The Good Book Is Better Than It Used to Be

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Foreword by Linda McKinnish Bridges......................................viiPreface..................................................................ix1. More Awesome: The Meaning Deepens with the Years.....................12. More Authentic: King Truth Dethrones King James......................123. More Personal: The Chapters and Verses Are Mine......................284. More Human: The Writers Mirror Our Flaws.............................455. More Diverse: We Have Many Choices...................................616. More Religious: Readers Will Answer to God...........................777. More Liberating: Noah's Curse is Broken..............................938. More Egalitarian: Women Can Preach to Men............................1089. More Accepting: Gays and Lesbians Are Welcome........................12110. More Pacifist: Christ's Sword Is His Word............................13511. More Complete: The Canon Keeps on Growing............................14812. More Supportive: My Deepest Needs Are Satisfied......................161Notes....................................................................174

Chapter One

Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years. -Charles H. Spurgeon, English Baptist preacher

Climb aboard the time machine, courtesy of H. G. Wells, for a jaunt back to my early childhood in Tampa, Florida. We disembark at the intersection of Hillsborough and Nebraska Avenues and step inside the white clapboard building labeled Seminole Heights Baptist Church. I'm attending my first Vacation Bible School, an annual two-week event for children and youth three to sixteen years of age. Like all normal four-year-olds, I'm highly teachable. My spongy mind absorbs the amazing stories of Noah in the zoo-like ark and Daniel in the lions' den, along with proverbs and psalms that will ever nourish my soul. I consume more Bible than Kool-Aid and cookies.

Each morning, before dividing into age groups for lessons, crafts, and games, we all gather in the church's auditorium for opening ceremonies. Three pupils march down the two aisles, one holding aloft the American flag, another bearing the Christian flag, and the third cradling an open Bible in his hands. The girl with the American flag hoists it too high and pokes the top of the flagstaff into a whirling ceiling fan. The clash jars me, as though a thunderclap. I turn to see a wooden fan blade fly through the air and alight on a vacant pew. The piano music stops, our teachers restore order, and the flag- and Bible-bearers take their usual positions at the front. We recite the standard pledges of allegiance to the two flags, then pay tribute to the special book that gave Vacation Bible School its name. We say in unison:

I pledge allegiance to the Bible, God's Holy Word, and will make it a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path, and will hide its words in my heart that I might not sin against God.

Immediately afterward we belt out a hymn:

Thy Word is a lamp to my feet, A light to my path alway, To guide and to save me from sin, And show me the heav'nly way.

Some days we sing this hymn instead:

Holy Bible, Book divine, Precious treasure, thou art mine: Mine to tell me whence I came; Mine to teach me what I am.

Whichever the hymn, its emotional impact reinforces the pledge I've made to the Bible. I recite this pledge as many as ten times each summer for the next dozen years. Saluting a black-covered book seems no different from saluting a colorful flag. As a hymn writer declares:

The scripture is a banner before God's host unfurled; It is a shining beacon above the darkling world.

Like the American and Christian flags, the Bible arouses my emotions and stirs me to action. It represents powerful ideas and ideals. And unlike the flags, it spells out those ideas and ideals. The Bible can be opened, read, studied, and applied to our lives. I pledge to use it that way. I vow to follow it as a guiding light, to obey it as a book divine.

In Love with God's Word

A Chinese philosopher was said to ride his mule backward so he could reflect on where he had been without being distracted by where he was headed. Likewise, I have tried to recall the first stages of my life's journey without being influenced by where the journey has led. However faulty my memory, there is ample evidence that the Bible and I bonded as though we were Jonathan and David. "Jonathan made a covenant with David," we are told, "because he loved him as himself" (1 Sam. 18:3). I loved the Bible as myself. We were bound together as tightly as its printed pages.

During my growing-up years I often had a Fishers of Men New Testament tucked in my shirt pocket. This bantam Bible, a descendant of the Soldier's Pocket Bible carried by Oliver Cromwell's troops in the English Civil War, served me well when I shinnied up an oak tree to read it in private. I memorized passages such as the third chapter of John while perched on a moss-laden branch. That chapter tells the story of Nicodemus, who came to Jesus at night and heard him say, "You must be born again" (v. 7). It includes the "gospel in a nutshell": "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son ..." (v. 16).

