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the literal word or the actual word?
I believe the Bible literally, word for word. Sorry, that’s not good enough. It’s not direct enough. It’s not immediate enough. It’s not what God–through the Bible–is communicating. God wants to speak to us through the Bible and this can only happen when the words become more than literal. It can only happen when they become actual.
Abram heard actual words: “The Lord said to Abram ‘Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you.” Did he hear the words through his ears? the vibrations of speech striking his tympanic membrane? Or did the words by-pass the ear drum and go straight into the mystery of his consciousness which can’t be pinned down (yet) by any means? Does it matter? He knew as we know when we hear words.
He had no Bible, no text, no Torah. He heard a voice. Does God want less for us who have the Bible, the text, the Torah, the accumulated history of millennia of believers finding their father in Abraham?
The only question is: are words meant to be heard? Abraham heard words. Are we meant to hear words? That is, are we meant to experience words conveyed in-with-through a voice–the words of a personal being? One can read the Bible literally and it remains letters on a page or a screen: letters to which we assign our own voice or the voice of someone other than the One who inspired–breathed–the words in the first place.
We can spout opinions regarded to be orthodox without having heard the words. We can do this even when we believe the Bible to be the literal word of God.
So what? That’s inadequate.
Provin’ Ourselves Right-Thinking, the Easy Way
In our current American evangelical community ethos, we prove our tribal loyalty, we demonstrate our presumed faithfulness to God by asserting our committment to the literal words of the Bible, as though that is enough. I understand why we do this. It is because we’ve been in a century long debate with those who seem to be influenced by literary trends that only deconstruct the text and in so doing question whether the text of Scripture or any text for that matter can bear any meaning other than the meaning brought to it by the listener. As though there is no such thing as person-to-person communication.
We want to be earnest, real-deal believers in Jesus. I do. So we are not satisfied with a deconstructed text or a deconstructed Jesus. We long for the risen and reconstituted Jesus, the once dead but now living Lord.
But we take short-cuts. One of the short cuts is the adoption of the opinion that if we use this word “literal” in reference to the Bible, we’re saying what it is God wants. The instinct to want to say what God wants is commendable. The short-cut is not.
Believing the text to be the literal word of God isn’t enough. Or what we often mean by that is not enough. We can read the text literally with no voice attached. This is what the written word allows us to do: reduce a spoken word into a symbolic code. In the process, the voice is not conveyed. The voice has to be imagined, inferred, or better yet heard by a work of the Spirit riding on the symbolic code of the letters. Can we be open to the text but not the Spirit? I think so.
Please Don’t Mention This to Your Psychiatrist
Ah, but there’s the rub! How frightening! How imposing! How intimidating! How out of my control! Gosh that’s brazen, bold, almost sounds crazy, that letters on a page or a screen could be ridden by the Spirit like the wind, and the breathe of God could be conveyed within us and we could experience–feel, think, whatever it is that happens within us with a person speaks and we hear–God.
Let’s take it a step further: the Bible itself bears witness to our faith in Jesus as Abrahamic. Abraham is the father of all who believe. His connection with God is a paradigm, a pattern for ours. And Abraham heard words from God, even without a text, before any text had been gathered. If we believe the Bible to be inspired, as I do, then we believe that the God who inspired that Bible has the capacity to communicate with fallen, broken, paganesque, godless people such as Abram, such as ourselves, with an immediacy that is frightening. God may certainly do this in any way he chooses.
So What?
How would this affect us practically? It would mean that in addition to reading the Bible we would aslo meditate on Scripture. Our meditation on Scripture is a different mode of engagement than our mere reading of Scripture. Different things will come to light, different aspects of our being will be engaged. We will undergo God in a way that we don’t–or don’t always or readily–when we simply read Scripture.
Both are important. But of the two, meditating on Scripture, is I think, more important. Why? Because it is available to all people, not just to people who can read and who have access to a readable text. Those who simply hear the words of Scripture from another human being may meditate on those words–what most believers through most of church history did when they were unable to read or had not access to a text.
Speak Lord, Your Servants are Listening!
And it means that we are to anticipate, expect, yearn for, an experience of perceiving the voice of God in a way that fits us in the way that Abram’s perception of God’s voice fit him. Just as well: we can’t get into his head to know how it felt to him to hear, so we can only trust, anticipate, expect, that something analogous will happen to us–that as the seed of the Seed of Abraham this too is possible for us. This thing which is frustratingly not under our control, but within the possibility of who we are.
