Sorry for the delay this morning but it was out of my control. The blogger server was having major technical difficulties but things seem to be running smoothly again.
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Two big prayer requests today. First, my sister and brother-in-law are at UAMS today for the final step of the in-vitro process. I am praying that God will answer and bless Melissa and Ryan with a healthy pregnancy. Second, Jeff Bearden, a dear friend who has been diagnosed with cancer, begins chemo treatments today in Hot Springs. Jeff, Michelle, Dane and Jacob are in need of a host of prayer warriors at this time of anxiety in their lives. Join me today in earnest prayer for these people whom I love so much.
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So much contemporary reading in theology is transitioning from reading Scripture against the lens of science to recovering a reading of Scripture as art. Donald Miller in Searching for God Knows What summarizes well the shortcomings of the dominant hermeneutical paradigm -- reading Scripture scientifically -- of the last 250 years.
When the church began to doubt its own integrity after the Darwinian attack on Genesis 1 and 2, we began to answer science, not be appealing to something greater, the realm of beauty and art and spirituality, but by attempting to translate spiritual realities through scientific equations, thus justifying ourselves to culture, as if culture had some kind of authority to redeem us in the first place.
Because we have approached faith through the lens of science, the rich legacy of art that once flowed out of the Christian community has dried up. The poetry of Scripture, especially in the case of Moses, began to be interpreted literally and mathematically, and whole books such as the Song of Songs were completely and totally ignored. They weren’t scientific. You couldn’t break them down into bullet points. Morality became a code, rather than a manifestation of a love for Christ. These relational ideas were replaced with right and wrong, good and bad, with only hinted suggestions as to where right and wrong and good and bad actually came from. Old Testament stories became formulas for personal growth rather than stories to help us understand the character and nature of the God with whom we interact.
In a culture that worships science, relational propositions will always be left out of arguments attempting to surface truth. We believe, quite simply, that unless we can chart something, it doesn’t exist. And you can’t chart relationships. Furthermore, in our attempts to make relational propositions look like charitable realities, all beauty and mystery is lost. And so when times get hard, when reality knows us (down), mathematical propositions are unable to comfort our failing hearts. How many people have walked away from faith because their systematic theology proved unable to answer the deep longings and questions of the soul? What we need here, truly, is faith in (God), not a list of ideas.
And one should not think our current method of interpreting Scripture has an ancient legacy. The modern view of Scripture originated in an age of industrial revolution when corporations were becoming more important than family (the husband, for the first time, left the home and joined Corporate America, building cars instead of families), and productivity was more important than relationships. “How can God help me get what I want?” was the idea, not “Who is God, and how can I know Him” (160-1)?
