A Voice, Small, a Whisper

1 Kings 19 has always been one of my favorite passages in Scripture. This is the one where Elijah has been told that God is about to pass over, so he goes and stands on the mountain. Here are verses 11 and 12:

"Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence."

In my Hebrew class, we're going through the Elijah and Elisha cycles, so we recently worked through this passage, and it was fascinating. Now, don't cry, but I'm going to reproduce the above excerpt in Hebrew here:

ורוח גדולה וחזק מפרק הרים ומשבר סלעים לפני יהוה לא ברוח יהוה ואחר הרוח רעש לא ברעש יהוהואחר הרעש אש לא באש יהוה ואחר האש קול דממה דקה

The word economy here is incredible. The Hebrew uses almost no verbs. It's a ton of nouns and prepositions, because Hebrew can do that.

I think my favorite part of this passage is the very last snippet. "קול דממה דקה" gets translated in a ton of different ways:

• "a sound of sheer silence" (NRSV)
• "a still small voice" (KJV)
• "a sound of a gentle blowing" (NASB)
• "a gentle whisper" (NIV)
• "the sound of a low whisper" (ESV)
• sibilus aurae tenuis/"a whistling of a gentle air" (Latin Vulgate/Douay-Rheims Bible)

All right, that was TMI, but my point is that there's no real consensus about how exactly to translate those 3 words. The Hebrew pretty much just says "A voice, small, a whisper." It's pretty ambiguous. And I really, really like that.

The whole point of this passage is that God doesn't come in the forms we might expect--wind, earthquake, fire. He comes in a still small voice (for once, I like the KJV best). So many musical artists have picked up on this and run with it. Nichole Nordeman sings, "Oh great God, be small enough to hear me now." Audrey Assad, similarly, sings, "Let me hear a still small voice." There's something about a soft, intimate whisper that is more powerful than wind, earthquake or fire, especially coming from the God that made and controls them all.

Witness or Warrior?

From yesterday through tomorrow, I have been/am/will be in a New Testament colloquium on intertextuality in the book of Revelation with German scholar Stefan Alkier. Academically, I'm in over my head, and I'm still not sure what possessed me to give my entire weekend over to a non-credit class, but I've learned some interesting things.

What I've most resonated with so far was part of a paper Dr. Alkier is working on called "Witness or Warrior? How the Book of Revelation can help Christians live their political lives." He seeks to take back Revelation from fundamentalism (which he distinguishes from biblicism by saying it is always political in some way), which has over the ages used Revelation to justify violence and vengeance. Alkier argues that although Revelation does not shy away from expressions of anger and desires for revenge, even legitimating them, but its focus on the risen Christ demands that we leave acting upon such desires to God.

This immediately got me excited because I thought of Walter Brueggemann's book Praying the Psalms, which we read in Old Testament last year and about which I blogged a while back. Revelation, like many of the Psalms of vengeance, has had its place in the Biblical canon questioned for its violent and graphic content; but Brueggemann argues, as does Alkier, that to eliminate such texts is to be in denial that these feelings exist in humankind, which is dangerous. Brueggemann writes, "The real theological problem...is not that vengeance is there in the Psalms, but that it is here in our midst." Revelation, the Psalms and many other disturbing Biblical texts force us to confront feelings and passions that make us uncomfortable but which are very real.

I wasn't going to go here, but the next time I hear someone rant about how there are 109 violent verses in the Quran, I'm going to tell them to go read Psalm 137:7-9, 2 Kings 2:23-24, and Revelation 18, for starters. If you want more, this website lists no fewer than 1,199 Bible verses with "cruelty or violence."

Hebrew and Discipleship

I am now in my second year of Biblical Hebrew. It is hard. But so very cool.

When it makes sense--when I successfully translate (whatever that means) a passage and see the nuances in the Hebrew that don't come across in English--it's incredible. Seeing the semantic and theological implications of Hebrew word choice and grammar is exhilarating for me. Yes, I'm a dork, but this stuff is amazing notwithstanding.

