the book as a whole here).  Fifty-nine percent of Christian twentysomethings “dropout” of church for a time or altogether during the third decade of their life.  As parents of future (and a few present) twentysomethings and church members with 18-29 year-olds we care about, we want to know why this is happening and what we can do better to stem this tide a bit.  There are many good books out there on this topic right now, and Kinnaman’s is one.

Drawing from his research, he identifies three different kinds of dropouts: prodigals, those who reject God and Church completely; nomads, those who rootlessly move in and out of churches through seasons of devotion and apathy unconvinced of the churches’ relevance; and exiles, sincere lovers of God who find the traditional church a hard and ineffective place to stay.

I put Kinnaman’s observations about these three types of church dropouts in the following downloadable chart: Three Types of Church Dropouts

Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh Discovered

Passed along by Melanie.  Have a good weekend!

“Dead Sea Squirrels” by Beth DeMeo

April is National Poetry Month and as the month draws to a close here is a poem for all of us who enjoy the fun you can have with language.  I believe these are called malapropisms, but whatever they are they are funny!  Thanks to Melanie for passing the poem along.

Dead Sea Squirrels

Right from the gecko

She put in her two senses; 

No tudors in the writing center

No ten minuets on the computer

No number of classroom lesions

Could be taken for granite.  

She would have her paper view,

Her deceleration of independence.

“Life,” she wrote, “begins at contraception.”

 

She wasn’t a pre-Madonna,

Wasn’t interested in the Higher Archy; 

It was really one in the same,

A mute point, considering her verbal jesters,

But a bit of a nuance if

All her class precipitation wouldn’t be worth wild.  

 

She studied the dead sea squirrels

And the broke period,

And the mid-evil

And the futile system

And the reasons for a military to protect the boarders;

History, time in again, was a doggie dog world

With no daycare faculties.

 

She defiantly liked her English professor,

And was in his good gracious.

She read about Romeo and Juliet’s vowels,

And how he never got the letter from the fryer.

She read of the viscous murder in the Tell-Tale Heart,

And the emaciate conception

And the unchased women,

How the lover was great full for his girlfriend,

And how literature teaches us all

To cease the day.

– Beth DeMeo in the English Journal, March 2012