Sidewalk Theology: Questions I Get Asked a Lot #3

Q: What's the Bible good for?

The influence of the ancient Hebrew scriptures and New Testament on visual arts, literature, social structure, worldviews, criminal justice, benevolent institutions, history, education, music, family structures, social order, race relations, economics and nearly everything else in the Western world and a lot in the non-Western world makes this a bigger question than is usually jammed into five short words. 

Face it, the Bible is a big deal. This sometimes unwelcome scriptural juggernaut with it's enormous shape-shifting pressure has been shoving it's weighty pages around for a long time. It's had colossal influence on how we humans have been doing life. You can like the Bible or skip it, be a friend or critic, but this crazy-quilt library of sixty-six books, by forty authors written over sixty generations has been about as influential as controlled fire or the inclined plane. You don't have to like it, but the Bible has had a significant impact on a significant number of communities and billions of people. Smart kids now tell us its cultural influence is diminishing, but it looks like the Bible's massive fingerprints will be detectable for awhile yet, even without crime scene dusting and Sherlock's magnifying glass.

Our short, superb question necessarily begs further questions: in this thousands years long  human experience, how helpful has the Bible been? How harmful? How much of what's praiseworthy can be laid at the feet of behavior motivated by a correct understanding of the Bible?  How much blamable Bible influence in history comes from silly or accidentally flawed explanations, impressions or interpretations? National and personal tragedies, even horrors and genocide have been perpetrated because of cravenly deliberate distortions by friends of the Bible.  Balling it all up with our seemingly simple, original Earth sized question presents us with a puzzler the size of thirteen expanding universes. It's too big for my feeble brain for sure.

But . . . I can tell you how a lot of people misuse the Bible. I can also tell you where I am right now on best practices for how it's supposed to be used.

As a Bible consumer, I'm to use it primarily to judge myself. Scholars talk about a 'canon of scripture'. A canon is a standard or measuring rod. The Bible is to be my touchstone or reference point, informing me about my behavior toward God and other humans. The way I read it, the Bible tells me pretty directly that God's two great purposes for my life are,  

1) that I be in right relationship with God and 

2) that I be in right relationship with other people. 

Borrowing from the Jewish holy book we call the Old Testament, Jesus distills it all into two great relationship commands: First, with all you've got, love God whom you can't see, then with the same fervor, love the humans you can't help but see. Those two high purposes can't be divorced. 

Bible Pop Quiz - what is the one, honest-to-goodness, legitimate use of this 1700 page tangle of miracle stories, palace intrigues, prophesies, biography, love poetry, history, laws and unreasonably long lists of people who should have changed their name at Ellis Island and spared us all? I'm to use it to examine me and how well I'm doing with the Bible's catch-all commands to love God and love people.  That's how I should use it, but when I aim the Bible at other people, I weaponize it. To weaponize it is to deform and distort it.

Oddly enough, both those who believe and defend and those who don't can be guilty of weaponizing the Bible. Sneering believers have been guilty of rifling through its onionskin pages, skipping the calls for self examination while gleefully seizing on phrases that pin a scarlet A or equivalent on the less believing crowd whose deeds cause the gasping believer much sputtering and pearl clutching.  That's repulsive but the real problem is they've turned an ancient and beautiful repository of documents from another time and place into a present day cudgel. 

The person approaching the Bible with neutrality or even hostility also weaponizes it when they demand the believing enemy live by the unbeliever's/non-user's understanding of it. They've also put themselves in the screwy position of beating someone with a club they don't believe in.

Some legalist eagle may say, "What do you mean the Bible isn't a weapon? It calls itself a sword!" True, but notice in Ephesians 6 the sword is to be wielded against ugly supernatural world powers of darkness described as evil principalities, powers and rulers. In Hebrews 4:12 it's to be used in performing delicate and restorative soul surgery. It's not to be used to trash gay people, annoying religious types, political opponents, flag burners, flag wavers, lawyers, televangelists or even telemarketers. I'm afraid the 70x7 forgiveness thing is still in effect even for chirpy people who clutter up our phones with stuff we don't want.

If you read the Bible, my advice is, go slow and read it to yourself. For yourself. Once you do, as a favor to me, please don't write a book about how it's shot with holes and damaged your life or given you the vapors. Resist too the opposite temptation to publish those dandy Bible revelations known only to you that got you the car, cash, spouse, two-and-a-half kids, and house in Malibu you always wanted along with the full name and shoe size of the Anti-Christ. 

I'll end up with the vapors.

Sidewalk Theology: Questions I Get Asked a Lot #2

 Q: Does God get anything out of prayer or is it just a bunch of noise for Him?

From your good question I can tell you suspect prayer is a personal thing for God. Your suspicions are a direct hit on an aspect of prayer that has been missed - even by those who see value in it and have done a lot of it. 

From the Bible and a little bit from experience, my impression is that God loves prayer because it's a relationship thing. He loves being in relationship with His creation, especially when it's with others, like Himself, who can make real, free decisions that have real consequences. 

