My thoughts on the subject of a new Bible study move onward. I have made quite a bit of progress since my previous blog on Open Source Church. I've talked to my pastor about it and I'm not satisfied with where my ideas landed while preparing to speak to him. At that point, I'd considered making this a recurring course on Biblical interpretation. By now I realize that is far too narrow and only the starting point.
Instead, I'm thinking of a series of-in depth Bible studies, the first of which will focus on Biblical interpretation. The overall goal is the search for the God of the Bible.
The Reformers came to their conclusions because of a renewed influence of Biblical study. Luther didn't leave the Universal (Catholic) Church because he had some new revelation or some new idea on who God is and what He's doing through the history of humanity. Rather, he because increasingly disillusioned with the hypocrisy of the Church and was profoundly disturbed by it. Thus, he began to question the Church's authority and decided to seek the wisdom of the Church founders. There, he found the words Paul wrote to the fledgeling Roman church: "But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness." (Romans 4:5)
I too have been increasingly disillusioned with this present Evangelical Church. The reformers created this church and this church has found it's own waywardness in recent years. As a point of illustration, I was in a local bookstore this past week and I took notice again of something which seems supremely unsettling to me. The "Christian Book" section lies side-by-side with the "Self-Help" section. This is a common categorization, but it is disturbing in this: Christianity does not help a person, it destroys a person. Evangelicals today seem to think of Christianity as some sort of mystical pill to make us feel better. Sorry, that simply doesn't jive with Scripture.
Christ said: "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." (Matthew 16:24) There is no way this is self-help! To follow Christ one must deny self. To follow Christ one must die.
I had a friend in high school who couldn't understand Christians because they were self-deprecating, why would this be good? I'm afraid my answer to her then wasn't very good. The proper answer is that we humans have nothing in ourselves that is worth keeping. We must first die and by reborn in Christ's likeness—this is what being "born-again" means. In this we lose our own sin of self-worth and take on the virtue of self-sacrifice. This is good because it always us to forget the horror of what we are in order to gain the glory of what God meant us to be. Yet, this is not self-help because self is dead.
Unfortunately, the problems facing evangelical Christians are not really clear cut. We have a situation where evangelicals are trying to aim for the target, but instead of aiming for the heart their trying to clip the hip or the shoulder. Many times, the evangelicals are doing good things, perhaps even things that Christ or Paul commanded, but we're forgetting that which is most important.
As an example I tend to harp on, this comes out in the desire to preach a lesson that is "relevant" to the non-Christians in our midst. Relevance isn't a bad thing, but often our search for relevance leads us to soften the message in such a way that it loses it's edge. The goal shouldn't be to entice the unbeliever, but rather to get their attention. We don't have the luxury of getting along with unbelievers. We know we're on message when people want to silence us. Jesus put it, "'A slave is not greater than his master' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you." (John 15:20) The evangelical church isn't persecuted enough.
The solution, in my view, is that we need to have such an understanding of who God is, His character, His purpose, and His workings that we aren't willing to compromise on message. Figuratively, we need to be a sharp and painful tool in order to do God's work. Christ has been pictured as having a double-edged sword for a tongue and so should we.
This is where Open Scripture hopes to go. I want to put together a study designed to learn who God is and by that learn how we can be most effective. My own church is currently attacking this issue from the opposite angle. This ministry is intended to help each individual learn how God made them to serve Him. My tact is rather to find out enought about God's nature that I know what it is about Him and His purpose that drives me on to serve.
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