What Do We Say about,... the Bible? Is it Still Relevant?


What Do We Say about,… the Bible?  Is It Still Relevant?
Luke 4:14-21
February 12, 2012

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Have you ever been booed?  I mean really booed by others?  I’ve been booed twice.  I actually got booed at my wedding.  You know how at weddings people clink their glasses to get the couple to kiss.  I told Diane that I wasn’t going to do that, and so when people started to clink their glasses to get us to kiss, I shook my head “no.”  That’s when they booed us. 

I also was booed once in a class at seminary.  It was my first year, and I don’t remember what the class was, but we were in the midst of a discussion on the relevancy of the Bible in today’s world.  I made the comment that I just wish we could get rid of the Old Testament.  I said that it was filled with violence, bigotry, and archaic ideas, and that we would be much better off without it.  After I said it, members of the class actually booed me.  I chalked it up to their being ignorant, but over the years I discovered that I was the ignorant one.

My comment was born out of my ignorance.  I had read the Bible from cover to cover the summer before seminary, but I have to admit that I didn’t really understand much of it.  The Bible really isn’t a book to be read cover to cover like a novel.  It’s a book to be read slowly with biblical aids to help it make sense.  But I didn’t know that.  When I read the Old Testament it confused me. I wasn’t sure if it was accurate history or not, and I couldn’t keep all the stories straight.  Also, when I read the prophets, I couldn’t figure out what they were so angry about.  Same with Paul.  I now understand the different books, but back then I was just confused. So I picked up and held up the violence and what seemed like bigotry, without recognizing that this was a very small percentage of the Old Testament.

My beliefs about the Old Testament reflected what a lot of people in and outside the church think about the Bible.  Over the years I’ve heard many, many people complain that it’s an archaic and outdated book full of ancient superstition, violence, bigotries, and ignorance.

Is the Bible outdated?  Is it still relevant to today?  How we answer that question has a lot to do with whether we’ve actually read the Bible or not, and how we’ve read it if we have.  What I’ve noticed over the years is that a lot of people have strong opinions on the Bible, despite the fact that they’ve never really read it, or if they have, they’ve read it like I did before going to seminary.  I had a strong opinion based on little knowledge and lots of ignorance.  But the question still remains:  Is it outdated?  Is it still relevant?  To answer those questions, you have to get clear on what the Bible is and isn’t. 

First, despite what many Christians argue, the Bible is not a history book.  It’s a book of wisdom and revelation.  The Bible is not trying to tell us what happened in human history or the world’s history.  It is trying to tell us about who God is and who we are.  It is trying to tell us about what God has done, is doing, and will do.  It uses history, but it’s not a book of history. 

One reason it is clearly not a book of history is that back when the books of the Bible were being written people didn’t think historically.  That’s hard for us to understand in our modern age, but to delve into history as a study, you need one crucial thing that people of ancient times didn’t have:  leisure time for study, as well as written records to study.  To wonder what happened in history, people have to have the time to sit around and think, and in the ancient world people didn’t have that time.  They often lived hand-to-mouth.  They had very little free time.  So their questions weren’t historical questions about what happened.  Their questions were about why life is so hard and where God is in the midst of this hard life.  When we treat the Bible like a history book, we actually misuse it.  . 

When the Bible is read literally as history, it gets stripped of its wisdom.  As a history book it’s “okay” history.  Many, or even most, of its stories are based on real historical events, but that doesn’t mean that they were written to give us historical accounts.  Remember, the biblical writers were trying to tell us about God, not history. That’s why, in Genesis, there are two different creation stories.  Because we have a need to have only one story due to our desire to have one historical account, we tend to merge the stories to create one story, but there are two, and they can’t be easily merged. 

The first story is the one we often cite.  It’s in chapter one of Genesis, and it tells the story of God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh.  In this account, humans are the last to be created.  Everything comes before them, and on the sixth day God creates humans, and it insinuates that God created a bunch of them, not just one or two.  As it says, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  So in this story, God creates humans last, and probably creates a whole tribe of humans.  Then in chapter two a whole different story is told.  In this one God creates a garden with a spring welling up in the center that becomes the headwaters of the great rivers of the Middle East.  In this story one human is created first.  The plants and animals all come second.  Toward the end the human is put to sleep and a male and female are created from that one human. 

