Picture the lone scholar in his study, poring over a biblical text. On the one hand, he is embracing the kind of single-minded passion that the psalmist celebrates in Psalm 119:97: “Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long.” On the other hand, he is engaged in an activity that is foreign to text’s intent and function.
The Scriptures were not intended primarily for individuals to read in the quietness of their rooms, with private meditation or personal enlightenment the only goal. Rather, as Stephen Fowl and Greg Jones put it in Reading in Communion: Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life, “Scripture is primarily addressed not to individuals but to specific communities called into being by God.” When we read Scripture, we read Scripture. The community of faith reads it together, beginning with the mere act of biblical translation (the work of dozens of scholars in conversation) and then in group Bible studies, but most importantly in worship. And not only do we read it—as if simply hearing and reflecting on the words were enough—but we read it like an orchestra reads a musical score. The goal is faithful performance.
It’s like picking up the text of a Shakespeare play. I can read it on my own, but the whole time, I’m aware that the letters on the page are simply the prompts and cues for a much larger communal production. Writes Nicholas Lash, “The performance of scripture is the life of the church. It is no more possible for an isolated individual to perform these texts than it is for him to perform a Beethoven quartet or a Shakespeare tragedy” (Theology on the Way to Emmaus). This performance takes place in worship, Lash says, but more specifically in the sacrament of communion. Through communion we enact the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as expressed in the gospels. We hear the Word, speak the Word, sing the Word, ingest the Word, and then leave with the task to share the Word with the world.
In that sense, we are always reading Scripture toward group performance. The scholar in his study, if he is honest with himself, is merely practicing his lines. His dissertation may be an important safeguard for making sure the whole group gets the lines right or puts the proper emphasis on certain phrases or doesn’t overlook the less popular passages, but the dissertation is not the ultimate goal. The goal is his cupped hands at the communion rail—the same hands that will grasp his son in a hug or pick up a mop at the soup kitchen.
But it doesn’t end there. While we may read Scripture toward performance of the text, the performance of the text is also reading us. Take the sacrament of communion again. During the Chilean dictatorship of Pinochet, for instance, the Roman Catholic Church at first was cozy with the regime that silently tortured and eliminated thousands. As William Cavanaugh describes in his powerful book, Torture and Eucharist, the perpetrators of violence were right there on Sunday morning, taking the body and blood of the tortured Christ along with everyone else—even with their victims. And eventually the church began to realize this was deeply, fundamentally wrong. The reading and performance of the Passion each week had begun to read them. So the church began to create a counterculture, a community that offered its own outreach and care to the victims. It no longer endorsed what the government was doing, no longer participated in government programs, even took steps of excommunicating perpetrators of violence.
“The play’s the thing,” said Hamlet, “wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” The faithful performance of the text, which is the goal of reading the lines in the first place, has the curious effect of reading us: of taking our spiritual vitals, gauging our spiritual temperature, pointing out anomalies, holding up mirrors. The two readings cannot be separated. Which should give us pause the next time we advise youth in our ministries to spend time reading their Bibles every day. If we don’t add the important caveat, “There will be a performance on Sunday”—or even, “There will be a performance the minute you leave your room and talk to your mother”—then we’re not being honest about the nature of this text we claim to live by.
|
Before I even answer this question, let me say this. If you have not read Eat This Book, by Eugene Peterson, go to Amazon and get it now. You will be blessed by its contribution to your spiritual formation.
Now, to the question at hand… Four thoughts come to my mind when asked the difference between reading Scripture and letting Scripture read us. The best way I know to answer this question is through my own life experience. These thoughts may not be true for you, but then again, they might be very true.
1. Accessibility or Authority. When I read the Scriptures, I go looking for something as if I am the authority on the text/subject. When I let the Scripture read me, I go into it with a soul that is open and accessible, able to be reached (for example, during the practice of lectio divina).
2. Practice or Principle. When I let Scripture read me, I am in search of a forming practice or a faith-shaping discipline that transforms me from the inside out. When I go to Scripture, I am often in search of a particular premise or principle. The former is much more difficult and requires more of my conscious effort.
3. Soak or Surface. When I let Scripture read me, it means that I am permeable, and I absorb the truth into my very being. Letting the truth soak into my soul opens up new dimensions of truth. Sometimes, when I read the Scriptures, I am simply searching for truth on the surface.
