Monday 26 November 2007

We are still walking through "The Last Word on Biblical Authority" by Brian Blount.



We're asking the question, How do we go about understanding which biblical words live today, and which don't?... People need some absolute, something hard and lasting, a last word on all things for all ethical situations for every ethical context imaginable. We are like Paul's babes in the faith; we need the suckling security of a milk bottle filled with authoritative assurances about what we should do and how we should live in any and every time for any and every circumstance. We don't want complexities because we're not spiritually grown up enough to handle them. We want it simple: simplified faith, simplified ethics in light of that faith. We want "do this" or "do that," "don't do this" or "don't do that." We're too often not ready for the meat of mature considerations about the words of texts that were often right for their own time twenty centuries ago but may well be wrong for our time.



It sounds like we must be able and willing to talk with texts. That is, not simply look to them for precise answers like those to a simple math test. Rather, we must be willing to hear the text and talk with it so that we can find out if the context of the written word can or does match up with the context in which we are reading the word and attempting to make sense of it for our day. I think we all have a tendency to listen to a text only as we want to hear it. In that exercise, I suppose we do not hear anything that will cause us to get up and wrestle with it. Instead we avoid any confrontation with the text by simply letting it speak as we want it to speak. There are many ways we can turn texts into "do this" and "do that" when the text really isn't that specific. What is really going on within our encounter with the text is that we will only hear what our filters let us hear - or are able to hear.



Connection: Maybe we can begin by keeping the opening question before us as we go through this day: "How do we go about understanding which biblical words live today, and which don't.? Already, we will begin to face the moment a bit differently.



Living Word, you change what is into what will be. From here to there, we will experience loss and we are overwhelmed by joy. We would ask that your Word would continue to pull us into life that we have yet to experience to the fullest. Amen.