Where Are We Going!

Over the next few posts we are going to cover three areas:

1. The Western world’s penchant for minutia and the breaking of the Story into fragments.
2. How Story is an antidote for this fragmentation.
3. The concept of the Kingdom of God as a prism through which we can understand the Story of God.

Houston, “We Have a Problem…”
One of America’s finest hours in space flight came when an oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13. The quote “Houston, We have a problem,” is actually a misquote. The actual quote is “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” This was a major problem for those on board the Odyssey. The crew in space and the crew in Houston had to put their minds together to solve this problem and bring the three astronauts back to earth safely.

It is natural when a problem occurs to find a solution. However, sometimes a bigger problem occurs: we don’t know we have a problem. This is the situation with millions of readers of Scripture. We have a problem when we read Scripture and we may not even know it.

A Little Known Problem
The little known problem in Scripture reading is the fragmentized way in which we have come to read it. A little snippet here and a little snippet there, a Bible bit here and a Bible bit there. So if it is a problem, what do we do about it?

We will continue this thought in the next post!

It has become fashionable in the West to wear sun shades to protect the eyes. They come in all shapes and sizes and all kinds of colors. It just so happens that we all wear some color of shades in our glasses when we read Scripture, which is our presuppositions that we bring to the text we are reading. We all have them. Once in a discussion with my father-in-law about Scripture, he announced that he did not have any presuppositions when he read the Gospels. My reply, “your presupposition is that you don’t have any presuppositions.”

We all start somewhere. The starting point will determine the ending point. As an example, on the West Coast there is a main Interstate highway with the number 5 (I-5 for short). It runs from Blaine, WA in the North to the Mexican border below Chula Vista, CA in the South. Let’s say you were in Portland, OR and you wanted to go to San Francisco, CA. You can’t get there on I-5 South. You can go part way, but I-5 doesn’t go to San Francisco. Driving South on I-5 from Portland predetermines where you are going. You can’t get anywhere else except where I-5 delivers you.

The same is true with our presuppositions. They predetermine before we start where we will end. Assume that you believe that Jesus More on Presuppositions: Those Shades Are Cool!

Hundreds of hours are devoted to reading and studying the pages of the Bible. I am sure that most followers of Jesus have gone to or are a part of an ongoing Bible study. Bible studies come in all shapes and sizes. All colors and sounds. Here’s a type of Bible study that I have seen over the years in many churches.

It was bitter cold outside. The temperature was dipping into the low teens as Justin prepared the living room for the weekly meeting of the church’s Bible study. He stoked the fire to get it roaring so that the hot ambers would keep the room fuzzy warm as the group studied that evening. He could hardly wait for the evening session.

After the evening meal that all the small group shared together they gathered in the front room around the cozy fireplace and began to sing some choruses that truly bored Justin and were what his friend Jason called “Jesus is my girlfriend” songs. The melodic line almost caused him to gag and he would often put his finger down his throat while the group was singing mimicking a gagging action. Of course, no one would see him do such a thing because they all had their eyes closed and looked like they were in some kind of trance. More on The Bible Says What?

The Bible has been around for a long time, but not as long as God has. It’s been here for several millennia in its literary form and several millennia before that in its oral form. More on The Bible Can Be Difficult To Read!

There are several things that it seems necessary to know about the story as presented in Scripture that will help us read the story with more clarity. First, its main character is God. He is the hero of all the stories. Scripture shares his story in terms of his actions and words. We get to know a person by his or her story. We can get to know God better by understanding his story. More on The Story in Scripture