If you don't trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you. For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won't have an intimate relationship. Remember the (two!) movies The Stepford Wives? The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.
Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't! You'll have a Stepford God!A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.
--Tim Keller :: The Reason For God :: Chapter Seven...dealing with the objection You Can't Take the Bible Literally
Such a good insight. The picking and choosing of certain aspects of the Bible comes off as so "enlightened" in our culture, but it is really defeating. You lose the relationship with God in the process. You are left with yourself as the ultimate authority...which means you're pretty much left talking to yourself...which pretty much makes you go crazy. That last statement could come off as "funny" or perhaps "rude", but I think it is true. Those who have tried to bend and twist the Scriptures to say what they want drive themselves to misery. They become very disintegrated. We were never meant to live this way. The Gospel leads us to true wholeness because it leads us to look outside of ourselves.
So true...thanks for this great post. I have been struggling through the last part of Judges recently, wondering, why is this stuff in the BIBLE? Good to be reminded of this as I read things that seem barbaric and strange to me. I have to ask myself, why is this in here? It's no accident.
ReplyDeleteThe way my browser window was open at the time of me reading this post I couldn't see it was a Tim Keller post. As I was reading along I'm thinking, wow, this stuff is unbelievable! Jamie's church is going to be PACKED every Sunday with stuff like this. Then I realized it was Tim Keller and not you...but the good news is...I was actually surprised that it was not you writing because it seems like something I'd hear or read from you. So I guess what I'm saying is, if I can read something and remain unaware whether it's you or Tim Keller writing, that must be a good thing!! See you on the court next Monday...I'll be the one who stays on one side for the entire game out of breath... :-)
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