How Do You Look at God's Word? part 4

3.The Bible as a Mirror or Inkblot. Are you familiar with the inkblot test designed by Hermann Rorschach? The way I understand the test is you look at a inkblot and then describe what you see. The inkblot has no meaning at all, its purpose is to allow the therapist a glimpse into your personality, emotions, and thought processes. People who look at the Bible this way are mirroring what they already believe onto the Bible. The Bible is only a mirror for what they already believe and they will miss or disregard anything that doesn't fit into their perceived notions. For example, anytime someone writes a new book that claims to tell us what Jesus is really like, rest assured all it will do is tell us what the author is like.

4. The Bible as a puzzle. You open a box of puzzle pieces and dump them onto a table and spend the next few hours, or days, or weeks, or even years trying to reconstruct the picture on the front of the box. Imagine viewing the Bible as a puzzle with pieces of God's plan or even His mind scattered throughout its pages. Your job is to pick the right piece to start with and then to search through the Bible to reconstruct the picture of who God is and His plan. Once you have done this, you are finished you don't have to read or study it any more and can confidently tell everyone what it is all about. Do you see the problem here? Which is the right piece what does the picture look on the front of the box look like? The picture is whatever you imagine. Following this shortcut you believe you can master the Bible, but God gave us His word so that it could master us.

5.The Bible through a Maestro. A maestro is the master of any art. I grew up in a tradition where everything was seen through the lens of the maestro apostle Paul. Oh sure, Jesus was Lord but I learned about Jesus from Paul not the gospels (a small exaggeration but not much). 80 to 90% of our studying consisted of the book of Acts and Paul's letters. When we met new people, our opening line was, "Are you a member of the church? Not are you a Christian." But to say I am only going to ask, "What would Jesus do?" also misses the point. What about all the other stories in the Bible. It takes the complete story of God.

This is where we are going next time.