At home and at church, especially in Sunday school classes, I used a complete Bible with both Old and New Testaments. Sad to say, my childhood Bibles have gone the way of my toys and roller skates, but two remain from my high-school years. One is a tattered Scofield Reference Bible, a Bible so popular that Oxford University Press has produced ten million copies. It contains maps, explanatory notes, and-except for the Psalms-dates on each page running from BC 4004 to AD 96. The other is a Thompson Chain Reference Bible, a pricey edition bound in Alaska seal and as flexible as the Bible I have often seen in Billy Graham's gesturing hand. A gift from cherished friends, it includes a concordance, charts, character studies, book analyses, and one hundred thousand linked references. Both Scofield and Thompson helped me craft my maiden sermons.

Like others in my family, I did the daily Bible readings specified in the Baptist Training Union quarterly study guides. The Training Union met every Sunday prior to the evening preaching service. One of its features was an eight-point record system, a more rigorous standard than the six-point system used in Sunday school. At Training Union each week, the group captains handed each member of their group a little slip of paper with eight boxes to check:

Present (10 percent) On Time (10 percent) Studied Lesson (15 percent) On Program (15 percent) Study Course (10 percent) Daily Bible Reading (15 percent) Attending Preaching (10 percent) Giving to Church (15 percent).

Determined to be a model Christian "who does not need to be ashamed" (2 Tim. 2:15), I strove to be 100 percent every Sunday. To claim credit for Daily Bible Reading, I had to do the readings specified in my quarterly without missing a single day. No exceptions were allowed. Missing a day reduced not only my individual grade but that of my group. A secretary copied my report into a permanent record book, and for all I knew, an angel copied it into the Lamb's Book of Life.

I also took part in "sword drills," those soldier-like Bible drills in which participants vie to find a given passage within seconds. When the leader said, "Charge!" we flipped through the pages as though ruffling through a telephone directory in a panic. Muslims don't treat their sacred book so roughly, but we Southern Baptists liked to brandish the sword of the Spirit as if in man-to-man combat. A well-worn Bible spoke well of its owner.

One of my earliest sermon manuscripts has this exhortation in capital letters, "Fall in love with God's word." Like Robinson Crusoe, I reveled in this precious book morning and night. Though never deprived of family and friends, I found comfort in verses like "Surely I am with you always" (Matt. 28:20). I tried to live by directives and promises such as "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight" (Prov. 3:5-6).

No one told me to "pat the Bible," as some churches teach children today. Still, I treasured it as my bosom companion. It was the air I breathed, the food I ate, the water I drank. When poring over scripture I often felt transported and transformed as though having an out-of-body experience. The sacred words buttressed me in times of trial and distress. They served as amulets to ward off the evil one, as spectacles through which to view the world, as signposts to show me the way I should go. Like bees, the words provided honey for my soul day after day and delivered a sting when I needed correcting.

The Bible filled the role of the Harry Potter books and similar tales of wizardry that fascinate young readers today. It offered riddles and enigmas, angels and demons, a talking snake and a talking donkey. It featured a warrior named Samson who, like a modern suicide bomber, called on God's name as he brought down a temple on himself and a host of Philistines. The Bible appealed to my baser instincts as well the higher.

In the words of the Anglican prayer book, I tried to "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" the scriptures. Some New Year's resolutions I wrote in my mid-teens reflect this commitment:

To read God's Word every day. To know God's Word from cover to cover. To find God's message in every verse of His Holy Word.

No doubt I fell short, but at least I aimed to make the Bible a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I tried to hide its words in my heart that I might not sin against God. That is still my intent. However, the Bible to which I pledged allegiance in my youth is not the Bible that nurtures my heart and soul today. They are two different books.

Experience Brings Change

If I had been told in my youth that my Bible would change, I would have replied, "No way!" I would have quoted such passages as "Your word, Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens" (Ps. 119:89) and "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever" (Isa. 40:8). My Bible could not change because it was God's eternal word.

I still acknowledge God's word as eternal truth that stands firm in the heavens. But I no longer consider God's word unchanged on earth in its written form. It is unclear whether the passage in Psalm 119 refers to the Torah (the five books of Moses) or to divine revelation in a more general sense. And probably Isaiah thought of God's word as a dynamic, prophetic message apart from any written document. So I no longer apply such passages to our Bible of sixty-six books. I try to interpret scripture with greater care.