4. Mission or Myself. Usually when I read Scripture, I am tempted to read into the passage(s) what I need God to do for me or what God has done for me. A particular blessing, perhaps? On the other hand, when I let Scripture read me, I usually end up finding ways that God can use me for the sake of the world, as opposed to me using God.
|
I really don’t know about this question. It has always bugged me, or at least confused me. Or maybe it has bugged me because it has confused me. I like the idea that Scripture does something—that it reads us as much as we read it. I potentially like that we give Scripture some form of agency. I think this escapes some of the propositional truth exegesis that dominated evangelicalism decades ago and is still holding on in places today. But what I don’t like is that it too easily (and confusingly) assumes that we don’t read Scripture (it just reads us) and then blurs the importance of hermeneutics when reading the text. In other words, it can distract us from realizing how deeply we bring prejudices and perspectives into our reading. I wouldn’t want to undercut the importance of what we’ve learned from philosophical hermeneutics. But that’s for a whole other post.
Okay, here is what I really think is at stake in this question and how I would like to nuance the conversation. Either way you frame the question, Scripture is an agent. But Scripture is a collection of written texts, pieces of paper (or papyri or whatever) collected into a book that can sit on your desk or keep a door open. Of course, it is possible that words that make up ideas can be transformative, but it is you—the human agent, the subject—who reads them and brings them to life. In themselves these pages don’t live.
A kind of postmodern interpretation would be that only the community of faith lives, so Scripture only reads us as we read it together, drawing it into our subjective experiences. Part of me really likes that argument, but I think it makes the human agent too central. I’m worried that some have tried harder to make the Bible, the inanimate object, live, as though the Bible is one of Andy’s toys in Toy Story. I actually don’t think this is very helpful—therefore I do not think Scripture reads us.
Rather, I think the Word of God reads us. I hold that it is Jesus Christ who is living and moving in the world; it is Jesus who is encountering us, “reading” us, if you will. Jesus is a subject, an agent; Jesus is the living Word—living as the fullness of life, as the one who has passed through death. As the Johannine literature asserts and as most theological traditions affirm, Jesus Christ is the Word of God, and this Word is moving and active because this word is a living person.
So this means that our goal in youth ministry (and brace yourself, I’m about to say something to get you thinking) is not primarily to have kids read and know the Bible. We don’t care if they know about the inanimate object. Rather, what we want—and want deeply—is for kids to use the Bible to interpret the activity of the Word of God. What’s important is not that kids can memorize verses but rather that they embody the Bible enough to use it as a lens to seek God in the world.
The Bible is not the fourth person of the Trinity; the Bible is not divine. It doesn’t need to be error free to be true. The Bible is the authoritative lens (tool) to discern where and what the living God is doing. So the whole whining-about-kids-being-biblically-illiterate shtick is a red herring. Who cares if kids can pass some stupid Bible test? Who cares about biblical knowledge? What we want is for them to become interpreters (and of course, now, from this perspective, biblical knowledge is very important!) who devour the Bible—not to pass a test but to have the eyes to see the beauty and suffering of God’s action in the world.
The Bible is the authoritative gift God has given us to see the normative shape of God’s continued action in the world through Jesus by the Spirit. Chew on that for a while—and if you have more questions, wait for the third book in my theology and youth ministry series, which will be out first thing 2013. And for now, send all your angry emails to Mike King.
|
Comments
Well stated (except for the part where you want me to deal with your angry respondents). "Who cares about Biblical knowledge?" The answer to that one is - a lot of people, including those managing the application process into your Seminary. Booya!!!
Question - You stated emphatically "I do not think Scripture reads us." In Sarah's post she mentions "Reading in Communion: Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life" by Stephen Fowl and Greg Jones. Fowl writes extensively about "reading scripture over and against ourselves." Would you consider that this may be a way to talk about the scripture reading us?
Peace.
And Andy... apologies accepted, although the picture of you receiving a back rub from hairy hands at the Association of Youth Ministry Educators Conference will remain on my blog http://king.typepad.com/mike_king/2010/11/the-root-of-all-evil.html
Dissertations | Essays