To Teach:
The Bible, when it is principled, turns the principles into the goal and truth rather than the Bible itself. The Bible becomes a launch pad on which a contemporary setting can create principles to project onto others even though it is really from within themselves. All the while they are depending upon the Text to substantiate and validate their idea because of the authority prescribed to it by others.
This is sloppy sales at its worst.
Take a network that already exists, derive importance for yourself and for your particular craft out of the fidelity that others show to that network and sell a new idea. Principlizing the text makes the principle more central than the Text itself (To Know and Love God/Shaped by the Story), thereby making the one principlizing more important and central than the author(s) or larger story of the Text. It represents another attempt at creating a mediatorial buffer between us and the Divine, something humans have sought to do from the beginning.
Solution:
Let us hide from God and all our problems will go away, or at least they will seem to not exist in our existential reality.
Perennial Question:
“Where are you?” This question, asked by God, is not a question asked to actually locate us but is instead for us to locate Him, after we have sought to dislocate Him. In the question, he becomes present to us though in reality he never actually left. So why ask the question?
The issue is that humanity desires for God to be spatially located, like us, and not omni-present. As long as he is omni-present, I have to deal with his presence and all that his presence means. Psychologically, if we believe in a God that is controlling, unmoved, arbitrary, mean, a moral drill sergeant, or any litany of qualities that make him undesirable to be around, then we will create spaces and places where his presence doesn’t reside, wouldn’t reside or would despise.
The great Teacher overturned all of these expectations by going to those exact places to enjoy the people that were there. By being present in the spaces and places where God isn’t known to reside, he allowed the sinners to see God present among them and not only in episodes of visitation and hospitality, but in the glory and grime of each moment these spaces held. Jesus had always been at Zacchaeus’s home. His embodied visitation just tore back the drapes and let light uncover the Father’s abiding presence. He’d always been there, happy, relaxing, loving, angry, hurt and at times disappointed, but never enough to leave. We can take the hand away from our face and stop deceiving ourselves into thinking and acting as if he isn’t there or here. Our desire to put distance between ourselves and the Divine is an age old way of coping. There is grace for us in these moments as God gently leads us into awareness rather than smacking our hand from our eyes to face reality. He is kind.
We need to know that our principlizing of the Text, at one point or another, does cause us to hide our face from the Text. We do this by creating “contemporary” principles that put distance between us and the Text itself.
Does this mean we shouldn’t derive principles from Scripture? Of course not, but we do need to hold back on principlizing solely derived from exposition/exegesis. We need to take a step back and stop proclaiming that there is only one meaning but many applications. We need to let the story speak and the principles to rise like bread in an oven rather than extracting them through microwavable exegesis. There is more than one meaning for many Texts in Scripture and my own principlizing can’t account for them alone.
By being aware of the psychology of this process, I can realize that I want to principlize at times in order to avoid the Text rather than expose it. I want a mediator to stand between myself and the Text so that I don’t have to face the Divine, his presence and all that that means. Lord help us to truly encounter you in the Text, in life, in pain and in each others’ lives. You are present, Help us to know that you don’t want us to be drawn to your presence as much you want us to know that you’ve drawn your presence to us. Help us to know that we not only have access to your presence through Christ, but that your presence has access to us.
“…well-intended churches promote our culture’s humanistic story instead of God’s…When the Bible is no longer embodied and shared as a true story to give my life to, it’s subject to being overcome by the story of the culture. When fragmented and propositionalized, the Bible story risks becoming dull and impotent compared to the powerful message of our culture.” (pg. 62 – Shaped by the Story)
The temple veil was torn
And we walked in
The temple veil was torn
And now He's a friend
The temple veil was torn
Birthing presence into place
The temple veil was torn
Freed Father and forever grace
The temple veil was torn
God's presence reborn
No comments:
Post a Comment