The Way of Love: Learn

The scriptures referred to are Romans 10:8b-13 and Luke 4:1-13.

When they released the first Lord of the Rings movie I saw it with my son and some of his friends. Most of us really enjoyed it but one of my son's friends did not. It wasn't the acting or the cinematography or the plot or the action he took issue with. It was the fact that they had completely eliminated a character he loved: Tom Bombadil. Years later, when I was watching the DVD and listening to the commentary, the director and screenwriters addressed this. They were big Tolkien fans but in adapting the first book of the trilogy they realized they had a film that was already nearly 3 hours long without Tom Bombadil. And while he is a wonderful character, he does not advance the plot. So, regretfully, they cut him from the script.

But they didn't cut him from the original book. My son's friend didn't lose anything...except the ability to enjoy the film for what it was, a great adaptation of a massive epic. The purpose of the film was not to include every single person, event and detail. The purpose was to entertain. And maybe entice some people to get the book where they would have the delightful surprise of meeting Tom Bombadil.

A lot of people fail to discern the purpose of material presented in media. For instance, anyone who has posted a humorous meme on social media knows by now that some folks will post long serious dissections of its deficiencies in the comment section. Sometimes after one of these diatribes that totally missed the point I will post a Gif of comedian Craig Ferguson saying, “It was a joke. It was a joke. It was a joke!” The purpose was to make you laugh, not make you launch into a 25 page white paper on the subject.

People do this with the Bible. They take it for a science book, though it was not written to explain how the physical world works. They take it for a treatise on economics or politics, though those are not its chief concerns. They see it as a minutely detailed look at the end of the world, though these passages are full of obvious symbolism. Some take it as a code book in which God has hidden messages that can only be decoded by some elaborate system, though that goes against the whole idea that God wants to reveal his message to the world.

Some see the Bible as a massive rule book. During his final illness the comedian W.C. Fields had a visit from a friend. And the friend found him reading the Bible. The friend, who knew Fields to be a drinker and a womanizer and a miser, expressed surprise. To which the comedian said, “Relax. I'm looking for loopholes.” And sadly there are so-called Christians who look at the Bible as a legal text and read it to see what are the minimum requirements they have to meet to keep God off their backs, not to mention what they can get away with and how far they can go.

So what is the Bible? It is a collection of histories, stories, poetry, prophesies, parables, sermons, letters, apocalypses and accounts of what Jesus said and did. The common theme is the on and off relationship of God and humans. It tells how humans have repeatedly turned away from the God who created and loves them and what God has done to bring them back. The purpose of the Bible is to bring us closer to God. Which is why the second practice in the Way of Love is to learn. Specifically it is to reflect on the scriptures daily, with special focus on Jesus' life and teachings.

When you read the Bible with its purpose in mind, you start to pick up on its insights into both humans and God. For instance, rather than try to make some current crisis fit a specific interpretation of prophesy, instead you can see how what is going on in the world offers examples of what the Bible says about human nature. Such as when scholars or eyewitnesses reveal that someone you thought was a thoroughly good person did some bad things as well. Instead of getting angry with the people who reveal this or trying to cover up history, you can acknowledge with Paul that “There is no one righteous, not even one.” (Romans 3:10) Aside from Jesus, no one in the Bible, not even the “heroes of the faith,” are without sin—some of it pretty bad. Why do we expect anyone else to be perfect? Jesus said, “For from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, evil, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.” (Mark 7:21-22) That covers just about everything in the news. And it reveals why people need to turn and get closer to the God who is love.

If you look at the story of the first humans and the snake in Genesis, not as some “Just So” story from the ancient past, but as a paradigm of every temptation, it becomes relevant to your life. Do you ever disregard what God says? Do you sometimes doubt his goodness or wisdom in saying some things are off limits? Do you start looking for reasons why some condemned action is actually good for you? Do you feel that any experience is a valuable way to learn about some aspect of life? Do you ever go along with something you shouldn't because someone you cared about was involved? Did you ever do something against your better judgment only to find you did not realize all the negative consequences of it? Then you can see yourself in Adam and Eve.

