Ben Sasse, Senator from the state of Nebraska emphatically stated this week at the Commencement week for Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton MA that ‘we are generally a people of the Book’. He remarked that indeed, the graduates of the Seminary were trained to take the text seriously. As I listen to him, I am reminded of Dr. Albert Mohler’s diagnosis of the postmodern worldview, as one of the symptoms he mentions is the demise of the text.
The demise of the text is when a people cease to accept and acknowledge that the text in and of itself has meaning apart from the person reading it. It is when people think that the text obtains meaning from the one reading it. In such a case, therefore, rather than listening to what the text says, the reader uses it as one uses a puppet, as a person uses a tool to cut across his own meaning, with no regard to what the writer meant to begin with.
This, Dr. Mohler says, undergirds the postmodern movement that believes in the deconstruction of truth narratives and the death of the metanarratives.
We might be tempted to think this kind of approach to life lies in the academic circles and far from evangelicalism. But this is far from the truth. In Uganda where I currently live, with the advent of many fellowships that are postmodern in their approach, the gospel cannot be preached without understanding this new tide. I will give an example.
Our routine Monday fellowship here in Kampala is discussing the book of Job. For those who have ever read this book, it is a book about suffering and the sovereignty of God. It is an elephant in the stuffed room of materialism.
In one of the discussions we had, the question of whether it is God’s will for Christians to suffer came up. By far and large, this question had already been answered before, and the fellowship was in full agreement. A brother, however, who had just joined the fellowship vehemently protested the whole idea that it may even remotely be God’s will for us to suffer. And the truth is, he is not alone. As he desired to explain his position and why he believes so, he quoted 1 Peter 2:24 ‘by His stripes you were healed’ (italics mine).
In his explanation, this ‘healing’ (which he interpreted as physical and immunity from any form of suffering) was in the past and only remained to be ‘named and claimed’ by those who have enough faith.
Now, of course, our desire was to help him see the context of the passage, how Peter is speaking about the atonement of Christ’s blood, and how His suffering brought us healing (reconciliation) to God, and how the context says so. We tried to show him how the verses before this actually speak of why suffering is our lot as Christians (1 Peter 2:20-23), and how Christ’s patient suffering is an example for us to rejoice in our suffering, knowing that to this end we were appointed (Philippians 1:29).
But, instead of sticking to the text, he (not surprisingly) retorted ‘okay, let’s go to Luke 10:19’. ‘But’ we insisted, ‘since you raised 1 Peter 2:24, should we not first agree that it doesn’t agree with what you claimed it says? To which he replied ‘we cannot build doctrine on one verse. Let us go to the other one also’.
This, indeed is true. We cannot build a doctrine on one verse. There has to be agreement from the rest of the scriptures. But the habit of hopping from one verse to another without careful exegesis is a recipe for disaster. Those who quote scriptures half way are often afraid of what they will find should they did deeper. And unknown to many, when we don’t care about what the text actually says, we end up forcing it to say what we want it to say. We in effect rape the text.
Sound doctrine is not established by jumping from one verse of scripture to another. Doctrine is established by studying passage A in context, learning what it teaches, and then studying passage B in context, and learning what it teaches, and then seeing that what passage A seen in its own context teaches is what passage B seen in its own context also teaches.
Most of those who claim deep revelation cannot afford to spend an extra second in one passage, but are like running rain water, restless always, and thus live without soaking in the sense of scripture which ought to transform their beliefs and theology and cause them to lay down their ‘American/Ugandan’ dream in pursuit of the grand goal of the gospel!
As believers, we must be willing to get down to the text, listen to it, as Dr. Mohler says. We must let the text speak to us rather than us speaking to it. We must be willing to do exegesis of the text rather than eisegesis. We must be willing to patiently follow the conversation from wherever it is coming to wherever it goes. We must be followers of the text, not leaders of it. That is when we will learn and grow.
We must ask, what is the Author saying? What was his audience? Can I step into their shoes for a moment, and understand their historical, cultural context? What questions did they grapple with? What gulf exists between the original audience and me? What is eternal and what is historical? What is the flow of the conversation?
To befriend the text, to muse about it, to recite it and meditate on it must be our joy. We must be students of the text. We must listen to the text. As Senator Ben says, we must be the people who take the text seriously, who treasure it. For after all, we must learn never to think beyond that which is written (1 Corinthians 4:6), because scripture taken rightly is sufficient for our instruction and doctrine (2 Tim 3:14-17).