I got into a discussion (read: heated argument) with the minister I worked for several years ago regarding the Bible and how it isn’t where our “evangelism” should start with people. I argued that you can’t use the Bible to bring someone to a relationship with Christ if they don’t care about the Bible. (Just as a side note, I know this is a very, very huge generalization, and I know that some people have come to Christ through Scripture, but it’s my article and for the most part I think it’s a valid argument. If you don’t like it stop reading and write your own.) It doesn’t make sense. If I don’t believe something, i.e., the Bible, is true, nor do I care if it is true, why would you try to use that very something to try and convince me that the Someone in that something wants to have a relationship with me? (Just as another side note, I was an immature douchebox back in my early ministry career and I probably started the argument. He and I remain good friends to this day.)
I was thinking today at work (we’re only running one line, which means my day is dragging and my brain has too much time on its cerebral hands) about this idea and came up with an apt analogy. I have a ridiculously cute nephew and an equally handsome son, both of whom take the cheesiest pictures of anyone you’ll meet under the ages of 2 and 5, respectively. Sometimes I want to show them off to people who don’t know anything about them, have never met them, and have no relational connection whatsoever. You can tell that they only vaguely care how cute they are, not feeling 1/1000th of the feeling I have for them. Why? Because to me they are more than pictures. Behind the pictures are voices, personalities, laughter, memories, and attachment. The pics are a link to them, a vivid reminder of who they are. I used to take pictures of my son on trips with me, because, in a way, it brought him to me whenever I looked at them (One more side note and I’ll stop: re-read that last sentence and then make the connection to the Eucharist we celebrate on Sundays.)
The Bible is a book of pictures, images, metaphor and story, which those of us who grew up with it take for granted. To those who have a living relationship with Christ the Bible serves as a picture frame, full of emotion, voices, personalities, memories, and attachment. In other words, a relationship. For those without that relationship there are none of those things. Not that the Bible is unimportant or useless to everyone like this, but without the relationship the images of Scripture lose context and depth. Evangelism, as I’ve written about before, must begin in genuine relationship. Only when the images of Scripture find fulfillment in your life for others to see will the Bible come alive for them. Humanity’s initial relationship with Christ begins in the relationship they have with a disciple. We, the Church, with Christ in us, give color, depth, emotion and attachment to humanity’s encounter with Scripture--because they have already seen it come alive in us.
shalom, matt
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2 comments:
Here's a quote from Borg that may or may not relate to your article:
"Of course, the Bible contains a plurality of voices: in it, we hear the voices of the communities out of which it came and the voices of the writers who composed it. The voices sometimes conflict with one another, for the Bible is a human product: it contains voices of oppression and protest against oppression, voices of conventional wisdom and subversion of conventional wisdom. But in, with, and under those voices, we are to listen to and respond to the divine voice. What matters, as [Martin] Buber put it, is that we hear the voice."
Your point is well take on the Bible and my grandsons.
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