They taught throughout Judah, taking with them the Book of the Law of the LORD; they went around to all the towns of Judah and taught the people. – 2 Chronicles 17:9

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 17, 2013): 2 Chronicles 17

I was recently reading a political blog when I found some good advice – In these troubled times we need to turn to the one whose advice has been read by more people and any other wise sage to whom we could turn. Now, he was not referring to Jesus – or even Shakespeare or Dr. Seuss. This wise sage is read much more widely than any of these. He was referring to the guy who writes those wise messages placed within our fortune cookies (Wonton foods, the largest manufacturer of fortune cookies makes four million of those wise treats a day.) When all else is lost, maybe it is to him that we need to turn to find the wisdom we need to move into the future.

Admittedly, the advice is very tongue in cheek. But apparently there is trouble brewing inside of those wise treats. You see, apparently we don’t seem to like what the cookies are telling us. There are too many problematic fortunes being produced. And the fortunes that we want removed from our cookies, the fortunes that are really freaking us out are the ones that contain messages like “Love is in the near future.” After all, we don’t want out want our children to get any ideas. So there is a movement to have these messages removed from our cookies.

It is the temptation that we have with any man made advice. Several years ago I had a conversation with a friend who wanted certain Bible verses removed from worship – never to be mentioned again. It has been a temptation from the very beginning. Just a few decades after Jesus’ life there rose a bishop named Marcion of Sinope. Marcion was offended by the messages of the Hebrew Bible, so he created a Christian Bible (actually it was the first Christian Bible in existence.) But his critics remarked that he wrote not with a pen, but a knife. He carefully excised out of the text anything that he found offensive – including all mentions of the Hebrew Bible. Now the Bible could agree with only his theology. But when we do that to the Bible, it ceases to be a canon – which is simply a ruler against which we measure our lives.

This verse has been described as the pinnacle of the book of Chronicles. It was a reminder that there was an objective rule against which the descendants of Abraham were to order their lives. We are not sure if it was the full Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) or just the book of Deuteronomy (which is a summary of the law) that the teachers carried. But there was something against which the people’s lives were to be measured. This was not a book that was to be negotiated with, but rather one that was to be followed.

And this was an important message that the descendants of Abraham returning from their exile in Babylon needed to hear. The Bible does not stand in need of being harmonized to match our belief system – it needs to be struggled with so that we can understand the full extent of its meaning.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 18