JESUS NEVER READ THE BIBLE.

December 2011

When people demand Scripture be acknowledged as the “infallible, inerrant, Word of God” because it “says so in the Bible,” I can’t help but roll my eyes at the ridiculousness of The Bible referencing itself. It’s kind of like me saying this essay is reliable because it says so in this essay.

When I look at the Bible as an instruction manual for life, it becomes rigid and cold and lifeless, because an instruction manual can tell me how to put something together, but it can’t enjoy it with me.

This approach to Scripture leaves me feeling far from the story of love and liberation written on its pages.

How have we so confused Scripture for God?

And are we following Jesus– or a book?

Maybe we could take a step back from this idolatrous deification and consider whether or not The Bible has, or should be given a voice of its own.

Because the way we talk about, implement and regard The Bible is important. Although I personally find it uniquely incredible, extraordinary, invaluable, and authentic– there’s a world of difference between the Bible as the source of truth, and something that points to truth.

I bet it drives God crazy to watch us respond to his love with a kid’s song that opens with “Jesus loves me this I know, for The Bible tells me so”.

Really?

I know God loves me because The Bible tells me so?

This gives The Bible credit where credit isn’t due. It’s like thanking my cell phone for the great conversations we have.

My phone connects me to my friends. Their voices are pushed through my phone– but my actual friends are not contained within the phone. And although I appreciate my phone for its ability to connect me with my friends, I do not love my cell phone. I love the friend on the other end of the call.

Though The Bible may uniquely convey the essence of God, it doesn’t contain God—but don’t take my word for it. Read for yourself the words of Jesus as recorded in the cell phone book of John:

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (5:39–40)

These words blow me away every time I read them.

Almost as much as when I realized that Jesus never read The Bible.

It seems the deification of Scripture is something that’s been going on for quite some time— long before America, the Protestant Reformation, and even the early Church.

So when I hear people say the Bible is God’s revelation to man, I wanna barf.

And maybe so does Jesus (being God’s actual revelation to man, and all).

I believe the writer of Hebrews when he presented Jesus as being “the exact representation of God”. And I don’t believe it because it’s in The Bible, but because it’s true.

The cell phone narrative of Scripture reveals the same fingerprint of the Living God I sense is pursuing me in the here and now. It’s in the cell phone pages of Scripture where I read of others who have come before me—others from different tribes and different times—whose encounter with the living God affected them then, much like it’s affecting me now.

So why are we afraid to consider that God might be bigger than The Bible?

What if The Bible isn’t a puzzle to be solved but rather an invitation into a story that is still being told?

In contrast to a “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” approach to faith, what if there is more God wants to say? What did Jesus mean when he said,

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” (John 16:12–13)

Look. If Jesus was just a man who died two-thousand years ago, I can see the merit of clinging to a written account as being our closest connection to him.

But was he just a man who died?

What if we are made to live in reliance on the Spirit of God as our guide instead of reading the narrative of Scripture as a users guide or operating manual?

Perhaps (among other things) The Bible is more a reminder that we are not alone, that others have been recklessly loved by God before us, and that God will finish what he has started in all of us:

“A time will come, however, indeed it is already here, when the true (genuine) worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth (reality); for the Father is seeking just such people as these as his worshipers. (John 4:23–24)

There’s this notion that without The Bible’s explicit directives telling us what to do at every turn, life would become impossibly chaotic, heretical, and unmanageable (because living by the Spirit of God leaves us susceptible to misinterpretation and misunderstanding).

As if living life by the letter of the law isn’t “impossibly chaotic, heretical, and unmanageable, filled with misinterpretation and misunderstanding.”!

Because The Bible is clear, straightforward and tells us everything we need to know in an easy–to–read, easy–to–obey manner?

As if a just-tell-me-what-to-do-and-I’ll-do-it approach to relationships doesn’t kill the heart of intimacy?

I digress.

For people who claim to follow Jesus, some Christians quote the Apostle Paul an awful lot.

I don’t want to follow Paul.

Nor do I want to follow his interpretation of Jesus.

(And I definitely don’t want to follow other people’s interpretations of Paul’s interpretation of Jesus!)

I want to follow Jesus.

Here, and now.