How Do You Look at God's Word? part 5

After having progressed through these 5 shortcuts at least to some extent at one time or another, I have come to view the Bible as a story. A story that is true, not some made up legend or myth. It is a large over-arcing story with many smaller stories, which though separate from each other in time and writership still follow a central theme - God and His relationship with those made in His image.

A characteristic of a good story is that it draws its readers into the story and they begin to relate to the characters and the plot. It matters what happens the people in the story and the path of the plot keeps the reader intrigued. It is this relationship with the story and its characters, of which I have become one, that I started using a relational approach to read and study the Bible.

Scot Mcknight describes an incident that happened to him early on in his profession that helps explain this concept. Scot says he asked a wise and gentle professor: "What do you teach?" His reply stunned me: "I teach students. What do you teach?" Scot says about 99% of professors when asked that question will give the subject they teach. Good teachers are teaching students a particular subject matter. They are not teaching a subject to students.

There are a couple of points that result from this viewpoint that I want to mention. The first is that the relational approach distinguishes God from the Bible. I don't have a relationship with the paper and ink that make up the Bible, but I have one with God the author. This is an important distinction. It is through these words written in ink on paper that we learn of the love of God and how to love Him in return, but this book is not God. We have many different translations of which most are very good with a few not so good. I may have doubts, or questions about these different versions and there are ones I prefer for study and some just for reading. But my God is unchanging, He is God. He is not subject to the whims of translators. A further example that this distinction is important is the story of the Red Sea crossing during the exodus from Egypt. A person can study for a lifetime trying to figure out if the Red Sea is really the Reed Sea and consequently was not all that deep, or whether a earthquake in the Mediterranean made the crossing possible and never meet God. The story is about God's leading not the Red Sea.

The second is: the Bible is God's written communication with us. It is similar to a letter I would write to someone I love. The letter is not me, it does not love the person to whom it is addressed but contains words of love from the sender.

Thirdly the relational approach causes me to listen to what God is communicating and to engage in what God is doing.

Scot Mcknight summarizes all this by saying," A relational approach believes our relationship to the Bible is transformed into a relationship with the God who speaks to us in and through the Bible."