As you may already know from what I’ve written here, I’m a big fan of reading the Bible, and that kind of talk might lead some to a point of suspicion and skepticism. We all must “beware the Bible-thumper!” To tell you the truth, I can see where someone could get that attitude. Everyone has seen that guy who knows just enough of the Bible to be dangerous.
But when I encourage people to read the Bible, that’s what I’m trying to get us all around.
I’ve written before about the Secret Service and their approach to protecting US currency. We should want the same – to know the truth so well that we can tell when someone’s trying to slip a lie into the conversation. Sadly, the problem with the casual Christian is that they sometimes latch onto bits and pieces of the truth that lead them to errant conclusions. The truth is important enough though that we can’t afford to be casual about it.
So what can we do? Well, immersing ourselves in the reading of the Bible is a start. But even then (I should say, “especially then”) questions do come up, and when we look for answers there’s a lot out there that can lead us down any one of a number of roads. It’s really important then that we hit the right trajectory because if we get off course, we might be working through our Christian faith making a lot of wrong assumptions.
It’s great to have a strong foundation through reading the Bible, but I’ve known people who read the Bible plenty and are still off track. Why? Because they cling to their cherished preconceptions so tightly that they end up not seeing the bigger picture. They misunderstand isolated passages and get stuck in a rut that prevents them from seeing things any other way. I knew one such person. He insisted that in saying that Jesus was the “Son of God,” the Bible could only mean that Jesus was not God himself. Not only that, but since Jesus was God’s “son,” he certainly wasn’t eternal but must have been created at some time.
What do we do with that? When I taught Bible study there were certain things that I just couldn’t get across to him because way back at the beginning of his journey he got off on a path that made orthodox Christianity unrecognizable from his worldview. His beliefs fit right in there with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but they didn’t fit with what the Bible taught. To be sure, we can read the Bible cover to cover, yet without knowing the context of what we’re reading, especially within the narrative of the whole thing, we may end up somewhere completely off track.
To avoid that, I use one simple rule: the best source for interpreting the Bible is…the Bible. You might think a statement like that has circular reasoning written all over it. It’s like I’m saying “I know the Bible is true because it told me it’s true.” But it’s not like that at all. I’m not saying here that it’s true because it says so (that’s for a completely different post). I’m saying that the Bible interprets itself in that it won’t contradict itself. If you ever encounter a problem in the Bible, the solution cannot tell you something that is contrary to what is written in the rest of the Bible. So, going back to our “son of God” example, if you think that calling Jesus the “son of God” makes him a created and subordinate being, you have to ignore what the rest of the Bible says about him.
Still, I’m not telling you that locking yourself in a room and reading the Bible in total isolation is the answer here. Reading the Bible in itself is good stuff, but it helps when you have the tools that makes the big picture clearer. I’m reminded of an example I’ve used in language learning – “memorizing the German dictionary will not make you fluent in German.” You need to see all of the words in their proper context to even begin to understand the whole of the language. And similarly, with the Bible, you build that strong foundation from the whole of it so that you know you’re on the right track. You get a feel for the entirety of the faith, and so you’ll know when you’re confronted with something that isn’t quite right.
First and foremost in this is the work of the Holy Spirit. We cannot forget the Holy Spirit’s role in teaching us and helping us understand our faith. But these things don’t all just come to us in some magical mind-dump. We’re just not built for that; especially in this world where we still war with the inner feelings and desires that put up barriers to the work of the Spirit in us. We do have means though, and over the years I’ve come to rely on three in particular that I think are the most useful. While our salvation comes to us through the proclamation of the word, we continue to grow as Christians:
1. By proclamation and preaching of the Word.
Let me start by saying something of the order of my approach here. I place the proclamation and preaching of the word first because of what Paul says in his letter to the Romans (10:14-17): “14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’ 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?’ 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
Now, this works differently for everyone; but it does work. I came upon salvation from hearing the word preached, but not at the moment it was preached. It crept in somehow on Christmas day in 1993 and simmered for a week or so before it struck me (I write a bit about it here). I have a friend whose salvation came from his wife’s diligent prayer and the playing of a sermon tape while she worked around the house. One day he heard the words on the tape and was brought to tears of repentance. His wife estimates she’d played that tape 42 times before that happened.
But this isn’t about getting saved. I’m just establishing the foundation of God’s word here in coming to faith. What I really want to write about now is how you grow after that happens.
Here I can turn to a few sources – from the Bible. First off, we have Jesus himself in Luke 24:27 – “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” Jesus goes to scripture a lot during his ministry, like when he tells his disciples that he is going to suffer and rise again. He knew his Bible. He knew what Isaiah 53 (and 55) meant when no one else could connect the dots.