Through the years, my understanding of the Bible has deepened and broadened. As Paul said, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me" (1 Cor. 13:11). In my early years I lacked the discernment and experience needed to interpret scripture on my own. Someone had to tell me what the Bible meant, and I reflexively swallowed what my mentors taught. That is no longer the case. I have outgrown certain beliefs about the Bible that, to use Karl Barth's term, belong to my "eggshell" stage. Credulity, a universal trait of childhood, has no place in adulthood.

My religious heritage includes the Protestant belief in the priesthood of all believers. It includes the Baptist emphasis on the right of each individual to interpret scripture under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This legacy spurred my spiritual growth. Increasingly, I dared to ask searching questions and to explore new and scary avenues of belief. Jesus had taken away my sin, not my mind. Unlike the priests who refused to look through Galileo's telescope lest they see something in conflict with their beliefs, I dared to consider the human side of the "book divine."

As an adult I learned that the human side is a dangerous side. The word danger derives from the Latin dominium, "lordship," which originally meant authority or jurisdiction. The Bible is dangerous because it speaks with divine authority, and believers strive to obey it-as they understand it. The results can be deadly: witch trials, snake bites, refusal of vital blood transfusions, even catastrophic wars.

Using scripture in ways that harm people is often based on a "foolish consistency," to use Emerson's term, in disregard of the biblical principles of justice and love. I learned to keep my guard up against the blind faith in scripture that engenders a dangerous certitude. It is crucial that we understand the Good Book rightly.

Much of the change in my understanding derives from my missionary career in Japan. I went to that country to teach, not to be taught. Unexpectedly, I learned a great deal from those I tried to teach. The Oriental culture, so sharply different from my own, stimulated new insights and opened up new perspectives. Let me cite a few examples.

I went to Japan armed with Aristotelian logic. If A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, then A is greater than C. My Japanese friends taught me jan-ken-pon logic. Jan-ken-pon is the rock-paper-scissors game that young and old alike play with their hands and fingers, especially when they need to make a group selection or other decision. Rock breaks scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper covers rock. Notice that in this game A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, but contrary to Aristotle, C is greater than A. This illustrates a logic that is elastic, not absolute, one that allows for underlying unities where there seem to be contradictions. Opposites complement each other; black and white blend into gray. This Oriental way of thinking has much in common with biblical thought, which abounds in paradoxes and ambiguities.

Theologian William L. Hendricks vividly described two competing models of biblical authority. One is the rational model ("1 + 1 = 2"), which is based on Greek philosophy. Its logical deductions give us certainty. The other is the relational model ("I love you"), which is based on biblical thought. Its stress on God's relationship to his people gives us assurance. The relational model, Hendricks noted, allows for different kinds of logic, whether Western, Oriental, or some other.

My experience as a missionary in Japan turned me from the "1 + 1 = 2" model of my childhood to the "I love you" model that Hendricks espoused. It converted me from the dogmatism of Aristotelian logic to a more open and flexible way of viewing reality. Thus it radically altered my reading of scripture.

During my first years in Japan, most people still suffered from the devastating effects of World War II. Seeing misery all around me, I tried to obey Jesus' command, "Give to the one who begs from you" (Matt. 5:42 KJV). Soon I had second thoughts. The beggars often fabricated a hard luck story, faked an illness or wound, even used a scrawny borrowed baby for emotional appeal. Children worked for heartless bosses who pocketed most of their earnings. A man wearing the white garb of a war veteran posed as an amputee by concealing one leg in a hole in the sidewalk. Most beggars had genuine needs, but so did a host of other people in postwar Japan. I had to ask myself, Is a handout the right response? When I "give to the one who begs," am I abetting a crooked and lucrative trade? I learned afresh the danger of taking Jesus' teachings literally. That is not the same as taking them seriously.

After I preached a sermon on sin, a woman said to me, "I have never sinned in my life." Her claim of innocence surprised me. Then I remembered that the Japanese word used for sin, tsumi, primarily means crime. One is charged with, convicted of, imprisoned for a tsumi. The young woman had spoken the truth. On another occasion, after delivering a sermon on God as Father, I learned that Japanese fathers were often perceived as detached, stern, and wrathful, that love and compassion were considered motherly attributes. Akiko Matsumura, sometime president of the Asian Baptist Women's Union, told me she was unable to conceive of God as Father. This had nothing to do with feminist theology. Her natural perspective as a Japanese had been reinforced by her own father's action: he had disinherited her for embracing Christ.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Good Book Is Better Than It Used to Beby F. Calvin Parker Copyright © 2009 by F. Calvin Parker. Excerpted by permission.
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