How do I do it?

by Frank Turk



It's been a couple of weeks since I have posted anything substantive here at TeamPyro (some people may say it's been longer than that, but we will let the scoffers heap hot coals on their own heads), but I've been busy. I hope you have enjoyed All-Dan blogging.

Anyway, I think at some point we left off with the question of, "well, if Scripture is so plain, how do I read the durn thing, cent?" Because telling people to read the book is not quite as helpful as it seems on the front side of the question. I know factually that some people read the Bible once every year -- every year, day by day -- and never get any spiritual or personal insights. So rubbing the text up against your eyeballs is not much better, really, than sleeping with the book under your pillow. It's not an ointment; it's not an injection. It's a book.

So you have to read a book. I know: very startling. What does that mean?

Well, you have to read a blog to get anything out of it -- and sometimes I am sure you wish you hadn't read some blogs because, well, you don't have a shower at work. But that said, what's it take to read anything at all? Can we read? Can a reader get something out of the text, or is he stranded in the wasteland which exists between minds in the radical existential void which has existed since about 1800?

Here's where my speciality comes in: I'm a Literature major. I know -- I haven't been in Grad School for almost 2 decades now (where does the time go? How can I not be 23 anymore?) -- so my "chops" may be "soft". Pheh.

That's why we're going to start with Scripture rather than my musty old M.A., and then work our way back to the practical issues, and we're going to be ready to respond, in the comments, to people who think this approach is solipsistic or whatever.

Here's what Scripture says, among other things:

Ps 119  How can a young man keep his way pure?
   By guarding it according to your word.
With my whole heart I seek you;
   let me not wander from your commandments!
I have stored up your word in my heart,
   that I might not sin against you.
Blessed are you, O LORD;
   teach me your statutes!
With my lips I declare
   all the rules of your mouth.
In the way of your testimonies I delight
   as much as in all riches.
I will meditate on your precepts
   and fix my eyes on your ways.
I will delight in your statutes;
   I will not forget your word.

Now, here's David as he's getting ready to unwind Ps 119, and he calls God's word several things: "your word", "your commandments", "your statutes", "the rules of your mouth", "your testimonies", "your precepts".

What is interesting about this is that it speaks to the way in which David must be receiving what he says he has "stored up in his heart": it is not in some completely-neutral textual medium but in kinds of texts, which the really snooty call "genres". Think about that -- David says that God's word comes to us in different kinds of expression, from the broadest category ("words") to some pretty fine categories ("testimonies", "statutes").

So in making this first serious clarification of how to read God's word, let's realize that God's word is not some kind of featureless sine wave of data which we just have to plug into. It has various forms of communication in the various books, and we have to be able to receive these things in the method and purpose of that particular text type.

Now, I think I have covered this example before here at TeamPyro, but I'm going to spell it out again here for emphasis. Let's look at another passage of Scripture for an example of how to do what I am talking about here:

O LORD, how many are my foes!
   Many are rising against me;
many are saying of my soul,
   there is no salvation for him in God.
                         Selah

But you, O LORD, are a shield about me,
   my glory, and the lifter of my head.
I cried aloud to the LORD,
   and he answered me from his holy hill.
                         Selah

I lay down and slept;
   I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.
I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
   who have set themselves against me all around.

Arise, O LORD!
   Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
   you break the teeth of the wicked.

 Salvation belongs to the LORD;
   your blessing be on your people!
                         Selah

For those of you who are well-read, I am sure you recognize Ps 3 here. But look at how this song ends: {Lord}, strike my enemies on the cheek {and} break the teeth of the wicked!

Is David really praying to God to punch his enemies in the mouth hard enough to break their teeth? That's what the text says, right? Even the wretched MSG gets that much out of the text. So is David the first guy to pray to Ultimate Fighting Jesus -- and have we finally found a foothold for full-contact Christian apologetics?

I am sure some of you are hoping I say "yes" to that so that I have to go back and take back all that I said about tats and dressing like bikers to enter in to a culture, but that's not going to happen. Let's go back a few verses here and look at the beginning of this song -- this poem. In the first stanza, David said, "many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God".

Well, so what? What's that have to do with God being a brawler? Well, it has nothing to do with God being a brawler, which is exactly my point. God's not a brawler: He's a punisher of the wicked. And David, who is asking God to deliver him from wicked men, is asking God to punish men who have said wicked things. And here, the punishment for a lying mouth is a punch in the mouth -- a slap to the face hard enough to break teeth.

But to get that from this text, you have to do something interesting: you have to recognize that David is speaking in a poem, and that the way a poem works is by means of things like metaphor, hyperbole, and analogy.

It may be startling to some people -- like atheists, for example -- to discover that the Bible is a sophisticated text written by literate men by the inspiration of God, but it should not be startling to Christians. And in that, we have to be willing to engage a sophisticated text with some level of literacy and -- if we may say this in circles which demand inerrancy and at the same time a "simple Gospel" -- sophistication.

If you can read this blog, you can read the Bible. I'm sure I'll have more about that in the future, but until then, try to read your Bible and not just skim. You might be surprised at what you find.

UPDATED: Dudes, you must read this and read to the end or else you'll have a heart attack.

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