Understanding the Real Word of God

How would you describe the Bible to someone who had never seen it before? A number of possibilities might come to mind. It is the Word of God. Which may not be all that helpful to the inquisitive yet ignorant mind of the seeker. It is a Theology book, or maybe something about ethics or an ideology. That may be true, but it would be unhelpful to the uninformed. You could go with history, however, the history that is there is rather spotty. It also contains some pretty unsettling stories of immoral behavior, murder and a touch of the supernatural. There are times when this history isn't even chronological and bounces from one genre to another. Stories, poetry, letters, some rather apocalyptic stuff, with both gaps and redundancy. It doesn't even seem to hold a very consistent order of things. Moving from expression of literature to another. And what of some of those strange literary images of beasts and wheel inside wheels. None of the Christmas tree topper angels looked like these descriptions. As believers, we can take for granted that all this makes some sort of sense.

Yet, even for us, we tend to gravitate from one Biblical category to another. There is a bit of truth in all of our labels, however, none are really all that satisfying. We struggle, in part, because we are bound to our culture. If you come from a western mindset, Europe or America for example, you view things from a certain perspective. Even those at a greater arms distance have been affected by the influence that western, American, culture wields. With the internet, music and the American film culture few have escaped the western influence. For whatever reason God has determined to reveal Himself through a record of encounters with humanity. For the most part, through His relationship with Israel. The events recorded are relational and experiential, giving information as to who God is, what He has done and what He requires of His creation. We learn of Him through the recorded accounts of His people over an extended time. The accounts are not sanitized or edited to make them more palatable. They carry the wonder of grace and kindness and the horror of depravity and unspeakable cruelty. They do so because that is the reality of humanity either in concert with God's instructions and directions for life or the abject rejection of His authority. These are placed on display in various degrees of agreement or rebellion for us to review, consider and apply.

Western culture prefers order, neat timelines and crisp structure to our stories. We want logic and the right answers. While at the same time we are sold out to situation ethics and flexible morality that changes with the times. The good guys should win, in the end. Directions should be evident and relatively easy to follow. How you feel is important and as long as nobody gets hurt, your actions should not be judged. As the revelation God has chosen to share does not follow those guidelines we pursue ways to make God's accounts more acceptable. Thus, theologians may spend a lifetime writing a systematic theology to gather all the fragments of delineated concepts into one discernible package. We spend vast amounts of time categorizing and cataloguing our findings. We tag them with impressive titles like, pneumatology, hamartiology, Christology and eschatology. We endeavor to create timelines and chronologies so the stories of the Bible can be followed easily and grouped together in handy flow charts. We also spend generations debating topics like "free will vs predestination" "faith and works" and whether you are pre-, post, or a-millennial, struggling to convince the rest of Christendom that we have the right answer.

None of these are particularly wrong. However, I fear we miss much of the real revelation of God in our vain attempt to organize and codify what has been graciously given to us. God integrates everything He chooses to reveal to us. What we desire to divide, the Lord reveals as an integrated whole. As we strive to know the right answer, God desires a right relationship. He gives us a book of examples as to how to achieve that and how to see relationships fall apart. We argue over the future while God reveals how we should live now. We develop charts and timelines while God reveals that He works in cycles. He lets us know if we fail this time there will be another opportunity to get it right. Our timelines tend to imprison us in failure while God reveals that He gives second chances.

Perhaps we need to step back and let the Word of God just be what it is. A remarkable gathering of profoundly messy relationships and experiences with the God of Israel and among the humans that have inhabited this planet. That is where we learn what we need to know. We learn of compassion from the story of Ruth. How to deal with unjust accusations as we follow David while he flees from Saul. Justice and mercy in the account of Sodom and Gomorrah. God's sovereign control in the story of Esther. A bit about the consequences of deceit and the God of second chances from the life of Jacob. How God redeems a murderer in the life of the Apostle Paul. The hope of the resurrection from the women at the tomb. Real people, real relationships, real life experiences with the God of creation. Has our effort to "rightly divide the Word of truth" left us with a cold academics that denies the real Word of God? A message from a God who loved us so much He recorded a book filled with experiences we can relate to just to show us who He is and how we can best live life in the here and now. Maybe this is the real revelation God has given us after all.