Today’s Scripture Reading (December 1, 2016): Amos 8
“God helps those who help themselves.” Maybe the best known Bible verse that is not actually in the Bible. The words have a long history. Euripides makes this comment in his play “Hippolytus” - "Try first thyself, and after call in God; For to the worker God himself lends aid." Sophocles wrote (about twenty years after Euripides), “No good ever comes of leisure purposeless; and heaven never helps the men who will not act.” But the actual saying probably dates even farther back than either of these philosophers. However, it is a thought that has passed through many traditions. Even Mohammed had his version of these words. A story is told that one day Mohammed noticed a Bedouin leaving his camel without tying it down. He asked the Bedouin, "Why don't you tie down your camel?" The Bedouin answered, "I placed my trust in Allah." At that, Mohammed said, "Tie your camel and place your trust in Allah." God helps those who help themselves.
From a Christian context, the problem with the saying is that it places success solidly in the hands of the person instead of God. It is part of a “works-based” theology that says that if I work hard enough, then maybe God will move. We don’t believe that, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Barna reports that 82% of Americans believe that the phrase is in the Bible. Of those who call themselves Christian, but not “born-again” that number drops to 81%. Of those who identify as “born-again” believers, 68% believe that the phrase is in the Bible. And of American teens, three out of every four think that “God helps those who help themselves” is the central theme of the Bible. Even Jay Carney, President Obama’s former Press Secretary, got into the act by quoting the beloved Bible verse that isn’t in a press conference. Oops.
Amos prophesies of a coming famine. Not one of food and water, but rather one of hearing the words of God. The coming famine will be a famine of Scripture. And that famine we are suffering through today. Over seven years ago I began writing this blog as a tool to try to get my church to read the Bible. My hope was that this blog would show solidarity with people as they wrestled with the text. If you read the text suggested every day, then in just over three years you will read every word that is written in the Bible. Here, in year eight, this is our third time through the biblical text.
But the reality in North America is that we substitute other things for the Bible. Even this blog can be that kind of a temptation to substitute something else for Bible reading. It is sometimes easier to read what someone else has written about the Bible than to try to read the text yourself. But when we settle for the words that someone else has written about the Bible instead of the biblical words themselves, we welcome the famine about which Amos prophesied. And we begin to believe things are in the Bible that just aren’t.
In our culture, there is no excuse. Most homes have multiple versions of the Bible laying around somewhere. But, to be honest, I rarely open the Bible as a printed book. Most of my Bible reading is done on my laptop, or my tablet, or my phone. I am one of those annoying people who when the pastor says “Open your Bible to Amos 8” grab my phone and open an app. I spend a lot of time on sites like “Bible Gateway” which offers multiple translations of the Bible and “Blue Letter Bible” which allows me to study the text in the original language.
Whatever the method, the Bible has never been more convenient. But to avoid the famine that Amos speaks about, we have to be willing to read the Bible for ourselves and to wrestle with the harder passages. The practice is well worth it. After all, who cares what Garry says; it is what God says to his people in the Bible that is of the most importance.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Amos 9
No comments:
Post a Comment