Finding Your Fundamental Posture Toward the Bible
As a parent, I’ve developed a keen appreciation for the importance of a child’s fundamental posture toward me. I can tell if a child is open and soft-hearted, or closed and unreceptive.
It’s our fundamental posture toward the Bible that determines a great deal about whether we will be able to experience Jesus in this amazing Book. This fundamental posture is an interplay between the state of our heart toward God and our understand-ing, beliefs and experiences with His Word. While there is a place for more technical and doctrinal perspectives on scripture, at the end of the day, our heart toward the Bible is what matters most.
Experiencing Jesus in the Bible has been advocating a heart-response or posture toward the Bible that can be summed up like this: we read this book, looking for God, because God, in Jesus, is looking for us. The more we look for Him, the more we find Him.
We bother to look, believing that God is even more eager to communicate to us than we are to hear from him. And that His Word is intimately linked to His power.
Remember, the God who is revealed in Jesus is a God who speaks. God does the big, important things, through his Word.
Creation, for example. In language of science, the Big Bang. Before the Big Bang all matter compressed into an infinitesimally small point: singularity. What caused Big Bang? That’s the great Mystery. There was no space-time, no cause-effect before the Big Bang.
So how did all this wonder come into being? Matter, stuff, energy, light, water, wind, earth, fire? “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty (wasn’t the earth yet), darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” (Gen. 1: 1-3) The Bible teaches that in the beginning (a scientist might say “at the point of singularity”) God spoke a Word and it came into being.
Our moral sense, another example. Is our sense of right & wrong just a cultural construct? Or is it somehow structured into the universe? Martin Luther King said: “the long arm of the universe bends toward justice.” Every culture has a sense of right and wrong. Every human being has an instinct for it. If it’s programmed into us, who wrote the program? Someone or something with moral preferences: God, who has a will and injects his will into the system. How does He do that? Through his Word, in the form of commands: “don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, love God above everything, love one another.”
The gospel of Jesus is a third example. The message that makes sinners right with God, ends the hostility, makes peace with God. The gospel is good news, conveyed to us through Words.
Jesus himself, the greatest example. Who is Jesus? The “word made flesh.”
If Jesus is the word made flesh, why bother with the Bible? Because Jesus bothered with it. He read the Bible, learned it, quoted it. He believed this book is a Big Deal, that God speaks to us through it. You cannot read the gospels without seeing that. Jesus had a very high view of scripture: “and scripture cannot be broken” (Jn. 10:35) He assumed the integrity, authenticity, authority of the Bible.
If you follow Jesus, he will hook you up with this Book. And by the influence of His Spirit, Jesus will instill in us certain attitudes-postures toward this Book.
First, we learn to embrace this book with genuine affection. Ps. 19: 1-6 conveys a sense of awe, wonder, delight in creation. The psalm moves seamlessly from this into love for the word: vss 7-11. We’re to love/cherish/delight in this Word. Like we might delight in creation. Love for this word described in heart-felt, affectionate, sensual ways. A form of pleasure. Ps. 119: 72, 92, 97, 103, 127, 131, 148, 162. Like you, I can say that creation—earth, sunsets, sky, mountains, lakes—have given me countless pleasures. Sometimes WOW! pleasures, but more often simple, subtle, everyday pleasures. It’s like that with this word. .
Second, we learn to lean on this word. 1984 was a dream season for the Detroit Tigers. One of the keys to their success was an ace reliever, Willie Hernandez. In the late innings, game on the line, protecting a one run lead, bases loaded, need an out to save your life? Willie was go-to guy. He had 31 saves in 32 tries that year.
In a pinch, we all have our ace relievers, go-to people, go to things, go-to strategies. The problem is, we sometimes pick the wrong go-to guy to go-to. Alcohol. Isolation. Pornography. Self-pity. We end up leaning on things that can’t bear our weight.
Various kings of Judah, had the bad habit of forming alliances with nations like Egypt to protect them from outside threats. The king of Assyria said to the king of Judah, “You are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces a man’s hand and wounds him if he leans on it” (Is. 36:6)
That’s a vivid image. Like pole vaulters when the first fiber-glass poles were being used. Image a pole vaulter running, planting, leaning, the pole bending, bearing his weight, then snap! Be careful what you lean on! Make sure it can bear your weight.
Jesus was careful what he leaned on. He didn’t lean on praise of man or the conventional wisdom of his day. But he put he put whole weight of his life on this word. He leaned on it hard.
When he was in the desert tempted by dark powers to make a deal with darkness, he fell back on this word. MT. 4: 3-10 “It is written…” Jesus said, and with those words, resisted the subtle seductions of evil.
He didn’t just rely on his own conscience or moral sense. He didn’t fall back on his own will (“that would violate my values.”) He was up against the most persuasive powers of darkness; he resisted by leaning on a superior power, the power invested in this inspired Word.