Of course, Hebrew can also send you on a wild goose chase trying to figure out what the heck it's saying. Hebrew words are based on 3-letter roots, which sounds nice but becomes problematic when you're trying to look up some strange form of a verb that has dropped both its first and last root letter. Then there are the forms that look exactly alike but have completely different meanings. That's how Moses (a la Michelangelo) wound up with horns on his head instead of a "radiant" face (thank you, Vulgate, 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible) via Exodus 34:29-30.

The other day, my Hebrew teacher gave her "Hebrew and psychology" spiel. She told us that Ellen Davis (a Bible and Practical Theology prof at Duke Divinity, to whom my teacher refers as "Hebrew Yoda") can still spend days stuck on a single word in the Hebrew Bible. Sometimes you just don't know what is going on in the Hebrew, and often you're not alone. In fact, there are plenty of places in the Hebrew Bible where scholars admit they're not really sure what's happening and have essentially made an educated guess. Hebrew requires work and will reward you, but it can also frustrate the daylights out of you.

I'm finding my Hebrew studies to be informative to my attempts at following Christ. If you want to be a disciple, you really have to dig deep into the Scriptures and into yourself. The rewards are unimaginable, but the pain and cost are real.

I quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer compulsively (the gender-exclusive version, because it sounds so much cooler)--"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." Anyone who offers you Christ in a way that is easily digestible and fits neatly into your life as it stands is not giving you the Gospel. Following Christ means putting yourself at the mercy of an unpredictable yet steadfast God, being willing to confuse a radiant face for horns and taking correction from the (ideally) honest yet loving body of Christ.

When I really throw myself into a Hebrew translation and emerge with even a feeble grasp of the intricacies of the passage, I am giddy and hungry for more. The excitement of that moment would be so much less--perhaps even nonexistent--if I didn't have to pour sweat and tears into it. How much more so should I rejoice every time God grants me a new sliver of his vision as encouragement for me to continue to walk through the valley, to climb the mountain, to see the unseen?

Thank You, GBOD

The United Methodist Church's General Board of Discipleship (GBOD) makes worship and teaching resources available through their website (which, by the way, is confusing since they changed the design/layout). Their lectionary resources for this coming Sunday (July 4) point preachers to blessings and prayers for the military and veterans, but they also include this paragraph:

"Always remember that the Scriptures for the day should set the theme for worship, and special commemorations should happen within and related to the context of the overarching biblical and Christian seasonal themes. God's word and our common baptism tell us who we are in Christ and so establish the underlying norms for our worship, not our national, ethnic, or familial ties or current station in life."

What a great way of putting it. I know some people (myself included) get worried when they have to preach on a day like Independence Day--I was dreading the possibility of singing "America the Beautiful" in worship. It's a delicate balance that I think we mess up quite frequently--many of us want to offer a counter-narrative to patriotism that sometimes can blot out our unity in Christ, but there is nothing wrong with praying for the troops or honoring veterans. The GBOD website is trying to encourage worship planners to put our identity in Christ first, but that where recognition of human achievements and national holidays are appropriate to the Christian season, they can be included in the appropriate time and space. I'd just as soon ignore the 4th of July holiday and take up the issue of war another time, but I know the parishioners are probably going to go straight from church to a cookout and to watch fireworks. There has to be some sort of continuity and point of contact between what happens in Sunday morning worship and what's going on in the rest of the lives of the congregants. That doesn't mean unilaterally supporting cultural phenomena--the Gospel should be subversive of anything that detracts from its singular position in our lives--but it does mean finding the connections and making space for transformation. Anyway, I'm sort of thinking out loud, but those are just some of my musings on the subject, which I'll be refining in my own head over the course of this week.

Back to the lectionary. I'm thinking 2 Kings. I really like the Naaman story.

"You shall love the alien as yourself"

This morning, I saw this posted as a friend's Facebook status:

"JUST SO I UNDERSTAND THIS...YOU PASS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET 12 YRS HARD LABOR, YOU PASS THE AFGHAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET SHOT. YOU PASS THE AMERICAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET A JOB, DRIVER'S LICENSE, ALLOWANCE FOR A PLACE TO LIVE, HEALTH CARE, EDUCATION, BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SPENT SO YOU CAN READ A DOCUMENT. WE CARRY PASSPORTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES OR FACE JAIL TIME. REPOST IF YOU AGREE"

My only direct response to this is...so our standards of comparison are North Korea and Afghanistan now? And getting shot in Afghanistan happens a lot more often for a lot more reasons than crossing the border illegally...

