Green Letter Bible

When I was younger I thought that red and green went well together. I would often be found wearing a bright red, Bucky Badger T-shirt with forest green sweatpants (I didn't wear jeans for most of my childhood. I found them uncomfortable). I thought that since they were Christmas colors, they must go well together. Thankfully, my sister has slowly educated me so that I now dress pretty well, at least when I care. I save the red and green combination for the exegesis students.

But now, red and green come together again. Red letters and green...letters. HarperCollins is going to make a buck or two by publishing this eco-friendly version of the Bible (it even uses soy-based ink). Just as there is a long-standing tradition of red letter Bibles with the words of Jesus in red (an approach to reading the Bible that is problematic in itself), this Bible simply puts in green any verse that relates to nature.

I only wonder whether the whole part about this earth passing away will be printed in green.

Calvin's Apt Humour

"It was a shrewd saying of a good old man, who when some one pertly asked in derision what God did before the world was created, answered, "He made a hell for the inquisitive."

John Calvin (quoting Augustine), Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.13.1

Swindoll, Scripture, and Sufficiency

"I promise you I will do everything in my power to keep it from being boring, having sat through a lot of boring chapels in my life, I know the misery of that sort of thing.Every one of my three talks will start with a statement. It will then be followed by a story or an illustration that I hope drives that statement home. Then we'll glance at the Scriptures and see something in there that might tie in with the opening statement and the illustration and we'll close with another story, that's my plan."

So were Chuck Swindoll's first words in chapel at Wheaton College this fall. I want to say right up front, don't get me wrong: I have a lot of respect for Dr. Swindoll, and think that he preaches the Gospel.

But in this introductory paragraph to the three chapel talks he gave, I hear an approach toward preaching that betrays the text of Scripture as the normative, informative substance of teaching in the church. Swindoll is not teaching in the church when he speaks at Wheaton. He doesn't even neccessarily claim to be preaching. He's giving a talk. What I'm saying is that in Swindoll's introduction we hear an attitude not foreign to the churches of middle America over the last 20 years.

It's the "hip" churches of my parent's generation in which I grew up. Churches that weren't those churches that bored you when you were a kid. They weren't the fundamentalist churches that gave boring sermons about legalistic rules that didn't seem practical for today. At all costs, don't bore people. My personal irony is that I was always bored. I never quite saw why anything mattered.

What is revealed about Swindoll's doctrine of Scripture in this statement? Is it fair to say that, based on how he designs his talk, he believes that it will be the illustrations he gives that most powerfully drive home the statement he makes? I fear the message his outline gives is:

I. Thesis
II. Supporting Evidence
III. Related Ancient Text
IV. Final Supporting Evidence

What is being implicitly said about Scripture with such an approach as this? Scripture is not immediately applicable. It doesn't directly address our life. We have to bring it to bear by relating it to a pithy, non-biblical, easily applicable statement that is already twice illustrated by extra-biblical illustrations. It takes the Bible from being an organic narrative of God's faithfulness through the lives of countless saints to being no more than a book of proverbs, rules, and bland, removed theology.

I think the faults of this approach—which was all to common to my experiences with churches in the 90's—show why many people were ready for the Emergent movement (whatever it is). What parts of the emergent church realize is that stories do matter. Religion that is not organically and intricately tied into daily life does not captivate, transform—or matter. But rather than moving back to the biblical text to see these stories, the emergers took another step away, relying on their personal experiences rather than the normative force of God's word. They make the same mistake as Swindoll, only on a different level.

This is the point where I should have a perfect solution. Fail. But I do offer this: The Bible illustrates itself beautifully. The Bible is full of relatively pithy statements of profound truths, which are very helpful in teaching. Part of the duty of the teacher is to, by means of how he teaches, show that Scripture is what he says it is. That it carries sufficient knowledge for salvation. That it bears immediate weight and implications on our lives. That we can understand it. That it is worth working to learn, appreciate, and meditate upon.

I know you well enough to not like you.

The people I know and understand the best are, almost without fail, the ones who have the most ability to frustrate me. They are the ones whose faults I see the most clearly, and the ones who I often feel least inclined to forgive. The better I know someone, the easier it is to see their sins. And, seeing their sins, I have one of two reactions.

One is anger. I know that they are doing something wrong, and even if it not directly to me, I know the ramifications of it. But I know Romans 2, and I know that when I respond in this way, God's Word stands in condemnation against me. To consider these things in terms of how God sees me but for the blood of Jesus, I shudder in fear.

The other is love. When, by God's grace, I see my friends' sin with regenerated eyes, I respond in love. This can mean rebuke, but it is love. It seeks to restore. It seeks to build up. To consider these things in terms of how God sees me through the blood of Jesus, I am overwhelmed with thankfulness.