Until we are moving into the reality of this, I think much of our banter about the Bible and it’s meaning may be just that, banter.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:52 am
I’m so glad that I was saved in a church environment that taught that God still speaks to us. My encounters with the Holy Spirit have been life transforming. His faithfulness to lead me into all truth has been incredible. We must hear the voice of God. We must have the word of God. I really see the two as absolutely inseparable.
For instance, I was counseling a young man this past week who told me that he met with God best when he was smoking dope. The Holy Spirit showed him that it was okay. The Holy Spirit also showed him that it wasn’t a big deal that he had sex with the girl that he was witnessing to. Never mind the fact that he has a wife and child that he’s abandoned in another state. The Holy Spirit told him it was more important for him to work on his spiritual journey than to take care of his wife and child. He also said that he didn’t have to keep his word if the Holy Spirit told him to go in another direction.
Now I know this is a dramatic example, but I think it speaks well into the realm of the balance of the voice of the Spirit and testing it against scripture. Paul says that even if an angel comes preaching another gospel, let him be accursed.
I think we can have a beautiful balance of the Word of God in the spoken and written word. Don’t you?
June 24th, 2009 at 10:53 am
So most mornings I read the written word. I am often very encouraged but not every time. But sometimes — very few times in my life actually –I read the words, yes, but they somehow read me more than I read them. God speaks and it is truly wonderful.
For this to happen more often I probably need to slow down, spend more time reflecting on what I have read, read fewer verses … really commit to the art, the practice, of Lecto Divina. But you’re right, Ken, it ain’t just reading the words from the pages of Scripture.
June 24th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
happylad, I think that lad you were speaking to was listening to a different spirit than the holy one!
June 24th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Excellent comments, happylad. We need both the spoken and written Word and what we think we hear spoken must align with what is written…because sometimes we don’t hear as clearly as we should.
June 25th, 2009 at 4:15 am
[P1] All human beings are fallible.
[P2] All the books ever written on this planet were written by human beings.
[P3] All 66 books of the bible were written on this planet.
[C] Therefore, all 66 books of the bible were written by fallible human beings.
I have studied the bible, sometimes very little, sometimes a lot, over the last 36 years. I have never seen any evidence that any part of the bible was written or inspired by anyone other than fallible human beings. If you have evidence to the contrary, I invite you to present it.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Since human logic is falliable human beings are incapable of convincing anyone of biblical infallibility. Someone looking for logical proof of God by picking apart the bible will fail or belive they “have” it but be deluded (at least to a degree). The bible does not direct our feeble vision upwards to fully understand (dissect)God but to trust Him and pay attention to the stories and experience of others to best align our thoughts, words and actions with His will.
God’s point of view is bigger than we can convey or fully comprehend. That’s the whole point.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1, KJV)
God’s got the evidence, ask Him. Then brace youself for the answers.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:09 am
As a Christian for over 20+ years, I’ve wanted to experience what Ken is talking about but I’ve never had my experience match the description that many other Christians say they have. At least not as it related to the Bible. I have had many times where I can say I’ve had spiritual awakenings as the result of God “speaking to me”…either in the form of a person speaking, or of something I’ve read, or during the course of meditating on a topic.
Almost all of these spiritual insights are consistent, for the most part, with truths I find in the Bible…so I guess that’s why I continue to be a Christian…of a sort. I just have never heard from God as a result of reading the Bible any more (probably less) than I have from reading a book about the Bible (or not about the Bible)…or hearing a sermon…or talking to a wise person.
Someone mentioned this in another post…but it feels like we as Christians have “defined” the Bible in a really messed up way traditionally…almost to the point of worshiping it. I know I’m not necessarily viewing it with the right perspective now, but a lot of my faith struggles over the years have been tied to trying to make myself accept evangelical Christianity’s take on the Bible. It’s all felt too much like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Even some of the newer perspectives of folks like NT Wright feel desperate to me…like if we’re smart enough we can make all this stuff fit perfectly into a progressive worldview.
Life would be a whole lot easier if it did all fit. God knows I’ve wanted it to…spent 20 years trying to make it all fit. A lot of it does fit, though…a whole lot. And that’s cool…that’s enough for me to engage the Bible as a truly inspired work…and to lean on it for wisdom and guidance and my life. When it’s suggested that I should be “hearing” from it, though, in some special way….and I’m not…can’t…haven’t…that encourages my flesh to want to abandon the whole thing. I have to fight to stay engaged with the Bible not because of what the world says about it but because of what the church says about it.