My indirect response comes from the fact that when I saw this, I had just read the daily office from the BCP with my housemates. The Old Testament lesson for today is this:

"When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."
-- Leviticus 19:33-34

I was so grateful for this. I don't really know how to respond to all the nastiness I see getting slung around online over Arizona and immigration and whatnot, and it turns out I don't have to say a thing. I can just point to these verses. Because, interestingly enough, most of the people I know who are rabidly anti-immigration are...Christians. I'm not demonizing those people--I have many friends and relatives who fall into that category. I'm just saying.

I wasn't going to blog about the issue at all, but this news item pushed me over the edge.

Wisdom as Relational Justice in Proverbs 22:1-16

Yesterday I turned in my exegesis paper for the second semester of Intro to Old Testament Interpretation with Dr. Stephen Chapman. I actually experienced something like postpartum depression because I had so enjoyed working on this paper all semester. It's 18 pages long with lots of footnotes, so I'll limit this post to a few key excerpts. If you decide you want to read my whole paper (which includes the passage itself), you can link to the PDF on my Duke webspace here.


Introduction/Thesis:
"Proverbs 22:1—16 includes sayings on various subjects, all of which inform an understanding of wisdom not as an intellectual inclination but as a commitment to living out discerning and just relationships in light of Israel’s status as God’s chosen people. Statements on poverty and wealth begin and end the passage, framing a sustained call to interpersonal, relational justice. Although the aphorisms on poverty, wealth, discipline and generosity may on the surface appear to be aimed at reinforcing an unequal status quo, when understood in its cultural and canonical context, this passage carries an ethical imperative that shapes a definition of justice as relational, personal and distributive."

A Killer Quote:
From J. K. Nyerere's Man and Development on Proverbs 22:2 ("The rich and the poor have this in common: the LORD is the maker of them all."): "At this time in man’s history, it must imply a divine discontent and a determination for change. For the present condition of men must be unacceptable to all who think of an individual person as a unique creation of a living God. We say man was created in the image of God. I refuse to imagine a God who is poor, ignorant, superstitious, fearful, oppressed, wretched—which is the lot of the majority of those He created in his own image. Men are creators of themselves and their conditions, but under present conditions we are creatures, not of God, but of our fellow men."

Theological Reflection (Paragraph on Charity and Justice):
"There are two words in Hebrew that can be translated as 'justice,' משפט (mishpat) and צדקה (tzedakah). Neither is found in 22:1—16, but the ideas embedded in the language inform the theology of this passage nonetheless. In his book The Dignity of Difference, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks meditates on the distinction between these two terms: 'Mishpat means retributive justice or the rule of law. ...Tzedakah, by contrast, refers to distributive justice.' Tzedakah does not have a direct synonym in English; Sacks explains that this word contains the ideas of both charity and justice—two terms that are translated separately and therefore perceived as being mutually exclusive in both Latin (iustitia and caritas) and English. When [David J.] Pleins claims [in The Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible], 'Proverbs rarely moves beyond charity,' he is interpreting through a lens that is tempered by his temporal and linguistic location, a lens that is incongruous with ancient Israelite ideas of justice."

Reese's Pieces: Irrefutable Proof of the Existence of God

My grandfather is awesome. He's a retired bishop in the United Methodist Church, and he's just the jam. Today he told me something that just upped his awesome factor:

Bart Ehrman's official title is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Gray endowed the chair specifically for the purpose of keeping a Christian presence in the faculty of UNC's Religious Studies department. Ehrman is a self-professing agnostic (formerly Christian).

Now, it turns out that James A. Gray is my grandfather's cousin. My grandfather commented today that if Gray knew that an agnostic occupied his namesake chair, he would roll over in his grave. This is funny enough coming from a 70-something-year-old man, but it gets better. My grandfather once met Ehrman and actually told him this. Ehrman didn't seem perturbed.