From Today's Readings...

"The willingness of prosperous Christians to renounce much of their worldly gain allowed the communities to support their needy members in ways that were both more generous and more personal than Rome could achieve with its bread and circuses."

Joyce E. Salisbury, Perpetua's Passion p. 73

Amidst my seemingly endless reading for the day, this little gem stuck out as a stark reminder of how Christians are supposed to care for their poor. Most of us can think to the scenes in Gladiator where the emperor sought to appease the masses through food handouts and massive productions in the Coliseum. Yet the generosity of the Christians is seen as more lavish than this.

Promises are made on both sides of the aisle during election season. The Church must remember than no candidate will take away our obligation to the poor. We do not wait for policy to change, we take the vanguard in action.

What I shared with my Church about my time in China.

Revelation 5 tells us that God has ransomed a people for his glory from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. Jesus Christ is alone is declared worthy to bring to an end all the sin and suffering of this world because he has made these people a kingdom and priests to our God. And because of this, thousands of saints and angels worship Him, saying “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!”

During my time in China, I saw clearly what this worship of Jesus demands of the Church now, and what it demands of me. Last November God used numerous means to call me to go on the STAMP China trip. I offered numerous reasons to avoid going on the trip, But God graciously removed from my life all the things I coveted rather than heeding his call.

During the four weeks I spent in China, I was able to share the Gospel with Han Chinese who had never heard the Gospel clearly proclaimed. I was able to visit an underground training school full of Chinese nationals with a zeal for the Gospel and for prayer that humbled me, because I have far too great a fear of man. I met a Muslim-Background believer who is, by all accounts, the first baptized follower of Jesus from his people. I saw God at work in more ways that I have time to recount now. But most of all, God opened my eyes to the truths of Scripture regarding God's people and their calling in this world.

After God scattered the people of the earth at Babel and made them into may nations, he called Abraham to be one through whom all the nations of the earth will be blessed. As the story of Salvation develops, this blessing comes ultimately through Abraham's descendant, Jesus. Through Jesus we have been made children of Abraham, and we have inherited the mission of being a blessing to the nations. At Babel the nations were scattered. In Jesus, God has called them back together as one people. We are given the honor—and responsibility—of having been made agents in the harvest of the nations.

My point is this: Scripture shows that I—and we— are not saved for the sake of ourselves. We are saved for the sake of the glory of Jesus. We are called out of darkness to be a light in the darkness. Each of us is called to consider the difficult question of whether we are to go. Each of us is called to prioritize our lives to support the mission of God. Each of us is called to labor in prayer for those who go.

God used my time in China to make the Scriptural call to go to the nations more clear to me. And it seems that He is calling me back to China in the near future. But STAMP China, and Scripture, and the stories I have told you, are not just about me. I pray that the reports you have heard today heighten your awareness of how God is restoring the nations to himself. I pray that you will seriously consider what the mission of God's people requires of you. The calling is not my own. As the body of Christ, we are united in this singular effort.

A common refrain on our trip was that after seeing what we had seen, our lives could not be the same. Now you, too, have heard the stories. How must your life change?

Reading the Bible

College Church is doing a summer series at the evening service on the Word of God. One sermon in particular has stuck in my mind over the last month. Ministry Resident (and now Pastor) Andrew Fulton taught on the perspicuity of Scripture.

Perspicuity is somewhat of an ironic word. It's an uncommon word whose meaning is unknown to many that means that Scripture's meaning is commonly available. The core of the message of perspicuity is that the essentials of faith are understandable to all in Scripture. While there are many things that are difficult issues of interpretation, the core message of salvation is consistently clear throughout Scripture.

Fulton discussed how group Bible Studies often progress. There are the intellectuals, who can make others think that you have to have an MA to read the Bible. And there are the argumentative types, who tend to focus in on every controversy possible. Of course, at the other end of the spectrum are those who read the Bible with so little nuance that they never feel the deep tensions that God uses to grow our roots deeper.

But the general negative tendency of Bible Studies as a whole is to focus so much on the difficulties of Scripture that we never affirm and internalize that which is perfectly clear. Yes, we need to work on the difficult portions of Scripture. And we need to have answers for the difficult questions of life. But many Bible Studies digress to only talking about the difficult sections. When people walk away from such a study, they are usually discouraged, lacking confidence that God's Word is perspicuous, and lacking the impetus to internalize anything. After all, they don't even know what the text is even saying.

This needs to shape how we lead Bible Studies, but also how we behave as participants. Participants that seek intellectual quarry will find just that in Scripture. But those who seek the clear Word of God, the message of salvation, will find the Gospel in its simplicity, but also in its depth that reaches and changes every aspect of life.