The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Modernised and edited by Jim McGuiggan (2004)
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Many believers gather together for “Bible study” no more than once a week and by the time announcements are made and people are settled into their seats there’s about thirty-five minutes left to “hear God speak”. Maybe it isn’t surprising that even after decades of church-attendance we remain pretty much biblically semi-literate.
Add to that the fact that leaders often have their own already adopted agendas/topics that take up those precious thirty-five minute slots and we have additional explanation for our biblical semi-literacy. These topics often include, “how to handle your personal finances” or “how we can increase our church membership” or “fives ways to make our gatherings more appealing” or “five ways to make our gatherings more appealing to the members” or “ways we can make a good marriage even better”. In these and many more topics we dip into the books on psychology, communication, sociology, the bio history of “successful” churches, economics (for people who don’t or maybe, can’t) handle their finances well.
When we announce that we will deal with a book, say, Mark, we treat each individual verse like an ancient artefact. We uncover what this verse means and move on to the next one and then the next one and then the next one. When we’re done we’ve covered maybe a dozen verses and we now “know” what the writer said but we haven’t a clue why he said it or how it fits into the purpose(s) of the book. We’re like a builder who has gathered ten thousand bricks and has no idea what he’s going to do with them.
And since our view pretty much is that “my opinion is as good as your opinion” we encourage everyone to contribute to the discussion. That way people will like the classes better, you see, and keep coming, though we’re not exactly sure why we want them to keep coming other than that people are supposed to come to Bible study.
But we do enjoy the fact that the numbers attending remain stable so we continue to ask people to speak off the cuff about the topic at hand. The teacher has perhaps spent some hours (maybe some years) becoming acquainted with the subject but people who never think of the matter from one week to the next are encouraged to give their considered opinion on the matter. If five of them take two minutes for their questions and/or comments there’s twenty-five minutes left. If the topic is such that people who never think about it from one week to the next can truly offer something germane then we have to wonder about the nature of the topic.
I think I do recognize that this needs balanced and that things might not be as bad as I’m presenting them. On the other hand, things might be as bad as I think they are though notable exceptions exist. My problem is: I think it’s hard to claim to give the centre stage to the Bible (the “Word of God”) when apart from the Bible we have a long list of our own agendas already set in place and we gather the people together so they can discuss them with God throwing in a verse or two every now and then. It’s as though he was a prominent member of the assembly who’s always piping up with a remark that is very useful within the parameters of the topic.
To put it more bluntly, it isn’t God’s agenda we come to hear; we come to speak about our agendas in his presence. Every now and then some teacher lets GOD set the agenda and allows GOD’s word to be heard and any one (or a dozen) of us interrupts him and takes the discussion down a path of our choosing. In practice it doesn’t matter what God wants to say through Mark or John or Ephesians or Genesis—we want to know what he has to say in these or other books (or the Bible as a whole) about our agendas. In the end we are not hearing what God is saying through Peter or Paul or Luke; we have the situation rigged where God can only speak on the topics we want him to talk about and very often the topics we want him to talk about he hasn’t said anything specific about.
I don’t suggest that the cure for this is simple nor do I suggest that it is always easy to allow God to speak so we can hear him—we need to invest time and energy to become skilled in Bible study and we need a listening heart that wants to think God’s thoughts after him and engage with him in his purposes. But what has that got to do with it? So it isn’t as easy as many say or think it is—and? Bless me; it doesn’t keep us from digging into other so-called “secular” subjects so why should it keep us from joyfully mining in the Bible?
You want to study mathematics, psychology, sociology, economics or some such important subject? Go to the seminars, buy the books, listen to the recordings! The Church is the vehicle of the Gospel! The Bible is the book of the Gospel! Our gatherings are to celebrate, to enrich our understanding of and to commit to the Gospel! State it how you will but until our teachers and congregations do what they can to shut up about their personal agendas and gladly, prayerfully and with some conscious effort allow GOD to tell his thrilling Story in the Bible we’ll continue to hear only our own voices talking about our own immediate interests.
Enough! In God’s name we’ve had enough of it! Give us THE GOSPEL.