This story just makes me giggle. And I'm not going to debate Ehrman here--Richard Hays, Stephen Colbert, my dad and many others have done a far better job than I could. I just want to clarify one thing: my problem with Ehrman is not that he's agnostic. It's his reasons for leaving the faith.

Ehrman is making gobs of money off books where the thesis is basically "OH MY GOSH THERE ARE INCONSISTENCIES IN THE BIBLE AND IT MIGHT NOT ALL BE 100% HISTORICALLY ACCURATE AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!" I *might* be mocking, but I can't help it if I'm snarky and sarcastic by nature. Anyway, the thing is, Ehrman presents his problems as if he's the first person to notice them. But if no one had ever realized that not all 4 Gospels were exactly the same...why would we have 4 Gospels in the first place? The point is that Ehrman is wrestling with legitimate questions in a way that ignores the fact that the church has been dealing with them for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Since I have papers to write and don't feel like going into this anyway, I'm just going to leave you with this gem:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bart Ehrman
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

"Oh yes, you did laugh."

I had a disorienting experience the other day that got me thinking. I still don't quite know what I want to say about it, but I'm just going to describe what happened and get some feedback.

I was at a church on Sunday that is not "my" church but which I visit occasionally. During the sermon, the pastor used the famous quote by Saint Francis: "Preach the Gospel; when necessary, use words." I was nodding in agreement when I heard several people in the congregation laugh out loud. I was completely thrown off guard. I had never thought that this quote was funny. I wondered if I'd missed something.

Later that afternoon, I called my dad, a longtime pastor and a Saint Francis fanboy. I told him about this new reaction to the quote, and he told me he'd had similar experiences in certain churches or settings where he was a visiting preacher or speaker. In particular settings, some things he says that would normally (by people who know him and share his perspective) would be met with pondering silence instead elicit laughter.

I suspect I'll eventually have more to say about what I think this means, but for now I want to hear your thoughts. What is your reaction to the saying, "Preach the Gospel; if necessary, use words?" Or have you had an experience where you found something funny that wasn't intended that way, or vice versa? What do you think different reactions to a statement like that mean, if anything?

Why Has This Happened to Me?

These two videos together form my sermon from worship yesterday at Asbury Temple UMC. It's in two parts, so don't forget the second video.

The Miraculous Feeding of the 5,000

Today, I overheard a snippet of a conversation taking place on the first floor of my house as I walked through the second. "Oh, you Methodists and your non-miraculous reading of that miracle," said one housemate jokingly to another. I knew exactly what he was talking about, and it prompted me to think a little further about my troubles with a particular reading of the passage in question. But I get ahead of myself.

The feeding of the 5,000 (or 4,000...or 5,000, not counting women and children...but still a lot of people...) became a boring narrative for me sometime in middle school. I'd heard it so many times I tended to zone out when that Bible story was being read or preached on.

Imagine my surprise when one time earlier in college a sermon on this Gospel lesson caught my attention. Having drifted off mentally as usual, I was suddenly listening and disoriented. The preacher was wondering aloud whether perhaps the crowd was moved by the generosity of the young boy with the fish and the loaves. Perhaps someone pulled out a piece of bread here, a hunk of cheese there, and before long everyone's little to offer became a lot to eat.

I felt myself immediately averse to this account, but I couldn't explain why. In fact, more recently, my friend said she thought that it would have taken a greater miracle to move the crowd to such generosity than it would have to reproduce baskets of bread and fish. I had to agree with that. But I was still troubled, and I think I'm starting to figure out why.

Let me make it clear that I'm not opposed to this Stone Soup version of the story. I'm open to different readings of the Bible, and besides, the stone soup approach works wonders in the household of which I am currently a part. It isn't so much this interpretation that bothers me, it's where it came from and what it can lead to.

In my Old Testament precept last week, we were discussing a book by Peter Enns called Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Enns attempts to find a way to reconcile a non-literal reading of the Bible with the maintenance of Scriptural authority (to summarize very crudely). In order to give us background on where the debate over the Old Testament and the authority of Scripture began, our preceptor described to us some of the theological and philosophical history of the various issues. He talked about one school of thought that sought to explain, in modern terms, the seemingly miraculous happenings in the Bible. One scenario that struck me was that on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus was walking on a sandbar and simply appeared to be walking on water. There were several other explanations that rubbed me the wrong way, and the interpretation of the feeding of the 5,000 that I outlined before was ranked among those.

