Reframing the Bible

I have long harbored the suspicion that in certain respects, in certain habits of thought, modern Christianity reads the Bible like an English manuel written in the 1900’s. I understand that the analogy is little rough. But I still think that the approach is wide spread amongst preachers, small groups and even in how we teach our children. We often come to the scriptures to look for a clear and accessible truth to abstract from it. This style of reading is often called the “plain reading of scripture”. To some this “plain reading” feels holier. I've heard numerous times in different ways “God says it, I read it, and that settles it for me”.

We hold to a western lens of “reframing” and it goes something like this: In order to address a problem or question I'm facing, our culture is facing, we take a chunk of scripture and first look to see how it can be applied to our modern issues. This process skips past the original frame in which the narrative of Scripture is written and instead unknowingly reframes. In doing this we barely make contact with the biblical narrative of a historically situated people. I would venture to say that when we do this we miss the meaning or truth intended by the author of the Bible.

There is a certain “re-authoring” that happens in the reading process when one assumes that a 2000 year old piece of literature, written to first century Judaism, translated into English, has a top level meaning we can access readily. Most teaching I hear does not do the hard work of reconstructing the Jewish timeline, idioms, hyperbole and cultural climate. There should always be a strong effort to return the language in the Bible to its original frame. To a Westerner in the year 2011, words have clear definitions but to a 1st Century Greek or Jew, words are symbolic. When we don’t intentionally reconstruct the original frame we widen the gap between the meaning in the original frame and the new frame into which it is inserted.

That would nail a lot of preaching and teaching today. Historically situated texts are extracted willy-nilly, with scant regard for narrative context, and made to serve some other purpose at the impulse of the preacher or teacher, who then maintains and declares that "this is what the Bible says." We make allowances for this practice because we think that no real harm is done by it, we think that no one in our churches is likely to care one way or the other, as long as people are moved or convicted.

We do need wise application to our modern issues. But first we need a strong effort to return to the original frame in our reading and interpretation. Once we have done that properly, we can start to ask what it would mean to be faithful in our living and thinking in relation to it.

Why Was Genesis Written?

Why was Genesis written? I believe it was poetically recorded to not tell us how the world and humanity was created but to tell us why the world and humanity was created. It might seem like a small thing but it has Biblical proportions. The epic questions that sit on everyone’s heart are answered in Genesis 1-2; “why am I here?” “what is my purpose?” “what good is my life?”

Over the last few years there has been so much pressure from the scientific community for Christians to answer the “how was the world created” question. A cultural boxing ring was created where the fight was about finding hard answers about how the world began. So the Christian community got pulled into the ring, began to fight and our main weapon was the first few chapters in Genesis. To not defend would be seen as weakness, so we spar trying to use our own scriptures.

Problem, this was not why Genesis was written. It was never intended to be a defense to how the world was created. It instead was and is to be a shocking portrayal of why. It was a contrasting picture to the other recordings of pagan deities from the Ancient Near East available almost 3000 years ago. There were other poetic creation stories in the cultures of the Ancient Near East. In them gods ruled with an iron fist. Bored gods created people to fetch their food and stay in slavery to them. The gods cast a shadow of fear over their creations and cared nothing of their well being. Violence, death and judgment is how the gods kept their creation in line. Genesis stands in stark contrast.

The story begins with a God who deeply enjoys making the world. He starts a work of art called the “human project”. He starts a project that reflects his own image “the imago dei”. This is lunacy in the Near Eastern world, gods are nothing like us and care nothing for us. But God creates a human project that is to live in deep relation with Him, one another, and creation. God loves what He makes. This is important to take notice of. His delight is to love and be loved by His human masterpiece. God created us to display His own unselfish love, His relationality and to create a project that would partner with Him in the ordering and designing of a new world. There is also a strong emphasis on identity in Genesis, how we identify ourselves. In the Near East accounts humans are pawns that have little personal value and are not essential on the earth. But in Genesis God gives His human project unbelievable power, freedom and potential to lead the the world. This is to be carried out in concert with the gracious, relational, secure rule of Jehovah. We are partners not pawns.

The narrative of Genesis is filled with purpose and God’s original intentions. This is what our world needs to hear. This connection and tethering to a larger, dominant, divine story is what my friends and your friends are thirsting for. We need to get out of the ring of defending our earth’s beginnings because it’s causing us to lose the plot. God can defend himself if He wants to. We’ve been commissioned with a story to tell.

Losing the Plot

Have you ever watched a movie and half way through you forget what the plot is? Somehow in all the action, drama and character development you don’t remember what the whole story was even about or where its going? With all the preachers we download, church shifts like the reformation, liberalism, revivalism, the mega church movement, the missionary movement, the religious right and books written to argue for or against a certain Christian perspective I think we somehow have lost the plot along the way.

Or have you ever started watching a movie in the middle and found yourself straining to remember key scenes in the beginning. I have a feeling this has happened in the American church, as over the years we’ve been talking about God and the christian life by starting at the halfway point of the story. Our desire to present the gospel in nutshells has caused us to exclusively highlight certain parts either to make it easier to communicate or to make sure people get the right points. Because of all this I believe there is a growing awareness that the epic heart of the story is eluding us.

Here’s the bigger than big problem, the plot is what you hang everything on. It’s the story that compels everything, it brings order and understanding to every event and statement. If you get the story a little off track, derailed or obsessed with one scene, nothing seems to fit naturally. Somehow stories have been relegated to something we tell children. But it’s the story and the grand narrative that is supposed to capture our hearts, help us make sense of what is happening down here, compel us to live always connected and give us something to beckon people to.

I know many church goers young and old that at some point lost or never heard what story God is writing and how our lives actively play a role in it. I have a strong suspicion that this loss of the plot and not “feeling” connection to anything much larger than obedience, repentance, personal holiness or church attendance has greatly contributed to our loss of internal passion, hope for the world, faith to risk, unselfish love and our identity in God’s blueprint.

Our Story of God needs to be re-framed, recast, re-centered, re-preached, and any other re I can think of. When the story is not dominate we have nothing to tether our everyday lives to.