            These two stories conflict with each other, especially if they are historical accounts.  But they don’t conflict if the purpose of the stories is to tell us about what God has done, is doing, and will do.  In the first story we learn that everything is created as good, and that we humans are created in God’s image.  It’s telling us that we are good, the world is good, God is good, and there is something of God in each and every one of us.  The second story tells us something similar, but it also tells us that there is a propensity toward sin among humans—toward carving our own way in ignorance of what God wants. 

            The Bible knows that these two stories exist side-by-side, yet it doesn’t try to reconcile the two.  It puts them both there to teach us about God and ourselves.  The problem is that we humans (perhaps out of our sinful need for things to have things fit our image) cram the stories together and treat them like historical documents on creation.  We have a need for this, but the Bible doesn’t.  It gives us two stories and says to us, “Learn about God, the universe, life, and yourself from these stories.” 

            The creation stories aren’t the only place in the Bible where different accounts are given.  A bit later in Genesis we get another conflict.  In chapter six, we hear the Noah story that we’re all familiar with.  Noah builds an ark and puts in the animals two-by-two.  But then in chapter seven we get a surprise.  The story is retold and God tells Noah to build and ark and put the animals in seven-by-seven for every ritually clean animal, and two-by-two for every ritually unclean animal.  If it’s history, why the two stories?  Because it’s not trying to tell us history, per se, but about God and us.  These are stories about human sin, and God’s attempt to get humans on the right track.  One is told from a general Jewish perspective, the other from a more orthodox Jewish perspective.  We don’t see the need for the two perspectives today, which is why we tend to choose the first story over the other, but back in ancient Judaism they did see the need because they were trying to communicate different things through each story. 

            Again, there are other areas where the Bible conflicts.  For example, look at the Gospels.  There are four gospel stories.  If it were history, wouldn’t we only have one?  And looking at the Gospel stories you find that some actually conflict in the details.  For instance, let’s just look at the time when Jesus overturns the tables in the Temple.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, this takes place after Jesus has spent three years teaching, preaching, and healing.  It’s part of what irritates the Jewish authorities, and eventually leads them to crucify him.  But in John’s gospel Jesus overturns the tables right after he’s baptized.  Then he goes on to do his three-year ministry.  Some have tried to say that the discrepancy is due to the fact that Jesus must of have overturned the tables twice—once in the beginning of his ministry, and once during the end.  But that’s not what the Bible tells us.  The Bible doesn’t care about the chronology because it’s trying to tell us about the nature of Jesus, of God, and of us.  It’s not trying to be history.  It’s trying to be a book of wisdom and revelation. 

We have a need to turn the Bible into something it isn’t.  What the Bible is best at, though, is lifting the veil between us and the Divine.  It doesn’t care so much about history as it does about trying to help us connect with God and to see God all through everyday life.  All of its stories are about people experiencing God, people struggling to follow God, people calling on each other to be better in following God, and instructions on experiencing and following God.  It also contains prayers (the Psalms and Lamentations), wisdom (Proverbs and Ecclesiastes), and much more.  And at times it actually argues against itself.

For instance, in the earlier books of the Bible there’s an implicit theology that when we do good, God will bless us with stuff—wealth and health.  And when we don’t do good, we get punished by God taking away our stuff.  But the whole Book of Job argues against this belief by suggesting that an upright, honest, and righteous man is cursed even though he is good.  In that book it changes the theology to say that sometimes we aren’t blessed because we are good.  Instead, even though we are good we must find a way to hold onto God in faith even though bad things happen to us. 

It’s because the Bible lifts that veil that we preach on it each week, and it is why Jesus studied it himself.  You see the Bible is a book of ancient wisdom and revelation.  It’s not like the bestselling books on spirituality of today.  There are a lot of very popular books both in the Christian world and outside of it, but none have the full scope that the Bible offers.  We get attracted to books written by one person, writing from a modern perspective, telling us what is comforting for us in a modern context.  In other words, we get attracted to spiritual books that are geared to us today.  And as a result, that tend to have modern biases that we simply can’t see because we are modern.  In essence, we are obsessed with newness, and often lack appreciation for ancient wisdom.  We love new things and new ideas.  Think about this.  Who of you, if I offered you $100,000 to renovate your home, buy a new car and television, and do whatever you want, would turn it down?  We love new things.  And like things, we are captivated by new ideas.  We tend to think that only ideas generated today are valid.  We do this in all areas of life.  We think that ancient people we generally ignorant compared to today—that they were superstitious, lacking in scientific knowledge, and prone to ancient biases. 

