Time for Redirection

In my blog, I will focus on the Bible . . . meaning that I will take it as my text. This blog will not be a commentary per se

I need to read my former posts a little more often . . .

As you can see after even a cursory reading of my blog, it has ultimately turned into what I said it wouldn't be--a commentary. To some extent, I think this may have been a good thing (for starters, the entries on Genesis 1-4 serve to prove the point I made a couple of months ago that the story of the Bible is the story of God's failed effort to create a world of harmony), but I also think this focus, if continued, would be counterproductive to the purposes of "Sabbath Breakers."

As I said in my very first post, the Bible will be this blog's primary text . . . but I don't think that tackling the entire Bible in order from page 1 through page-the-last is the most helpful (or even the most interesting) way to approach that text.

I wish that more people had a profound, deep sense of love and respect for the Bible, as I wish that more people had a profound, deep sense of love and respect for God, not because I want everyone to agree with me about the nature or existence of God but because the more I see of 21st century Protestantism, the more I observe a church that refuses to take the God it claims to worship seriously. Christianity (or at least its Protestant incarnation) rabidly attacks the notion that one must approach one's Creator with an appropriate sense of fear as "legalism," but in doing so, it fails to comprehend that the very act of facing one's Creator is, in and of itself, an awe-inspiring, deeply penetrating, and (yes) mystical experience that should never, ever be cheapened. Christ's crucifixion was an act of blood, sweat, and terrible cosmic agony . . . something that reading those beautiful words in John 13-21 would bring to life inside of us, if only we would allow those words to speak for themselves.

The problem with Protestantism (indeed the problem with Christianity ever since its inception) is that so many of its adherents foolishly assume that a little knowledge, being better than none at all, is enough to tide over any hungry soul. The soul, however, has a far greater thirst for inspiration, hope, and (dare I say it) God than the materialistic 21st century mind can permit itself to conceive--and the soul's hunger, in my experience, cannot be met by anything less than the God who created it. That God, it is obvious from reading even one of the thousands of verses contained in the Bible's pages, begs for an audience inside our souls. It is we, not God, who are responsible for the distance and barriers between us.

I wish that Protestants would take even one moment to see for themselves the beauty, the majesty, and the awesome mercy and graciousness of the God they preach. Perhaps it is true that the ecclesiastical system their ancestors rebelled against was callous and manipulative, but much has changed in the past 500 years. Only in painful memory do inquisitions and the dreaded act of burning someone at the stake for heresy exist, and even a recent Pope was willing to stand up and publicly declare that the descendants of those who originally called themselves Protestants are his brothers in Christ. While Catholicism (and even Orthodox Christianity) at times present a God who is too mysterious for mortal hearts, Protestantism often presents a God who is (contrary to the Bible) as comprehensible and ordinary as we are.

If we allow ourselves to adopt the prevailing winds of popular doctrine, we will lose sight of the beauty and majesty of the God whose breath infuses every word of that Bible.



In my next several posts, I'm going to address a body of scripture that is all too often dismissed in popular Christian theology: the Law. In particular, I will cover all of those rules and regulations in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy that were supposedly so cumbersome for the ancient culture that adopted them. As we will see, however, the crux of those "cumbersome commandments" is love, the same love that drove Christ to allow himself to be whipped, beaten, and crucified on our behalf, and I hope that acquainting yourself with the proverbial "heart" of the Bible will enable you to glimpse, for a moment, the character and majesty of your God.