When Scripture No Longer Gives Us Christ

What happens when the words of God no longer point back to the Word of God, himself?

When the holy scriptures become so riddled with misinterpretations, biased exegesis, and painful memories that the words no longer sound anything like the Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us?

When the one and only means many Christian circles ever gave us to interact with, hear from, and engage with the heavens becomes the thing that reminds us most of our worst moments of hell?

If you grew up Christian, especially evangelical, I want to honor your even clicking upon this title and enduring what I am sure has felt like an incredibly uncomfortable intro by affirming right up front: I don’t believe that means we disregard it.

I want to affirm that I personally believe the Bible is divine, inspired, and a wonderfully precious gift from the Holy Spirit intended to help us understand, recognize and experience the Divine in our time. I believe it is a truly sacred treasure of words, stories, poetry, worship, and documentation straight from our brothers and sisters throughout history given to us to help in our never-ending process that is the understanding of the God of all creation. I believe it is a blessed example of God partnering with humanity to bring about His will of goodness for all and the restoration of all things.

But I also believe it has been used to perpetuate the most evil and cruelest forms of destruction.

And I believe that we can no longer pretend that it hasn’t.

Misreading Scripture with Traumatized Eyes

In Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes authors E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien share a literal back-translation to English of Psalm 23 ("The Lord is My Shepherd") as understood by the Khmus tribe of Laos:

The Great Boss is the one who takes care of my sheep
I don't want to own anything
The Great Boss wants me to lie down in the field.
He wants me to go to the lake.
He makes my good spirit come back.
Even though I walk through something the missionary calls
the valley of the shadow of death,
I do not care. You are with me.
You use a stick and a club to make me comfortable.
You manufacture a piece of furniture right in front of my eyes
while my enemies watch.
You pour car grease on my head.
My cup has too much water in it and therefore overflows.
Goodness and kindness will walk single file behind me all my life.
And I will live in the hut of the Great Boss until I die and am forgotten by the tribe.

Similarly, I want to share a literal back-translation of another common verse, but this time as understood by those abused, harmed, and manipulated by religious entities:

For God so loved the world that he murdered and tortured his one and only Son, that whoever says a prayer and confesses him as Lord shall not burn in an eternal lake of fire but get to exist in an ethereal cloud paradise forever.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world (unless you are gay, a woman preacher, a democrat, or have sex before marriage), but to save the world through him. Whoever behaves and acts like a good Christian is not condemned, but whoever does not behave and act like a good Christian stands condemned already because they have not believed in the interpretations and truths the men in charge declared came straight from the mouth of God’s one and only Son. 

This is not an exaggeration. This is how John 3:16-18 is understood by a vast majority of people who were raised in religious spaces. I know, because I recently walked through this exact passage with 11 of them and this is what was heard.

Because I believe what I do about the Bible, we endured through the mess and chaos that was our preconceived understanding of this passage and sought to find a better way forward. We fought together to get past the baggage and very real and embodied trauma that these verses brought up within us and did our best to read the words with fresh eyes and a reminder of original context that did not include Christian nationalism or the Billy Graham Crusades. It was hard. It was exhausting. It was honestly, not really at all encouraging. And that was with every voice being heard in a safe and trusted environment where no one person was trying to declare their own interpretation as “the right one.”

Because I already know, there are many that read that back-translation and immediately thought to themselves, “of course that’s wrong! my preacher would never present it that way. He uses the right commentaries and went to the right seminary. So they should just come to my church where they can be told the right way of understanding those verses instead. All better!”

Not all better, friends. Not all better.

Information Overload

I existed in the realm of Bible studies and Bible teachers long enough to know exactly what our knee-jerk response to the issue I am presenting is. Just deliver the right information instead. Just keep preaching it, teaching it, and lecturing it at them until all their painful woes go away. Just give them the right authors and commentators and preachers to learn from and all is well, they can get back to their daily devos as sponsored by LifeWay.

But what any trauma-informed, heck any trauma-experienced individual can affirm is that we can not be lectured out of our pain. Often, our traumatic experiences exist as a wall, one built to protect and help our souls survive, but a wall nonetheless that becomes impenitiable. And information alone is not strong enough nor stable enough to burst through such walls, let alone begin to help gently take them down.

Dismantling such walls is a process. One that takes time and patience and resilience and presence. A process that requires safety and trust, and the time and consistency required for both to be built. So, while sermons and lectures and information output may have their place in such a process— such intellectually fixated solutions cannot be our main mode for such healing.