The Bible overcomes this by being a book written by hundreds of writers spanning almost 3000 years.  The Bible itself was composed over 1500 years, but it contains stories that go back much earlier.  What this says is that the Bible is timeless, not time-bound, while our thinking is time-bound, not timeless.  When we look at the Bible, we are tempted to think of it as just being old.  But compare the stories of Daniel with the stories of Moses.  There’s almost a 1000-year gap between the two.  We tend to think that only a generation or two separate them, but the wisdom of Exodus and of Daniel span a long period.  This overcomes the obsession with newness by connecting us with wisdom and revelation about God that is timeless.  Thus, the Bible is not a historical textbook, or even a guidebook.  Instead, it is a book that should be read, reread, and thought deeply about so that in the process we can become transformed into people that God calls us to be.  As the Eastern Orthodox Christians might say, we are created in God’s image, but through reading the Bible we begin to be formed more and more in to God’s likeness. 

Ultimately, what makes the Bible powerful is how, century after century, it has had the power to transform people who read it.  The Bible is always relevant because it always has the power to transform cultures, nations, and people.  Think about all the movements that have been inspired by the Bible.  Individual rights conferred on people through the Magna Carter were principles that came out of Christian thought.  Modern capitalistic thought was built, in many ways, by the thinking of the Puritans in Massachusetts and the Quakers of Pennsylvania.  James Madison’s understanding of Presbyterian government inspired much of our modern American Democracy.  The Civil Rights movement under Martin Luther King came straight out of his and others’ reading of the Bible. 

Ultimately, though, what I think makes the Bible incredibly relevant year after year is how it has had the power to transform individuals for over 2000 years.  Let me show you what I mean.  A number of years ago a retiring general was given a send-off dinner by his staff.  This general had been a good general, caring about his troops, organized in his manner, and effective in his thinking.  To everyone around him, it seemed like he had had a seamless and consistently rising career.  During the dinner, several junior officers asked him, “You’ve had such a successful career without the normal ups and downs.  How did you do it?” 

The general said to them, “You think this because you don’t know much about my earlier career in the military. Let me tell you about my life before I got it together.  When I was a young officer I let alcohol destroy my life.  When I was sober, I was a good officer.  I was respectful of my superiors, and supportive of my soldiers.  But I couldn’t quit drinking.  There were days when I started drinking early in the day.  And on those days I was surly to my superiors, and I abused my soldiers.  No one knew what kind of officer they were getting on any day.  Then I started getting demoted.  I was one of the few officers ever demoted to private, which they did to try to get my head on straight.  All it did was make me more despondent and I drank more. 

“One day a monk from the local monastery came by.  The officers used to let them come to the base to beg for alms, and to give spiritual counsel.  The monk saw me sitting on a bench, looking like the world was crushing me down.  He asked me what was wrong.  I told him my story.  He said to me, ‘I have an idea.  Tomorrow I will bring by a copy of the four gospels, and each time you want to drink, try reading a chapter from them instead.’  I looked at him like he was crazy, and said, ‘That’s not going to help me.  Reading a book isn’t going to help me.’  He replied, ‘Well, the reason I suggest this is that this is exactly what my brother did.  He was in as poor a shape as you, and his salvation was the four gospels.  He did what I suggested to you, and he’s now been sober for 15 years.  Just try it.’

“The next day he brought a copy of the four gospels to me.  I thumbed through it and scoffed, thinking, ‘I don’t even understand what I’m reading.’  With that, I threw it into my footlocker.  Later that day I felt the need to have a drink, so I looked through my footlocker for money and came across the gospels.  I started to read.  At first I felt nothing but the desire to drink, but as I kept reading chapters the desire to drink went away from me.  The next day I felt the need to drink, and this time I grabbed the gospels, and the desire went away.  Over the course of the next year I read the gospels everyday, and the desire to drink went away completely.  I’ve now been sober for 25 years.  I begin everyday with a half-an-hour of Bible reading, and it keeps me on the right path.  From that point on I was made an officer again, and rose up through the ranks to what I am now.  So you see, my career wasn’t always easy, but once I got right with God things worked out.” 

This is the power of the Bible.  It transforms history, nations, cultures, groups, and individuals, and it has been doing so for 2000 years.  What it says to me is that the Bible is always relevant, but to find out how relevant it is, we have to actually try reading it. 

Amen. 

What Do We Say about,... Being Spiritual but not Religious?





