Monday, January 22, 2007
Our small group just started working through a “Disciple” program. It’s a sort of follow-up church initiative to Purpose Driven Life. I guess the main idea/hope is that we, as a church, should read and know the Bible.
It was ironic, actually, because when we first seriously started discussing going through the program, I was coming up with all sorts of reasons why I might not be able to commit to the study—even though I had just finished sharing about how I wanted to stop making excuses and to discipline myself to have a real, daily relationship with God.
Just goes to show how hard it can be to start to change.
Anyway, today was the first day of our readings.
I’m not exactly sure what I should be thinking about or looking for, but I guess as long as I’m praying and trying to listen to God, I’ll eventually learn something. Until then, I guess it’ll just be ramblings as usual. But I digress.
Today we were supposed to explore the Bible, “remembering that it is many books by many writers who were inspired by God.” I didn’t really follow the instructions to “look through the entire Bible,” though, because I got stuck at the Preface.
A couple of things stuck out to me:
1) The second and third pages of the Preface in my Bible were printed wrongly: page three is on the left and page two is on the right. I actually had to stop and think for a couple of seconds to figure it out.
2) I read the Preface before, once, long ago. I don’t remember how old I was (except that I was definitely still a child) or what prompted me to read it then, but I have a sense that I was much more enthusiastic about the Bible then. And when I think about it, I can remember instances, moments or periods in the past when I was fascinated by scripture. Wanting to know the background/history, working to find some sort of meaning, trying to apply it to my life… What happened along the way to make me lose that sense of wonder about the Bible? When did I become smugly confident in my ability to be and act in accord with God while relying solely on my meager knowledge of the Bible?
3) The end of the second page of the Preface reads: “There is a sense in which the work of translation is never wholly finished. This applies to all great literature and uniquely so to the Bible.” I guess it struck me because, when we met on Sunday, we were talking about different translations of the Bible. In my mind the NIV is sort of the “definitive” Bible, but even its “writers” acknowledge that other/further translation can, will and should be done.
4) This is more from our small group discussion on Sunday than from today’s reading, but I am reminded that God truly is beyond our human ability to fully understand. I could read every single version of the Bible available in a variety of languages and I still wouldn’t have a complete image of God. Yes, words and stories have an amazing evocative power, but until we meet God face-to-face, we won’t be able to judge how accurate our earthly depictions are/were.