And Paul knew his Bible too. He was a top scholar, trained under top scholars (Acts 22:3; Php 3:5-6), but it took the humility of getting knocked to the ground and blinded, along with some time with the disciples to settle into the role God had for him as an Apostle to the Gentiles. If you want to see the power of preaching, just follow Paul’s work in Acts. I type the word “reason” into biblegateway.com’s search bar and see at least 7 times in that book where Paul was in the synagogues, market places, and even in front of government officials reasoning with people from the scriptures. And many responded. Famously, the Bereans are set up as an example for us in Acts 17 – they “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”
The other Apostles do the same. In the early chapters of Acts, Peter and John lead thousands to Jesus through a history of the Jewish faith right out of the Old Testament; and Philip proclaimed the gospel to an Ethiopian eunuch who was reading from Isaiah – “…and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.”
So we can see pretty clearly that the preaching of God’s word is first among the means to set a foundation for both coming to and growing in the faith. Not only is the Word necessary for salvation, it is something to be reasoned through and studied diligently as we listen. We should never settle for generic platitudes of a Christianity that fit on a coffee mug or inspirational poster. We should revel in the Word as it is proclaimed and taught from the pulpit.
2. By the teaching of the Catechism.
Naturally, teaching from the pulpit should lead us somewhere. We see in it that God’s word was opened to believers through the faithful study and reasoning of those speaking. While this is certainly the teaching of the Word, there is another (and I think more ordered) way that I’ve found absolutely invaluable, and it’s been around for quite some time. As far back as the 16th century (and before), we’ve had godly men who did the hard work for us. They studied the scriptures, formulatied questions, and gave us the answers to those questions in catechisms based on what they found. Question one of the Westminster Shorter Catechism – “What is the chief end of man?” – gets right to the point: Why are we here? What is our purpose (something I talked a bit about here)? The Heidelberg Catechism opens with the source of our hope: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” Both cover the foundations of our faith, using scripture as our guide.
I want to double down here too. I understand the desire to have our personal feelings and deep-felt needs met through Christian fellowship and small-group Bible studies. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them – we are commanded to meet together, and not just on Sunday mornings. But unless we’ve covered at least the basics of a good catechism, we might spend a lot of time in these studies making the assumption that the people in them are grounded in the faith. We may even go through a study not realizing that the person sitting right next to us hears everything through the filter of his belief that Jesus is the literal (i.e. “created”) son of God.
I remember one time spending an hour teaching a Bible study to a group of Koreans. While going around the room for prayer requests at the end, I was suddenly taken aback by one of the young men there telling me, “I’m not a Christian” (after that I always greeted newcomers with the question “how do I get to heaven?”). In another case, I was debating what Christians believe with someone when I came to the realization that when we each said “Christian,” we were talking about two different things. Again: the foundation is important. The catechisms give us the basics. We might spend hours on end debating and talking about all manner of things, but first we must be sure that we’re all on the same page.
3. Through personal study
Finally, you know how much I love the straight-up reading of the Word. I’ve written about my approach a couple of times. Some of the best insights and understandings you can get out of the Bible is in the simple reading of it. Just set aside a quiet and consistent time and commit to doing it. You can do it chronologically, you can do it in order, you can jump around with a checklist – the one thing that is absolutely necessary is that you do it. As long as you’re reading it, you can decide from there whether to read it outright or to go through with some kind of guide (study Bible notes, commentaries, etc.); whether to speed read it or devote entire months to single books. I personally get very little out of reading study guides and notes (but you may be different!) – most of my work comes from cross-referencing what’s already in the Bible elsewhere, and if I do come to something that challenges me, I may then refer to outside (and multiple) sources for clues on what directions are possible before going back to cross-referencing again (this was not always the case – again, results may vary based on a lot of factos). The ground-truth base though is the Bible. Nowhere within personal study may we appeal to something that contradicts it. This is why it is so important to just read it – to get through the whole thing as often as possible to reinforce an overall foundation of knowledge that is ultimately grounded in scripture.
However you approach it, approach it in earnest. The means that I’ve suggested here lay a firm foundation for your faith. The first gives you someone who (if you’re in a good church) is tenacious in digging into the word – someone who is trained in teaching and the original languages as well as (we hope) someone who can lead by the example of being firmly grounded in the Word through his own course of study. The second gives you a forum through which you can grow in the particulars – again, based on what God has told us about himself in the scriptures. And the third gives you the habitual and persistent habit of going into the Word yourself – being familiar to the point where if you hear something that doesn’t sound right you either know it or know enough to dig into it.
Doing all of this will make you a blessing to the Church. Laying this groundwork takes work – I’ve been at it for over 25 years and I would never presume to think I’ve “arrived” at any point in my faith where I can rest. But I assure you, the work is well worth doing.