Luke 15:11-32
January 29, 2012

Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

I want to begin by asking you to look up on your computer a video on YouTube.  It’s a video that’s gone viral (for those who don’t know what that means, it means that word-of-mouth about it has led millions of people to watch the video).  The video is by a Seattle man, Jefferson Bethke, and it speaks to many in the younger generations about their take on religion.  Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY

This video seems to make a lot of sense to a lot of people, but it has a major flaw, which is that you really can’t be a Christ-follower and at the same time declare yourself to be non-religious.  This video is a Christian version of a wider belief in our culture that you can be “spiritual but not religious.”  And this belief has the same flaw as the video, but I’ll get to that in a bit. 

I certainly understand the whole “I’m spiritual but not religious” attitude.  I shared it for at least eight years.  I mentioned last week that I dabbled with atheism for about a year, but after that I pretty much declared myself to be “spiritual but not religious.”  What was ironic was that I still said it while I was in seminary.  I really struggled with religion.  I understood personally how “spiritual but not religious” people look at our churches and think, “Man!  I don’t want to be like them.”  They say it because among us they see so many people who are clearly “religious but not spiritual,”

They see people in church, or who proclaim themselves to be Christian, but who don’t seem to have a loving bone in their body.  They see pettiness among Christians.  They hear gossip and criticism among Christians.  They see bad behavior and a lack of compassion (of course, I’m not talking about Calvin Presbyterian Church members ;-).  They see religious leaders on television and the internet who seem bigoted and dismissive of everyone who isn’t Christian like them.  It becomes easy for them to think that, “religion gets in the way of faith and spirituality, and I want to have nothing to do with it.” 

I get all this because I personally said all this.  But what changed my mind was something a New Testament professor of mine said in my last year of seminary.  I don’t remember what we were talking about, but he made the comment that “You can’t follow Christ without a community, and the people of Jesus’ times understood this because they weren’t individuals.”  That’s a hard statement for us to digest because it doesn’t quite make sense to us modern Americans.  He explained that back in Jesus’ day, people weren’t individuals.  Individualism—the tendency to see ourselves as individuals first, part of a group second, was a modern concept.  Back in Jesus’ day, the phrase, “be your own man,” or “just be yourself” would have made no sense. 

In Jesus’ day it was your family, your community, and your religion that gave you a sense of identity.  The people of his day identified themselves by their community (Jesus of Nazareth) and by their tribe (the twelve tribes of Israel).  They had no concept of being anything but religious since their religion, Judaism, was their identity.  To say that Jesus hated religion and came to abolish it simply wasn’t true.  Jesus’ religion was part of his identity. 

The professor’s statement made me realize that claiming that we are “spiritual but not religious” is a view of faith that arises out of our cultural trap.  We modern Americans are trapped in a perspective that is uniquely American and modern.  America is obsessed with individualism.  We worship the individual.  We worship those who stand out from the crowd as individuals and seem to have made it, whether we are talking about Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Sydney Crosby, Tom Brady, Taylor Swift, Brad Pitt, or any one of a thousand different people. 

The sociologist Robert Bellah was one of the first to really talk about the American obsession with individualism.  In his groundbreaking book, Habits of the Heart, he pointed out that America was settled by individualists who were willing to leave family and friends to strike out on their own in a new land. This ethos has stayed with us, but nowadays it seems like it is on steroids.  He even coined a term for this kind of religious individualism: Sheilaism. He coined the term after interviewing a woman named Sheila Larson, who told him that “I believe in God.  I’m not a religious fanatic.  I can’t remember the last time I went to church.  My faith has carried me a long way.  It’s Sheilaism.  Just my own little voice…  It’s just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself.”  Bellah and his researchers noticed in this that people were creating their own religion based on their own beliefs, and that Sheila wasn’t alone.

I was an adherent of Sheilaism (well,… Grahamism, actually).  And the movement from being an individual to being part of a religious community was hard on me.  That’s one reason my Ph.D. dissertation explored the movement from an individualistic to a communal spirituality.  I realized that to grow spiritually we need to become part of a spiritual community, but for many Americans that is very difficult, especially since modern culture has become so much more individualistic than even when I was a kid.

Our passage for this morning has something to say about this individualism.  The prodigal son was an individualist.  He wanted his money, his share, of his inheritance so that he could go out and do his own thing, be his own man, and find himself.  But when it all went bad he realized that he needed something beyond himself, and that to find it he had to both rejoin his family and his community.

Basically, the point of everything I’m saying is that being “spiritual but not religious” eventually makes us neither spiritual nor religious. Why do I say this?  Let’s look at several reasons.