Within Himself, God is a thriving, vibrant relationship of Father, Son and Spirit and recasting the familiar first words of the Bible, "In the beginning, God" as "In the beginning, Relationship" isn't far from the mark. It's a Relationship of perfect love and harmony that only gets better with the enlarging of the relationship circle. The more free beings who are in it, the better it gets. Jesus' request in John 17:21 meant something, "Father . . . let them (you and me) be in Us." Wow! We don't become what God is - don't get carried away, but we are included in that Relationship somehow. Double Wow! That's why all the New Testament talk of being "in Christ" and also why God prefers calling us children over servants and there's more Bible talk of adoption and family than justification and duty.

"God is love" only makes sense if we first recognize that God is a Relationship and not as a solitary. A solitary could not not be described as love because love needs an object and the best kind of love is mutual and fully reciprocal. Remember junior high crushes on someone who didn't crush back? That stunk, didn't it? You can't experience love that's worth much if you're a stand alone. It will only drive you crazy and make you write bad words on somebody's locker.

"God is love." Since love is God's nature and He loves relationships, God finds prayer/conversation useful, meaningful, interesting and consequential. He wants to participate.

One more thing: God is a one-of-a-kind Relationship who can simultaneously carry on billions of consequential conversations with people in every imaginable developmental, emotional, intellectual and spiritual state - pristine saint to debauched, boozing lech - and remain fully engaged with each one, actively arranging the best possible outcome every time for everybody. In most cases He is more fully engaged than the earnest saint or much more earnest boozer could ever hope to be.

The temporal outcomes of His involvement with us in prayer are better than can be imagined in many cases and the eternal outcomes are better in all cases. He does it all flawlessly even if our comprehension and perspective is blurred by bad information, irritation, fatigue or inferior, misplaced expectations, He flawlessly upholds His end. Now, here's the kicker, kids. While carrying on a thriving, loving, completely satisfying Relationship within Himself, He never takes His hands off the wheel of an ever expanding universe, all the while caring for you and me and Aunt Minnie. And the sparrows.

That is our God. Amazing.

Sidewalk Theology: Questions I Get Asked a Lot #1

 Q: If God already knows everything, including what I need, why do I still need to pray?

This one has been a consistent favorite from young and old. The old are  a little embarrassed to ask and sometimes have to work up to it. The younger folks just blurt it out. I like it when people blurt. Here's an email answer, pretty much as I sent it about a month ago to a young enquiring mind. 

Dear Curious George (name changed),

I'll take a stab at it.

First, I'll be referring to God as 'HE' but not because I think He's a boy with boy parts. God is no more male than female and we know that's so because we're told that men and women are equally made in the image and likeness of God. Both are equal imagers because God is equally both. I could use 'IT' but that sounds so impersonal and since God is intensely personal, is actually false. God is in fact not a solitary being but is an eternal, personal relationship. Because of our language, I'm left only with 'HE' or 'SHE' and 'HE' is merely historically more familiar though not more correct.

Part of the premise of your question is spot on: God knows everything and where a thing, being, truth or event is placed in time is no barrier to His knowing it. Of course He knows the outcome before we ask since it's His nature to know everything. He can't help but know.

Here's the thing though: from all I just said you can't assume or infer that God causes everything to happen as it does at the time it does. Prayer is an independent initiative on our part and plays a role, as do our actions or inactions. The universe we live in isn't closed or totally predetermined. It's in a state of becoming, if that makes sense. I think there's more wiggle room in reality than some of the old preachers have told us. They were kindly gents who should have looked a little more critically at great grandfathers' theology and at least attempted to better square it with the craziness of life tumbling all around us.

Now, it's true that God will accomplish a BIG PLAN, but within the plan we are permitted by our actions/inactions, prayers/no prayers to have some effect on the outcome of the BIG PLAN. It's going to happen but maybe, within limits, we affect the timing or the clarity with which we or others see the outcome.

If every activity, word, syllable, prayer, movement, response and counter response that ever happened or will happen were a direct decree from the mind of God, that would be an amazing feat requiring a super intellect beyond imagining. If we once grasped the size and scope of it, awe would be involuntarily wrung from us and properly so. BUT, if His plan becomes a reality while also allowing us some part in making real decisions with real consequences, good and bad, that is an act of sustained wisdom, variable coordination and chaos management that is light years beyond mere decrees. That is our God. He's worthy of much more than open mouthed awe, but I'm not sure what it's called really.

So, yes, God knows what will happen before we pray, but it doesn't automatically follow that He directly and personally makes it happen. We have some effect and that gives us motivation to pray. We  also have a monstrous responsibility to learn how to pray because it's participation somehow in what God is up to. I think He allows us tremendous freedom and latitude - it's called human life - while still accomplishing His ultimate plans. Simply because He is aware something will happen doesn't force us to say He makes everything happen. It's the difference between what theology calls foreknowledge and foreordination. I don't feel like dusting off the theology books, but you're nibbling at something pretty amazing Curious George. Tossing orders is celestial child's play. God is way beyond that.

Spending quality time reflecting on the nature and activities of God is mind expanding really. Our minds can entertain nothing bigger or grander. I think that makes it a very healthy thing.