In his book, the Way of Love, Scott Gunn points out that there are 2 basic ways to study and learn the Bible: one is for facts and the other is for meaning. If you only learn the facts, you can miss out on the meaning behind them. For instance, the Wizard of Oz is about a girl who is responsible for the death of one woman and then she and her friends go after and kill the woman's sister. Those are the bare facts, but robbed of all meaning they don't make much sense. In Christianity the central fact is that Jesus dies on the cross. Someone once asked me why did God send Jesus to die? To them that was so brutal and cruel it contradicted the idea that God is loving. I said: Look at it as a suicide mission. God loves us so much he wants to save us. And he sends Jesus to tell us that and demonstrate that in all he does. But God knows that Jesus will meet fierce opposition and that it will get violent and will result in his death. Jesus knows this, too. Yet Jesus takes on the mission and accomplishes it. And God, who created order out of chaos, creates something unimaginably good out of the worst thing his creatures can do. Jesus' death saves the world. If you felt it was beautiful and noble when Iron Man did it in the movies or when Aslan did it in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, why isn't it beautiful and noble when Jesus, who is not fictional, does it? The meaning behind the fact that Jesus dies is that it shows how much God loves us and what he'll do to save us.

Of course the meanings need the facts to illustrate them. If I say “I love you” but otherwise do nothing to show it, my statement is meaningless. So we need to learn facts from the Bible as well. I don't know what's more distressing: to read critics attack the faith without actually knowing the facts or to read Christians try to defend the faith with a similar lack of knowledge. People keep putting words in Jesus' mouth while apparently ignorant of things he actually said. And there's no reason for it.

Not only are there excellent study Bibles and reference works you can buy, but there are numerous wonderful apps you can put on your phone or device that give you access to several translations, the original Hebrew and Greek, commentaries, Bible dictionaries, subject indexes, concordances, and more. I use the Logos Bible app, the Bible Hub app, the Touch Bible and others. And they are free! There are also websites with a wealth of books online for studying the Bible. The Great Courses offer lots of lecture and video series on the Old and New Testaments, the archeology of Israel, the history of Christianity, the development of the Bible, historical theology, etc. Look for their numerous sales and you can get a series of 24 or 36 audio lectures for the price of a book. Remember what the word “disciple” actually means: student. We are to be students of Jesus.

But don't miss the forest for the trees. Don't let the facts, the details, cause you to lose sight of the big picture, the meaning and the purpose of the Bible: to help us get closer to God. Which means putting what we learn into practice. God never meant for our knowledge of his word to stay in our heads. Jesus applies scripture to his temptations in today's gospel. As his brother James says, “But be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” (James 1:22) On one of the occasions when the two great commandments came up, to love God with all you have and to love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus said, “Do this and you will live.” (Luke 10:28) What you learn is not meant to remain theoretical. As James said, “So also faith, if it doesn't have works, is dead being by itself.” (James 2:17) If I say I trust God but don't act like it—don't change my life, don't turn away from sin and turn to him, don't even try to love the people I encounter—how authentic is that trust? It's like taking the instructions your doctor gives you to avoid having another heart attack and sticking them in a drawer. Real trust or faith results in actions.

And this does not contradict what Paul says in today's passage from Romans about being saved by faith. In Galatians 5:6, Paul says, “...the only thing that matters is faith working through love.” In Ephesians 2:8-10 he says, “For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them.” (Emphasis mine) We were created to do good works but our sin has broken us and impaired that function. We can't repair ourselves; only Jesus can. Once he does, we can do what he created us to do.

However, not everything in the Bible is prescriptive, something you should do. Some of it is descriptive, saying, “This is what some people did.” You need to use discernment as to whether that is an example to emulate or to avoid. David did a lot of good things. He also committed adultery and murder. It's pretty obvious that God doesn't want us to imitate those 2 last things. But when confronted with these sins by Nathan the prophet, David, though a king, did not, like some people, deny it or shift blame or diminish the seriousness of what he did. He admitted it and asked God for forgiveness and he took the consequences. That is something we all need to learn when we sin.

And some bits of the Bible are meant for our enjoyment. There is a lot of beautiful poetry in the Bible. The Psalms cover just about every emotion you can think of. There are psalms of praise and psalms of lament. There are psalms in which the writer questions God's timing or worries about rampant injustice and psalms that express confidence in God's way of doing things. The Song of Songs is a beautiful love poem and perhaps a wedding liturgy. Ecclesiastes has the ruminations of a jaded king who sees the futility of a life lived only under the sun and not with regard to heaven. Satire is seen in parts of the prophets and in Jesus' pictures of things like hypocrites filtering gnats out of their drinks and then swallowing camels or his parable of a dishonest steward who somehow receives his cheated master's admiration, a swipe at the way the Pharisees served God.

I have been studying the Bible since my teens and more than a half century later I am still learning new things about the Bible, about God and about Jesus. But it's a poor relationship if the communication only goes one way. God not only lets us talk to him but encourages us to do so. We'll talk about the practice of praying next Sunday.