As strange as this may sound for a minister writing a blog, I intend to say very little about the Bible on this site. You see, I’m still recovering from my last ministry position, and one of the main casualties was my ability to read the Bible.
Ministers will often find –and the very honest ones may even admit–
That being a minister changes your relationship with the Bible
Just as being an accountant changes your relationship with money
Or being a chef changes your relationship with food
Or being a critic changes your relationship with art.
When you spend your days
Studying the word,
Dissecting the word,
Teaching the word,
It becomes very difficult to read the word
And to hear the word
And to let the word read you.
~Sidebar: You may have noticed that I’m doing a very un-evangelical thing by choosing not to capitalize the word “word.” This is because, for me, the capitalized “Word” is a title reserved for Jesus that refers to his role as the source of all wisdom, the form of all virtue, and the creative energy behind the crafting of the cosmos, and while I value both the Word and the word, I never want to make the all-too-common mistake of conflating the two. Now where was I?~
I discovered ten months into my tenure at my last church
That I had forgotten how to read scripture.
I recall the exact day:
I was at a summer camp with our youth group, and I had set aside some time to read the books of 1 and 2 Kings. I’ve long been fascinated by Solomon, and I’ve heard some outstanding messages from the lives of the kings, but other than a mandatory speed-read in divinity school, I really hadn’t explored those parts of Israel’s history for myself. They were also largely absent from my upbringing —after all, the Siege of Samaria doesn’t lend itself too well to a Vacation Bible School lesson—, so this might as well have been my first reading of Kings. I sat outside a coffeeshop at the Ridgecrest Conference Center, and my green pen was a flurry as I studied and notated,
But as Solomon was building up the temple in chapter 6,
Something in me was falling apart,
And then came a moment of mental and spiritual collision
When my self-centered goals clearly clashed with my original mission:
I wasn’t reading these books for wisdom or enlightenment or as spiritual discipline;
I was reading them so I could write a series of lessons.
I wasn’t seeking their guidance for my life;
I was seeking to moralize them into pithy 20-minute talks for mass consumption.
I wasn’t seeking to worship;
I was just doing work,
So I closed the word,
And for a whole year after,
It remained just a tool for my job and little more.
But thank God that’s not the end of the story.
When I left my role as a youth minister, it took two months before I could open a Bible again and simply read it for myself without those old teaching habits taking over. I’ve felt great joy in reading the word and knowing that the insights I find there no longer have to be crafted into 20-minute lessons, 33-minute sermons, 140-character tweets, or 10-line Facebook devotionals for your lunch break.
The mechanized approach to the scriptures,
The feeling of cranking out wisdom on an assembly line,
Has at last dissipated,
And I rejoice that it’s gone.
May that feeling never return.
What I’ve found instead
When I open the word
Is the chance to dwell for a moment in the Heart of God,
Communing with Him through the words that the Spirit preserved,
And yet those words are alive and ever growing as well.
The Bible is paradoxically a word from God
And also humanity’s reaction to God,
A treasured recording of God’s relationship
With God’s people,
Guided by God’s Spirit,
A perfect treasure,
Not just for imparting of platitudes,
But for sitting in sanctuary with The Holy One.
I missed that.
And I hope I never fall back into those old habits.
So if I don’t speak too much about the Bible on this blog,
Know that it’s not because I value those words too little;
It’s because I value them too much to lose them again.
And, if you’re reading this as a minister who’s lost the ability to read the Bible for yourself, know that you’re not alone.
Reach out. Let’s talk.