Searching the Scriptures
I think many of us have a love/hate relationship with scripture. There are times when it can lift us up, inspire us, enliven us… and there are times when scripture can be so confusing and seem so contradictory.
There are many of us who have been victims of what I call “spiritual abuse” when it comes to scripture. Some verse, taken out of context, gets used to make us feel guilty or ashamed, sometimes simply because of who we are. Sometimes it can feel like many christians use scripture like a hammer looking for a nail.
We hear scripture quoted in legislative committee meetings on both sides of a given issue. We hear scrpture used to tell some people they are bad. Throughout human history scripture has been used to defend the practice of myriad evils, from slavery to the genital mutilation of children. Today, it is alarming to me how scripture is getting twisted up to justify the wholesale takeover of human society by a very narrow cultural understanding of Christianity.
At the end of the day, scripture is not an owner’s manual. It simply will not answer every single question we have about life. As United Methodists, we don’t believe that scripture by itself is how God reveals who God is to us, either. Truth about God is revealed through scripture, but it is also vivified in personal experience, illumined by tradition, and confirmed by reason.
Scripture, by itself, will not reveal the truth about God. We have to bring those other parts of who we are to when we read scripture. And even then, scripture still isn’t an owner’s manual for life. We won’t always find the answer we are looking for in scripture. But when we bring our full selves into exploring it, we will certainly find God.
The stories of scripture, the commandments, the history, the poetry, the epistles, all of it provide so many different vantage points for us to encounter God! That is why we consider it a means of grace—not because Scripture is the sole avenue for us to find answers, but because it connects us to God. And the surprising thing is this: when we let go of an agenda when reading scripture, and assume a posture of curiosity and childlike wonder, we will always be surprised at the new thing scripture can give us. That is why I think John Wesley described it as “searching the scriptures.”
Our search isn’t for the answer we are looking for, it is for the presence and witness of God at work in our lives and in the world.
