Wrestling with Authority

This is my second engagement with Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity.  This section deals with his second question for the new church, "How should the Bible be understood?"

Thinking about the Bible's overarching narrative of "Who are we as God's people?" helps me think about how we should read and interpret this collection of stories.

Instead of thinking of these stories as a constitutional how-to guide for living faithfully as God's people, it is helpful to think of them as we do many stories - they help us understand a little more about who we are and how we live, rather than tell us what to do.

When thinking about how we understand scripture, I tend to think of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and the famous quote: "I cannot tell a lie."

Yet, that story is false.

Yep.  Never happened.

However, the deeper truth that is conveyed by this familiar story is true.  The idea that the father of our country was honest and valued his integrity is true.  The idea that we should emulate that honesty and integrity is even more true.  The story resonates with us because we have been in situations that are similar.

This is how our stories in scripture work with us.  Some of my personal favorites are Jacob wrestling with God and the story of Job, are just a couple of these stories that really resonate with the truth of what it means to be a child of God.

Jacob wrestles with God and is forever changed by that experience, as noted in the story by the limp and the name change.  When we hear this story it resonates with us.

We encounter God.

We wrestle with God.

We are changed by challenging, questioning, and engaging God.

Job experiences great tragedy, and struggles to understand how such a thing could happen to him.  Even though those who are around him encourage him to renounce God or confess his (imaginary) sins before God, Job maintains his innocence and refuses to turn his back on God.  Yet, God comes to Job and informs him, none too kindly, that trying to pin down how God works is not a good plan.

We experience tragedy.

We hear people tell us that it is because of our sins.  We hear people encourage us to turn our backs on God.

We don't understand how God works.

These stories speak to us with an authority beyond that of a "how-to guide."  These stories speak to our hearts and are given authority by their power as stories of the human condition.

Why do we need to give them authority beyond that?  Isn't the fact that thousands of years later, these stories still resonate with the hearts and minds of their audience authoritative enough?

For example, when we read Leviticus or some of the Epistles as a set of laws instead of hearing a story of how people tried to define themselves as God's people, we lose something in the cultural translation.

We think slavery is bad, so the rules for slavery are out of date.

We believe women should have equal voice and rights, so the rules about women are out of date.

However, when we see how the rest of the Middle Eastern world, the Jewish (and Paul's) ideas on how to treat slaves indicates that we should treat them respectfully and break societal conventions with how we should treat those over whom we have authority.

When we look at how women were being treated in the Greco-Roman world, we see how the authors  are trying to wrestle with being a child of God in that time period.

Just as we wrestle with what it means to be a child of God in our time.

We might never come up with a satisfactory answer, but then again, Jacob didn't really get an answer when he wrestled with God.  In fact, Jacob got a limp and a name change.

It was the wrestling that was important.

The desire to engage God is what gives the scriptures their authority, and as long as we do that in love we listen to the authority of God.

What's in a Plot?

I recently started Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity.  The book raises ten questions that are at the forefront of the emerging conversation regarding the future of Christianity in a postmodern world.

The first question that Brian McLaren engages in his book is, "What is the overarching story of the Bible?"

This is an excellent question to bring up, because humans are creatures of stories.  When we are little, we want to hear the same story again and again.  We have favorite stories that describe what's going on in our lives.  We love to listen and tell the stories that have impacted us.

After reflecting on this fact and this section of the book for a few days, I think that the overarching story of the Bible is...wait for it...

"Who am I?"

The whole of scripture is an exploration of what it means to be God's people.  The Old Testament wrestles with creation as God's creation and how a certain people came to know and experience God.  It continues as they wrestle with what God wants them to do because they have been chosen as God's people.

The different books and stories explore how their trials and tribulations, as well as their causes for celebration engage with God's promises.

The Old Testament (for Christians) culminates with an experience of God in Jesus Christ, as witnessed to by the Gospels.  The letters of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles are also written wrestling as those who followed Jesus Christ try to understand what exactly their faith means based on the crucifixion and resurrection.  

The whole story culminates in the Revelation of John as John writes down about the end of human history as God's chosen people.  

"Who are we?"

When we think about the scriptures as a series of stories that wrestle with this question, it helps us to make them more applicable to our daily lives.  Instead of being stories that are about a place long long ago in a galaxy far away, they are stories that mirror stages of our very own lives.

We want to know what we're supposed to be when we grow up.

We want to know what it means to be a child, a sister, a father, a mother, a brother, a grandparent, a friend.

We want to know what it means to be a Child of God - claimed by God's own act.

By interpreting the scriptures as a story that wrestles with a peoples' identity, we allow the scripture to be more than just a record or a fact.  Opening up the scripture to answer an overarching question - this struggle with identity - we open ourselves up to the larger meaningfulness of the story.

I can picture the Hebrew people and their ancestors sitting around a fire or a meal to share these stories about who they are, and where they came from.  Just like our stories at Thanksgiving or Christmas.

These stories are an important part of who we are as Children of God.  More importantly though, through the telling of stories that central message can be passed from generation to generation.

The Levitical laws, for example, aren't just good suggestions or commands to not eat bacon.  No, they are stories that emphasize how the children of God are set apart from other peoples.

The story of Abraham and Sarah isn't a story that's just about the father of a nation.  No it's a story about how experiences with God bring life, sometimes laughter, and change.

All of these are stories that say being chosen as God's people means something tangible in our lives as part of the mystery and beauty of creation.

And so, armed with these beautiful stories we engage in conversations with one another in our communities - just like we did in high school English Lit classes, as we try to understand how these stories are our stories.