Maybe I’m just weird, though.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Dave, I resonated so much to your post I almost shattered like a pane of glass
Anyway, I seldom if ever have these ‘the holy spirit is talking to me’ moments. I hate it when people next to me in church say ‘I feel the spirit in this place.’ I feel nothing!
So I have to rest on the Bible, or I fear I will fall from the road on which I see Jesus having me walk.
However in the times I felt like walking away from the faith, my inner response is ‘to whom shall I go?’ I just don’t see a better philosophy in this world.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Dave, you are not “weird” at all! You don’t need to be “hearing” from the bible in some “special way”. You already have had “spiritual awakenings” and “spiritual insights” from reading the bible, and you will continue to do so, as we all will. You already have “heard from God” as a result of reading books [both about the bible and not about the bible], hearing sermons, and talking with wise persons, just as we all have. You have “heard from God” from many different sources, as we all have. There is nothing “weird” whatsoever about you!
There is much more that we could discuss about this topic, so please email me at beammeupspock@hotmail.com if you wish.
And now a quote from:
Healthy Religion: A Psychological Guide To A Mature Faith, by Walter Kania, Ph.D. [2006], pg.2.
“The journey of the spirit is not something about what happens on the outside. It is all about the internal realizations of who we are. It is about the release, evolution, and the manifestation of that realization in all that we do. The true journey of the spirit is knowing that we are always connected, never were separated, and live in the full awareness of the sacred and the divine that is a part of who we are, in the midst of everything that we do.”
http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Religion-Psychological-Guide-Mature/dp/1425924166
June 26th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Dave,
Before you start one-on-one dialogue on faith, doubt and hearing the voice of God with Chris, please remember his words here:
[P1] All human beings are fallible.
[P2] All the books ever written on this planet were written by human beings.
[P3] All 66 books of the bible were written on this planet.
[C] Therefore, all 66 books of the bible were written by fallible human beings.
I have studied the bible, sometimes very little, sometimes a lot, over the last 36 years. I have never seen any evidence that any part of the bible was written or inspired by anyone other than fallible human beings. If you have evidence to the contrary, I invite you to present it.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:22 am
My biological father is loving, self-sacrificing, brutal, cruel, banal, inspired, seething with anger, gentle, insensitive, boring, interesting, wise, foolish, prissy, manly, outgoing, isolated, grumpy, selfish, and so on. My biological father, after all is said, is through all his moods and modes, loving. God is a person, something like my biological father, but larger. Much larger in the frame of the universe. And the Bible gives us glimpses of this complex paradoxical person. Does God have to be only loving in order for us to understand him as a loving God? No, I don’t think so. Isn’t the Bible the window or the movie on God? God speaks to all of us daily in our own lives through the people in our lives, the shifting circumstances of our lives, and the events of our lives. He is speaking to us all the time. He is vitally with us, immediate to us. And the Bible shows us that this is so.
June 28th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
lucy, is god sometimes brutal and cruel? is god hate, as well as love? no. god is not a person. the descriptions of god being angry or hateful are anthropomorphisms. god is always love, even when we feel his wrath.
June 28th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
happylad, when you listen to mozart, do you say, “that’s the product of a fallible human,” or, “what beautiful, inspired music!” aren’t both true? reductionist thinking leads nowhere.
June 28th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I can’t help but give a reply to these postings, all of which I find fascinating since in one form or another we are talking about the letter verses, or in relation to, the Spirit. And of course “the voice.”
I struggled for years trying to “hear God” either through scripture or through my own style of meditation, which was more of a conversation with God than meditation as most would understand it.
It was only when I started seriously listening for what the Spirit was saying to others (small group prayer, ministry time, family) that I began what has become an awesome journey of what I call “hearing God for others.” THere is something in this ” others” focus that really broke things open for me.
And it is in hearing what the Spirit in saying for others that I more fully hear Him for myself.
ONe might ask, how do you really know that you are hearing God? Great question, one which I think is a healthy to ask ourselves often. My answer, time and practice… and many times hearing things that I would never think myself about someone, really really good things, things that speak to their future and give them hope. I have learned that He has a much higher opinion of us than we have of ourselves, or our friends and neighbors. Thus the “others” part of the equation helps me to understand how He feels about me.
