Today’s Scripture Reading (June 20, 2016): Psalm 119:97-144
Theologian Walter Wink once wrote;
We can no longer simply submit to scripture without asking whether new light is needed to interpret it. I for one do not abandon scripture, but neither do I acquiesce. I wrestle with it. I challenge it. I am broken and wounded by it, and then in defeat, I sometimes encounter the living God. “Gays and the Bible: A Reply by Walter Wink.” Christian Century August 14-27 (2002): 43.
I understand the tension. I mean, I am sure that it is words and thoughts like these that drive some corners of Christendom to decide that they are a “King James Only (or whatever other translation that they decide to swear their allegiance to) Church.” The idea is to simplify the process of understanding God’s word. This is the hope of every Christian who asks for “just a plain reading of the text.” But the problem is that it is all just a myth. Swearing your allegiance to a certain translation of the Bible does not mean that you will have a right understanding of the Holy Scripture. It means that you will have an easy understanding – but often a wrong one. There is no such thing as a “plain reading of the text.” The Bible was written over more than a millennium (more than 1000 years) to a people who, at the very least, haven’t been alive for 2000 years (the people of the New Testament are the most recent people for whom the Scripture was written). It was written in languages that most of us do not speak and it was written in a political and social context that is alien to us. And our response is that we want an easy reading. We want too much.
I think Walter Wink’s response is reality. If you want to really know what the Bible says, don’t look for an easy out. Be prepared to struggle with a passage, to allow it to inform you over years and decades and a lifetime. The Bible cannot (and should not) be reduced to a Proverb. The problems it deals with are complex because we are complex. I love the image that Wink gives us of wrestling and being broken and wounded by the biblical text – and then in the end of being defeated by the text and in that moment finding God. I know exactly what Wink is describing. I have been there.
I have been writing this blog for over seven years. I began to write it for my friends and my church family. My friends who read these words have grown larger. And there are many times when I actively struggle with what to say about any verse. Even the process is flawed. The idea of breaking down the biblical text into verses sometimes gives us the impression that the verses can be self-contained. But that is not true. Each verse is written in the context of those verses that are written around it. It is to be interpreted by the chapter and the book and the author who wrote it (and whatever else that author might have written.) Each verse needs to be understood in the context not only of all of that, but also in the context of the whole Bible. The Bible as a whole is the lens by which we read every verse of scripture. (And it is the reason why one “friend” once described me online as a “per-verse Pastor” – because I dared to try to take the Bible one verse at a time).
All of this is needed to understand the Bible – and one more thing. The Bible will never be understood without the active presence of the Holy Spirit in the process. The Holy Spirit is really the discernment for which the psalmist is asking. Not that God’s Spirit is willing to spoon feed us. He expects us to invest some time and struggle with the text. And in the midst of the struggle, we find what it is that Walter Wink found in the midst of his struggle – God.
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