Being Moved by Scripture

I think that if we are being honest with ourselves, the way that Christians approach scripture is to find those characters and stories in which we already identify. Those characters and stories that seem to resinate with us and our lives at the moment. We sometimes phrase it as, “this passage really spoke to what I am going through right now.” We relocate the meaning of scripture to what we are experiencing. This is not an inappropriate thing. It is important to identify with what we are reading in the Bible and allow it to help us find comfort in what God is doing in our present life.

What we are not as good at is allowing ourselves, our opinions, and ideologies to be shaped by what we encounter in scripture. Thus, we end up conforming scripture to the way we already live our lives and to what we already think. The much harder question for us to consider as twenty first century Christians in an overwhelmingly individualist culture is, “What must a community that places scripture at the center of its life look like?” When phrased this way, it is ourselves that is being asked to move. Scripture tells us something about God, but it also has authority for us because we learn, as a people who have been forgiven, that we must be a people who are able to forgive, be at peace, and love. We serve a God who is love, but also we must know what it means to truly love and be loved. The God we worship is one who is shalom, who is peace, so we must then be a community which promotes peace and not violence or manipulation.

Theologian Stanley Hauerwas has noted that there can be no ethical use of scripture unless we are a community capable of following the admonition to put “away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.” To be this kind of community—one that has scripture at its center—we must be capable of sustaining scripture’s authority through the liturgy, in the public reading of the scriptures, and the acting out of what they teach us in the world. We need to be a community that is willing to be moved as we rediscover and relocate our center in the Word of God, not a community that attempts to shape God’s message in our own image.

This is an incredibly hard task, because it requires us to do the hard work of introspection and change. To admit when we are wrong and ask forgiveness, but also to offer forgiveness when we have been hurt. This is not easy task, but, in the words of (the prophet) Bob Dylan:

“It’s a long road,

it’s a long and narrow way,

If I can’t work up to you,

You’ll have to work down to me someday.”