I use scripture as my guide, of course. I find His thoughts about others, often or especially for those steeped in a mess of mistakes, to be gentle, loving, patient and always forward looking. There are many times when my thoughts are leaning toward judgement, and then I sense the Spirit saying words that I couldn’t possibly come up with, or would choose to say. Just being honest here.
And please understand that it’s not a “voice”, for me at least, but more like thoughts passing through that are just as easy to miss as catch.
So back to the “literal.” It is the old letter of the law verses the spirit of the law struggle. I often wonder what Jesus was thinking when he was confronted with the woman caught in adultery. As he paused to write in the dirt (and I think about God writing on stone tablets for Moses)was he thinking about the letter of the law? Was he thinking “boy, how they have missed what we were trying to communicate?” Or was he just buying time to think? Whatever the reason for pausing, He found the balance between the law and the love of the Spirit that he came to demonstrate. While not minimizing the “it is written” part His answer allowed room for mercy. Mercy that ultimately was given by a crowd bent on destruction….after each one took a quick inventory of their own lives. An inventory that the “law” made possible.
THe “literal” does not remove the space that allows mercy to surface. In proper context it enhances it.
THe focus on others helps me see(and hear)the reflection of what I so desperately need. And of course, giving others the permission to hear God for me is all part of the equation. And yes that can be scary.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Interesting that the bible was written by humans and on this planet. As a matter of fact the Bible was written in it’s current form about 300 AD by the then new bishops of Christianity. Where did they get their words and wisdom from?
Can we assume they were inspired by ancient text and scrolls written by prophets, apostles and scribes comissioned by these poeple through the grace of God or the verbal communication with God directly? Why did God communicate with them several thousand years ago? They could not have been more intelligent than us today. Are we really that much more intelligent? Perhaps not.
Perhaps he just wanted to check in on his creation and guide who he though was worthy of his Grace to lead the sinnerss back into the fold. Considering every time God turned around His creation was sinning thier back ends off and mocking Him, what else was He to do?
Ok God sent His only Son to even help guide the siners back to repentance. What did they do? They nailed Him to the Cross for teaching of a new found way to worship God and obey the law of Moses. Sadly the high priest of that day really wasn’t too happy with His meddling in their controlled and safe rule of the believers.( Ironically Jesus death and arrival was prophesied since Genesis).
No one does hear from God or Jesus directly any more in most cases I would imagine. Can you really blame God or Jesus? That is the charge now set up for the Holy Spirit to handle. As you recall Jesus stated in his last visit to the Apostles “My work is done. I am leaving now. It is all up to you. Go to Jerusalem and the Holy Spirit will come over you to help spread the Good News”. Ok. He did come back to talk to Paul in an apparent visual confrontation to stop Pauls actions against the Christians and believers of his day which led Paul to be the driving force to win others ( including Gentiles) to Christ.
And today we are to continue as modern day disciples to spread the Good news about the Lord God. We are not to sit and wait for something to happen. I don’t think He meant to theorize or debate the purpose but to win souls to Christ.
What do I know? I am just a student of the Bible, not a worldly scholar.
June 30th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
I like the way you described the way that God speaks through the Bible. It paints a picture for me of a spiritual pavement which the Spirit can travel upon. When we see that scripture is given story and context, life and breath beyond the literal words on the page- it becomes a powerful tool in the hands of a powerful God. To reduce it to anything less is to neuter the scriptures of their beauty, power, and wisdom.
July 12th, 2009 at 2:57 am
To the original post! It is amazingly true that the Word really needs to be studied in the original language and in historical and literary context before a doctrine can be made with any hope of accuracy. The more I study about it the more it is clear how nebulous some things can be. However, it is also in many, many places extremely direct and clear. Happylad, there is a beautiful balance between the wriiten Word and the spoken/whispered Word. The second is surely subject to the first.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:46 am
I “hear” from God sometimes. I have been taught to check myself against the bible, if there is a conflict, stick with the bible. But the problem I have is that some people who think they are hearing from God are not. It is scary because they start other religions, lead people away from Jesus, use it as an excuse to sin, etc…. If we just start “listening for God” and NOT referencing the bible we start going down a road in which no one knows what to believe or what is true.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:19 am
“There is a beautiful balance between the written Word and the spoken/whispered Word. The second is surely subject to the first.”
Amen.
And…
“I “hear” from God sometimes. I have been taught to check myself against the Bible, if there is a conflict, stick with the Bible.”
Amen.
BD