using the Bible

Album cover from Arcade Fire's Neon Bible

From Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity:

God’s character is never revealed fully at any single point in the story, nor can it be contained simply in any list of propositions or adjectives derived from the stories of the past. Instead, we can only discern God’s character in a mature way from the vantage point of the end of the story, seen in the light of the story of Jesus. (114)

We do our listeners, our readers, the Bible and ourselves a disservice when we make pronouncements or judgments based on one verse or passage or situation or event. We’ve got to see the big picture—everything leading up to Jesus, and everything following seen in light of Jesus’ life and teaching.

Too often we use the Bible to say what we want it to say. Usually what we want to say is good, but we need to realize and communicate that what we say comes from us, not directly from God. Even our words that come from God’s Word, are filtered through us, and we bring our own stuff to them.

Another mistake we often make is to find several different, unrelated passages, written by different people, which speak to our subject, and put them all together as if they all say the same thing.

A big trend in church is the use of topical sermons. They can be great, but it is really difficult to avoid proof-texting when writing a topical sermon. What often happens is this, we pick a topic, look for Bible passages that address that topic (either directly, or though indirect interpretation); then put together a message based on the 3 or 4 points found.

How often do we hear a message (accompanied by a fill-in-the-blank outline) that uses 7 Scripture passages from 5 different books (and 5 authors) of the Bible, with 3 different Bible translations? I'm not trying to be critical, and truth is, I've done this plenty of times myself.

But when we use Scripture this way, we’re not engaging the Biblical text on its own terms, or seeing it in its own context. It becomes too easy to use Bible verses to support our ideas, rather than letting the Bible form the basis of our ideas. We limit the texts’ ability to say something new or enlightening. This is easy to do when we see the Bible as a constitution, not so much when we see it as an inspired library.

This is one of the beautiful things about using a structure or outline such as a lectionary for preaching. It allows a community to work through the Bible, and challenges the preacher to read and teach the whole Bible, listening to how God speaks through all of it. It also leads to fresh, exciting new insights for both the preacher and the congregation.