Insert Obligatory End of Year Article Here
By Wayne Harmon
December 31. A time for reflection.
Well, not so much, really, but there is one thing that I have been thinking about a lot this past year, so here goes:
Bible Abuse.
The Bible was given to by the Holy Spirit to tell us the Story of humanity’s restoration to our Father through Jesus. It is a message of Love. I have made references to this in my previous posts “The Shoebox” and “The Bible is NOT a Rule Book”.
The Bible hasn’t changed, but men have tried to make it into something it is not. And in the most extreme cases they have actually replaced God with the Bible.
In Church history the earliest creeds, statements of faith, focused on God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But along the way these “Statements of Faith” began to shift their emphases from God to the Bible.
This trend has its roots in the Reformation. The Reformers wanted to show the people that salvation is from God and not from the Roman Catholic Church.
The Reformers began to teach Sola scriptura, which means that Scripture alone is authoritative for the faith and practice of the Christian.
That’s really a sound teaching. It is “Scriptural”, as seen in II Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” (NLT).
But men have taken this too far. Now the emphasis isn’t on the message of the Bible, but rather on the Bible itself. Though their words would deny it, their actions say, “We don’t need God. We have the Bible.”
Many “Statements of Faith” today begin with the Bible rather than with God. By putting the Bible first, their focus becomes the God IN the Bible rather than the God OF the Bible.
When faced with a problem in life, instead of asking God for wisdom, as we are told we can do in James 1:5, they look for a Bible verse they can throw at it. It just doesn’t work that way.
There is no Bible verse that can stitch a wound, set a broken bone or eradicate a cancer. Likewise, there is no Bible verse that can change a brain’s chemistry and relieve depression. There is no Bible verse that can free someone from addictive behavior.
As a college freshman, back when the world was in black and white and dinosaurs roamed the earth, I was researching Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark” for a literary criticism class. I was quite surprised to see how many different interpretations there were to this story. I remember thinking how cool it would be if I could actually sit down with Mr. Hawthorne and talk to him about it.
The God OF the Bible is a part of us by the Holy Spirit who actually authored the Book. We don’t have to read conflicting opinions of men. We can ask the Writer Himself!
And as I have done just that about some “issue”, many times He simply says, “That doesn’t matter right now. All I want you to do right now is to love Me, yourself, and those whom I have also created in My Image.”
The Bible is an AMAZING book! As we read the Bible in the coming year, let’s read it for what it is: One Book, written by One Author, telling One Story.
Copyright 2014: Wayne Harmon