What makes us think that in our struggle against, sin, temptation, dark powers behind them, we can prevail unaided? Nothing more than our conscience, moral sense, will? Jesus modeling another approach: in your struggles against these things arm yourselves—“put on the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.” (Eph. 6: 17) Lean hard on this word! On the cross, feeling abandoned by God, he fell back on Psalm 22, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (vs 1) a psalm that ends, “For he has not despised or disdained his afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him, but has listened to is cry for help” (vs. 24)
And so we learn from him to lean hard on this word. There’s immense power for us, extraordinary strength in this book, if we will lean on it.
Third, we learn to kneel before God as he speaks to us through this book. We learn to let this word tell us when we’re full of it. We all know people who can’t hear certain things about themselves. Mary? She’s a control freak. Organizes her life so she’s in control of everything. Mary’s friends know it’s robbing her of any shot at real happiness. Some brave souls have gently broached the topic with Mary but she won’t hear it.
Al’s depressed. He’s not sleeping well. Angry all time. Losing motivation. Al’s wife has pleaded with him to talk to somebody, maybe try some medicine. “That’s for weaklings,” Al says. “I’ll gut this thing out.”
Laura’s making love with her latest boyfriend. No one can tell her, her love is a holier thing than that--so holy, in fact, it’s reserved for a holy context, the covenant of marriage.
Ed’s always shading the truth to suit his needs. Fudging, spinning, dissembling. He’s so good at, he’s got himself fooled. There’s no telling Ed that.
I suppose we might agree that the world seems full of people who are full of it—full of their own perspective. Nobody can tell them otherwise! Besides our keen observations on the condition of others, in one way or another, at one time or another, we’re all full of it. We’d all be a lot happier if there were someone in our lives who loved us so completely, accepted us so amazingly, they could tell us, to our face, when and how we are. Gently, of course!
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (Heb. 4: 12-13)
There are places in our hearts human words cannot penetrate. Maybe you’re so insecure, a lifetime of daily affirmations from spouse, boss, friends, Chem-Lawn guy would never penetrate. You need a numinous, transcendent, in-spirited word to cut through tangled web of defenses and say, “You’re forgiven. Accepted. You’re mine.”
“I’ll gladly hear that word.” But this word…it judges the thoughts & attitudes of the heart.
“I don’t want anyone judging my heart! I thought this was a word of grace from a God of love!”
There are times when the word of grace from the God of love, to love us well, must tell us we’re wrong. If there is no voice who can speak to you when you’re wrong and clearly, convincingly, compellingly tell you, then you are without God. And you are living in that profound state of loneliness called hell.
This word, empowered by Spirit who inspires it, can speak to us with a precision beyond this world. Jesus warned of removing the splinter from your brother’s eye, when there’s a log in your own. We appreciate him protecting us from well-intention splinter removers who are coming at us with a pair of rusty tweezers, to get the splinter out our eye-ball.
But we’re not talking about some oaf with a log in his own eye and a pair of pliers coming after your splinter. We’re talking about God. The God who created universe in an awesome burst of power and fashions every snowflake, every molecule, gently guides the orbit of every electron.
This is the Word that can say to Mary, the control freak: “humble yourself, Mary, under the mighty hand of God” the universe is in my hands, not yours
This is the Word that can say to Al, in his depression “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” listen to your wife, she knows you better than you know yourself.
This is the Word that can say to Laura, afraid that her boyfriend won’t wait for marriage, “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ…”
This is the Word that can say to Ed, he truth shaver, “I seek truth in the inward being”
This is the Word that can speak to us the things we won’t hear from anyone else…
This the heart then that Jesus would place in us toward His Word…
embracing this word with genuine affection
leaning on this word with the whole weight of our lives
kneeling before authority of God as it comes through his Word
“I will simply state my assumptions about the Bible: On its human side, I assume that it was produced and preserved by competent human beings who were at least as intelligent and devout as we are today. I assume that they were quite capable of presenting what they heard and experienced in the language of their historical community, which we can understand with due diligence.
On the divine side, I assume that God has been willing and competent to arrange for the Bible, including its record of Jesus, to emerge and be preserved in ways that will secure his purposes for it among human beings worldwide. Those who actually believe in God will be untroubled by this. I assume that he did not and would not leave his message to humankind in a form that can only be understood by a handful of late-twentieth-century professional scholars, who cannot even agree among themselves on theories that they assume to determine what the message is.
The Bible is, after all, God’s gift to the world through his Church, not to the scholars. It comes through the life of his people and nourishes that life. Its purpose is practical, not academic. An intelligent, careful, intensive but straightforward reading…is what it requires to direct us into life in God’s kingdom. Any other approach to the Bible, I believe, conflicts with the picture of God that, all agree, emerges from Jesus and his tradition.”
From The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard, Harper, San Francisco, c. 1998
pp xvi-xvii. Willard is a theologian and scholar. He is professor at the University
of Southern California’s School of Philosophy.