First, the “spiritual but not religious” crowd treats spirituality like a smorgasborg or buffet.  I want you to imagine that after church you go down to the Sheraton in Cranberry Township for the Sunday brunch.  You get up from your table and make your way to the buffet.  There’s so much yummy stuff.  You can get a freshly made belgian waffle with syrup, whipped cream, and blueberries.  You can get crepes.  You can get eggs benedict.  You can get muffins and danishes.  You can get bacon and sausage.  Sure, there’s healthy stuff there, but you’re not going to eat much of that.  You’re not there for that.  But then think about how do you feel afterwards? Sluggish?  Tired?  A bit sick? 

Being focusing on taste, not health, is the whole reason for being there.  People who are “spiritual but not religious” treat faith and spirituality like a buffet.  They pick and choose among all the religions and their teachings to take what feels good, tastes good, and is easy.  By and large they aren’t choosing the tough parts about practicing faith and growing spiritually—things like being part of a community that pushes you to pray, study, become self-disciplined, work together, and care for people and situations beyond yourself.  Growing in faith takes work, commitment, struggle, and learning.  The “spiritual but not religious” crowd treats growing spiritually like all it takes is a walk in the woods.  They say things like “Well, I find God more in the woods or in a park than I do in church.”  So?  Often I do too?  But the woods don’t push me to grow.  They don’t push me to care about others.  They don’t push me to feed the poor, help the afflicted, care about the oppressed.  Growing spiritually isn’t just about feeling good.  It’s about being pushed to stretch and grow beyond ourselves.  When we pick and choose, like in a buffet, it dulls our senses rather than enlivening them.  It really makes us neither spiritual nor religious.

Second, despite what the video clip says, Jesus was religious.  Jesus was a deeply religious man.  For example, in scripture what name did the disciples give Jesus?  Often they called him “rabbouni” or “rabbi.”  He was a rabbi, acting out of the Jewish rabbinical tradition.  That’s why he had twelve disciples.  That was typical of rabbis in that day and age.  Rabbis (the term means “teacher”) generally gathered a group of disciples (students) around them, and they would live together while the rabbi taught them day-to-day how to live in obedience to the Law.  By gathering twelve disciples around him, Jesus was living out of the Jewish religion.  He also was known to worship and read in the synagogue, and he spent time in the Temple.  He might have caused problems there, but only because he overturned the tables of the moneychangers he saw as corrupting the religious practices of the Temple.  He was protecting the religion, not trying to abolish it.  He was trying to reform it, but that’s different from hating it or wanting to abolish it. 

Third, the “I’m a follower of Jesus, or “spiritual but not religious” crowd also ignore what religion does that is crucial.  Religion offers teachings, practices, rituals, and opportunities that open people up to God.  These are opportunities that the “not religious” crowd often doesn’t think about. Everything at Calvin Presbyterian Church is geared towards engaging us in activities that stretch and grow us spiritually.  We worship, offer and take classes, engage in times of prayer, are part of small groups, give to charity, and engage in a LOT of mission.  Everything we do stretches us to grow beyond our self-complacent spirituality.  Our spirituality is a lived out spirituality that pushes us to reach beyond ourselves in many, many ways.

It’s this opportunity to practice faith and spirituality that’s the most important.  What we want to be is spiritual and religious, because the combination is powerful in helping us actually grow to be deep spiritual people.  But when people say they are “spiritual but not religious,” they are saying that they are spiritual but really don’t want to practice their spirituality in any way that may cause them to really grow.  It’s kind of like saying, “I’m into nature, but I don’t like to be outside.”  “I’m athletic, but I don’t do sports.”  “I’m a learner, but I don’t believe in education.”  “I’m an actor, but I don’t believe in plays, films, and television.” 

To grow in anything you have to be stretched to grow.  What stretches people who are “spiritual but not religious?”  Walking in woods?  That’s not stretching.  That’s relaxing.

The basic problem of being “spiritual but not religious” is that doing it on your own, according to your own whims, following your own way, creating our own practices, and being our own guides actually pulls us away from being spiritual.  It makes us neither spiritual nor religious.  Not being religious kind of makes us like a spiritual water spiders who can skitter all over the surface, looking at interesting things, but unable to go into any depth.  We never discover what’s deeper down because we stay on the surface. 

I’ll close with a parting comment by reminding you that we still have to listen deeply and carefully to what people who are “spiritual but not religious” have to say to us about us.  I may have argued against what they say, but their criticism of us is still legitimate.  When they say that they are “spiritual but not religious,” they are reminding us that we are deeply called to be spiritual and religious, rather than religious but not spiritual.  We are called to be beacons of light, and not just empty lanterns. 

Amen.