Preferring Old Wine

In 2014 the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and the Canadian Bible Forum conducted a study on Canadians’ use and beliefs about the Bible. You can read the summary here, with links to more in-depth analysis. Some of the findings were striking. For instance:

• Just 14% of Canadians read the Bible at least once a month in 2013 (down from 28% in 1996).

• 64% of Canadians think the scriptures of all major world religions teach essentially the same things.

• 69% of Canadians think the Bible has irreconcilable contradictions.

• Only 18% of Canadians strongly agree that the Bible is the Word of God.

I’ll try not to dwell on the fact that 4% of Canadians strongly agree that the Bible is the Word of God but don’t read it at least once a month and simply note that the number of Canadians who regularly interact with a Bible is very small and appears to be shrinking quickly. Meanwhile confusion or ignorance about what the Bible is definitely seems to be the rule, not the exception, in our culture overall.

It’s not a surprise that non-Christians are disconnected from the Bible, but I’m convinced that we are failing to encourage and help Christians use and understand the Bible, too. On Sunday I said:

I’m confident that one problem the Western Church has today is that many churchgoers don’t have a very strong sense of what the Bible says, and even fewer have a good set of practical skills to interpret what the Bible means.

I realize this is part of why we have pastors, but without some ability to make heads or tails of the Bible people can’t recognize the difference between good teaching and bad teaching, and it’s harder to benefit from their own Bible reading and study. At its worst this lack of knowledge also leads to unfortunate situations like Christians who seriously believe that COVID-19 vaccines are the mark of the beast or that facemasks interfere with our bearing the image of God…

I don’t know to what extent it’s a problem in Canada the way it appears to be in the United States, but I wonder how much of this issue is related to the idea that identifying as a Christian has more to do with picking a side in a cultural conflict or being on a particular political team instead of making it a lifelong pursuit to be a disciple - literally a learner.

It is easy to treat the Bible like a simple tool that you pull out to accomplish a particular task. But the Bible is not a Swiss Army knife with a handful of verses and passages you can whip out when you need reassurance, or want to win an argument, or prove to yourself that you are more righteous than someone else. There seem to be a lot of Christians who are happy to live according to that famous verse in Flippians 2:14 - “I can do all things through a verse taken out of context…”

But the Bible isn’t a tool to be wielded. It is a divine word spoken into our world and our lives. And it is incredibly rich and deep - full of poetry and mystery and imagery and recurring themes and moments of despair and hope and humans making foolish mistakes we instantly identify with and a gracious God working to save them (and us) anyway.

When I finished my three years in seminary I learned a small amount of Biblical Greek and gained a huge amount of humility regarding interpreting the Bible. For me it was no longer two-dimensional words on a page. It was three-dimensional, with a massive depth of language, culture, history, and theology behind each word and phrase. There was work and struggle to be done on any given passage, and in many cases there was room for people working in good-faith to come to different conclusions.

This complexity doesn’t diminish my confidence in the Bible or belief that is the word of God to us. And it doesn’t prevent the Holy Spirit from revealing what God wants any person reading the Bible to know regardless of their knowledge, training, or education. But what happens when fewer and fewer Christians have Biblical knowledge, training in how to interpret it, or education to deepen their regard for the Bible? I fear the answer is shallow faith that is easily manipulated and inconsistent beliefs that fail to hold together.

I’m still searching for more ways to encourage this area of discipleship for us at Faith Baptist, but last week and in this coming week I did try to draw attention to what it looks like to take a passage whose meaning isn’t obvious and figure out what to do with it. What, for instance, did Jesus mean when He said:

“No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’” (Luke 5:36-39)

sermon_oct24.pdf

Download PDF • 262KB

Read, watch, or listen to the whole message to get a deeper sense of it, but I tried to demonstrate what goes into interpreting a passage like this. (Well, the more accessible steps, I didn’t talk much about parallel passages, competing interpretations, or even trot out any Greek). You don’t need to know Biblical languages or have access to all kinds of Bible commentaries to do things like:

• Learn a little bit about the author. Who is Luke? What does he care about? What themes are common in his writing? Most study Bibles provide an overview of each book with information like this.

• Check the broader context. What is happening in the larger section (maybe a few chapters) around the part I’m studying?

• Be clear on the immediate context. What is going on in this scene? Who is there, what are they saying, and why?

These basic steps help build a foundation for the two key questions an interpreter should ask. First, what did this passage likely mean to it’s original audience? And, second, what could this passage mean for a disciple like me today?

And, as it happens, I think Jesus’ teaching in this passage about the folly of trying to combine His way with other patterns of thinking is very applicable to disciples today in a time when some parts of the Church are fracturing (or at least re-sorting) over issues of politics, race, nationalism, vaccines, and more. I grant that you probably don't have time to do a multi-step interpretive process on most of the scripture you read, but gaining skills can help you answer questions for yourself from the Bible. More importantly, it will help you recognize which preachers and teachers are doing their homework so that you can be better equipped by the right people.

Ephesians 4:11-15 reminds us of our need to be equipped to know God’s way and do God’s will rather than being swept up in the world’s way:

“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ."

Could you use some equipping? A little more Bible in your diet goes a long way, and there are easy-to-access tools to help you understand it more. Even a common resource like biblegateway.com alone has a lot - different scripture translations, some commentaries you can read, and email Bible reading and devotional plans you can subscribe to. What could affect your life more, day-to-day, than the way you think? Let Jesus be what shapes your thinking, not others, not culture, not even religion. Christ alone.

Here's a rendition of "Be Thou My Vision" as a devotional moment for today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwwWMWTpp-U

Prayer For Today

Go forth into the world in peace; be of good courage; hold fast that which is good; render to no one evil for evil; strengthen the fainthearted; support the weak; help the afflicted; honour everyone; love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit; and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.

(Cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:13-22)