My issue isn't so much that I'm so attached to and dependent on the miracle status of the stories from the life of Jesus that I can't give them up, like a child with a security blanket. I won't call down curses on someone who says the demoniacs in the Bible were schizophrenic or otherwise mentally ill. (By the way, it seems to me that curing someone of a mental illness is at least as impressive as casting out a demon.) What troubles me about this whole train of thought is the obsessive need to explain everything. Faith is an art that requires an ability to live in the tension between the known and the unknown, the revealed and the unseen, the fulfilled and the yet-to-be. Certainly we should be exploring the Bible with minds that are open to new inspiration, but we should not take our need to explain so far that it becomes an attempt to control and manipulate the text. And we must never forget that while alternative explanations of Bible stories may be interesting, when they become the focus, we miss the point. The technicalities of how a miracle occurred should never become more interesting or important than the Miracle Worker. Explore possibilities, share new ideas, ask questions; but don't get rid of the mystery.

Nature and Scripture

"While I see evidence of God in nature, I would not know the person of Jesus Christ without reading the Bible. I cannot look at the stars and know that God wants us to turn away from wickedness. I cannot marvel at a sunset and feel the pain God felt as Jesus hung on the cross." — Caroleah Johnson, Upper Room Daily Devotional

Yes. This is great. I've always gotten agitated when people talk about seeing God in nature. Honestly, I wasn't terribly nice about it for a period of my life, and I had to be taken down a notch, which in part took the form of me finding peace at a monastery in the middle of the New Mexican desert—a place where God reveals himself, in no uncertain terms, in rock and river and sky. But I have continued to long for a way to articulate my concern when someone tells me they experience God primarily in nature.

There is nothing wrong with that. The devotional I pulled that quote from draws on Psalm 19: "The heavens are telling the glory of God." It's not that nature isn't a valid means of connecting to the eternal; it's just that our meetings with God in nature and other settings need to be informed by a familiarity with and understanding of Scripture. Jesus is universal and particular—though his face can be seen in any person or natural wonder, we need to know the story of the actual man who lived and died if we are to draw any meaning from that connection.

The kicker: as much as I've complained about relying too heavily on stars and flowers for a God connection, I don't read my Bible nearly enough to make up for that. It's something I'm working on, more intentionally now than at other times in my life. This reflection is one more bit of motivation for me to be in the Word more.

No More Excuses

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy." But the Lord said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a boy'; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord." Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, "Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant." — Jeremiah 1:4-10

I love this passage. It's been really important to me for the past several years as I've discerned and explored my call to ministry. I recall spending a lot of time with these verses my freshman year of college and feeling like I too often tried to hide behind my age as an excuse not to realize my full potential.

I picked this Scripture for my morning reflection and prayer time today, and I had a disturbing thought: Jeremiah said "I am only a boy"—and I've said "I am only a girl"—but what happens when that is no longer true? If youth wasn't a valid excuse for dodging your calling, how much more must be expected of you once you don't have youth as a shield, if even a flimsy one?

Obviously, I'm not tottering with old age just yet. I'll be 22 in just over 2 weeks. But I'm not a child anymore. I have a college degree, I have a full-time job, I pay my own rent and buy my own groceries. When I reflected on Jeremiah's calling at age 18, I was completely dependent on my parents and didn't even have a work study job or anything. I was a child in worldly terms and in faith. Although I still often feel like an infant in my understanding of God, I am not a girl anymore.

God expected enormous things of Jeremiah even in his youth; how much more must be expected of us once we enter adulthood? Young age wasn't a valid excuse then; it seems there is nothing to hide behind now. I have been called by God to a specific vocation, and even if the details have not yet been revealed to me, I can't keep telling God to wait until I'm older or wiser or more prepared. It makes me think of the quote, "God does not call the equipped; he equips the called." I can't hide behind what I may perceive as a lack of skills or knowledge or equipment. I have to respond to God's call and know that he will provide whatever it is I need.