And if most church folk, especially evangelicals, were being honest with ourselves— that absolutely terrifies us.

In the world of 40 minute sermons and endless Bible study series and celebrity preachers and famed podcasters and authors, intellectual solutions are all we really know. So, if those hurt and damaged by religious spaces can’t get it together long enough to sit through a sermon, to come to our 6 week women’s study, to watch a Matt Chandler video or to start listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast, well they are just shit out of luck aren’t they? After all, that’s all we really know or have to offer.

And so we finally arrive at my point in all this:

Dear Church, that is no longer enough.

It is biblical to believe that God is bigger than the Bible

If the only way we know how to encourage folks toward the heart of God is through a book that we ourselves have been complicit in manipulating, misinterpreting, and utilizing for selfish and controlling purposes, we are the ones who are shit out of luck.

What does it say of our beliefs and of our faith that the primary means through which we can have others experience, know, and learn about God is via a piece of literature, that in itself reveals just how many ways there are beyond it’s written words to engage with and relate to God?

Within the Bible itself we see food and feasts and celebrations and stories and parables and walking together and traveling together and learning hard lived lessons together all contribute to humanity’s knowing and engaging with the Divine. We see caring for the poor, the ill, the outcast, the forgotten, the widow, the orphan, and the marginalized all be means through which everyday men and women grow closer to the likeness and ways of Jesus. We see the gosh dang Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ himself reveal themselves to be the word of God incarnate, God with us, and God within us, intending to do much greater things than those we read of in this ancient text.

The word of God reveals just how active and present the Word of God is beyond the written words of scripture. Therefore, no one’s relationship with God should be wholly dependent on such written words alone.

There are a myriad of ways God has provided for humanity to engage with the Divine. And I truly believe that if church folk could humble themselves enough to actually want to learn from and exist with the deconstructed, the shunned, the isolated, and the lost, we are the ones who would end up blessed, discovering just how active and present our God is even outside of the written words of Scripture.

If we truly want to live according to those words and care for the hurting, seek after the strays, draw near to the brokenhearted, and sit near and with the sick, we have to reckon with the reality that the words of Scripture may actually be causing them more pain than healing right now. And while I, myself, will hold onto the reckless hope that this will not always be the case, I do believe that the words of Scripture confirm, our God is bigger and able and willing and wanting to continue to engage with humanity fully throughout whatever long and slow and patient process will be required for healing our understanding of such a sacred text again.

The only question left to ponder is, are we?

“Okay, but like how?”

I am always one for practicality and as a pastor and planter very much present in the space of learning how to address this reality, I’d like to end this post by sharing some ways our church is seeking to follow, know, and engage with God and the ways of Jesus even in the midst of our complex feelings toward scripture.

• Experimenting with ways to explore scripture communally and conversationally, rather than having one voice declare a meaning of scripture declaratively.

• Making room in our liturgy for discussions, for the sharing of our everyday lives, for the voicing of questions and frustrations, and for the uncomfortability that comes with not needing to resolve those right away.

• Exploring, discovering, teaching, and practicing methods of meditation and holistic reflections that help us get in tune with our emotions, our bodies, our thoughts, and the voice of God we hear internally.

• Utilizing the gifts and practices of the historic church like complines, icons, the liturgical calendar, and the Creeds.

• Various forms of prayer like Examen, Lectio Divina, and Ignatius Contemplation. Visio Divina is a favorite for our crew. I have previously shared some examples of how we practice such forms of prayer here:

  • Communal Lectio Divina

  • Visio Divina

• Taking the time to truly get to know one another and share about each other’s faith experiences, helping us both recognize and leave space for one another’s perspectives.

• And most recently, seeking and discussing together what bringing healing and redemption to our greater community might look like through communally discerning a shared mission. (CLICK HERE for more information on how integral mission is to the foundation and forming of our church)

I have learned about all of the above practices through various other faith traditions, unheard of books from the 60s, spiritual formation experts, a psychology book or two, and of course, the Bible itself. The reality of trying to engage with God communally in ways that go beyond a simple exegetical presentation of scripture is that there isn’t really one clear roadmap for that. It takes a sort of creativity, a sensitivity to the Spirit, and a deep knowing of your people that I think far too many pastors have gotten away from requiring for far too long.

Would we have the courage to put down the Bible study guides for a second. Would we have the boldness to step away from the repetitive discussion questions for a time. Would we be so brave as to seep ourselves into the spiritual, the mystical, the trauma-informed, and the psychologically proven in order to truly offer our people a safe and healing experience of the Divine.