The Saints Who Had Fallen Asleep

"At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs were also opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many." — Matthew 27:51-53

I have always thought that this passage was just so, so cool. The first time I heard this after having learned about the general resurrection, I was shocked. It's eschatologically problematic to have dead people walking around before the end times. I've never read a commentary on this passage, and I know that this particular part is unique to Matthew's Gospel, but what else could this possibly be than a graphic foretaste of the coming resurrection of the body? Jesus' own resurrection was in and of itself a prefiguration of the general resurrection—"for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:22)—but, as if the point needed to be driven home further still, here we have regular people getting up out of the grave. So all will be made alive.

Making Peace Through the Blood of the Cross

"[Christ] himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of the cross." — Colossians 1:17-20

Grace Sufficient

"Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three time I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.' So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, ad calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong." — 2 Corinthians 12:7b-10

With Unveiled Faces

"And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit." — 2 Corinthians 3:18

Deuteronomy 23:1

I'm sure you've all heard stories—maybe some of you have experienced this phenomenon—of people who, when in a difficult situation, open the Bible randomly and stumble upon a verse that speaks directly to them. The Holy Spirit, they say, led them to that particular verse, and they gained the strength they needed to press on.

Wondering what it might be like to receive this sort of individualized affirmation from Scripture myself, I tried this once. I opened to Deuteronomy 23:1—"No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord." Wow. Thanks, Holy Spirit. I'm not sure what you were trying to say to me there, but at least I know I'll never have that particular problem.

Maybe I'm just unlucky with Spirit-led Bible browsing, but if people sometimes find the faith and motivation they need to press on from such random acts of Scripture reading, who am I to deny its validity to that particular person? The thing is, the popularity of this odd method of reading the Bible evinces a trend in how Christians today sometimes approach the Word in error.

I'm not saying that the Holy Spirit can't lead people to certain Bible passages; God's Word may whisper a lot of the time, but every now and then it can be a loudspeaker right in your face. But the concept of asking for an answer to a question or problem and then finding the answer by opening the Bible at random assumes a flippant treatment of Scripture. For one, it makes it seem as if the Bible were written specifically for me; for another, it allows for select verses to be taken completely out of context, something that is also popular in the realm of naming favorite Bible verses.

Any Christian who reads the Bible alone in their room, seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit alone, misses a crucial component of the Christian life: the Church. The Bible cannot be read outside the Church. Certainly Scripture is often treated from an academic perspective, but it is my conviction that although a historical approach can be beneficial, it is only, to paraphrase Barth, a preparation of knowledge. True knowledge of the content, context and active power of the Bible is found only within the Christian community. We read the Bible together in order to build each other up in our understanding, to keep each other from error in interpretation or application and to encourage each other to live the commands presented in the Bible.

I've heard people say that they think the Bible should be read by individuals, its morals followed as part of a personal decision; that the Church has corrupted its message and that institutionalized religion gets away from the purity of the Word itself. The problem here is that the Bible would not exist without the Church. The canon was established by the community of faith in order to shape the common belief and the common life. You can try to read the Bible in a vacuum, but you simply can't do it. The story in the Bible is not a story about how you can live your best life now—it's a story of a whole nation called to do God's will, together.

It's fine to open the Bible at random and see what you find. Maybe you'll come across such gems as 2 Kings 4:40 ("O man of God, there is death in the pot!"), Jeremiah 20:9b ("I am weary of holding it in / and I cannot") or Leviticus 3:16b ("All fat is the Lord's"). Heck, maybe that is the Spirit at work—maybe God's trying to make you laugh. Or maybe you'll get lucky and run across something that speaks to the heart of what you're going through. The Bible wasn't written to help you through your life's troubles, but that doesn't mean that it's not applicable. Then again, which would you prefer: a random Bible verse that lifts your spirits momentarily, or a steadfast community of faith, living in the Word, that can continually build you up over time? I'll take that over the comforting words of Deuteronomy 23:1 any day.

The Lord Directs the Steps

"The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps."
— Proverbs 16:9