18/50: The Holy Chaos of the Bible
This song reframes how we view our days. And maybe it could reframe how we look at everything, including the Bible.
““But before Christianity was a rich and powerful religion, before it was associated with buildings, budgets, crusades, colonialism, or televangelism, it began as a revolutionary nonviolent movement promoting a new kind of aliveness on the margins of society.” ”
Where I grew up, the Bible was the untouchable answer handbook: the direct, inerrant, inspired Word of God. So, when I read it, my brain went into a different mode. I was looking for deeper meaning and timeless truths, reading Scripture as a textbook for life.
By the time I entered seminary at 35, I no longer had a love affair with Scripture that I once had. What a 13-year-old girl found meaningful wasn't working for someone asking bigger questions about living in a world of injustice and the role of the church in a post-modern/post-colonial world. I saw that the Bible had been used to perpetuate so much pain and abuse in the world and I didn’t know what to do with it.
In my first class on the Old Testament, we were asked to simply encounter the first books of the Bible and come up with questions before we were taught anything. I came up with very few. I read the Bible and my brain went numb with familiarity. But as I learned about historical criticism, I learned how the text had been messed with over centuries and that power and politics were all over the formation of our Holy Scriptures. I found this disturbing until a different metaphor for the Bible began to emerge in my mind.
Growing up, I had seen the world of the Bible as a five star hotel — pristine and perfect. But it was actually much more like Guatemala City. Merchants sell wares in the market, haggling over prices. People argue loudly. Cars and bikes and pedestrians crowd together. Smog fills the air. Protests and oppressed people struggle for justice. People live in literal garbage dumps. I think Scripture is more like that than a sanitized hotel.
And here’s why this is hopeful: What if God's movement in the world happens in the chaos rather than some disconnected utopia available to only a select few? What if the sacred emerges from messiness, not perfection?
This vision of scripture completely energized my biblical studies and my passion for the text.
Preaching the Bible week after week is a difficult task because it seems almost everyone brings a foggy brain when it comes to Scripture, but it is also an awesome opportunity to open the doors to the mess and proclaim that God is there in the midst of the chaos. We are invited to enter the conversation, find grace and wholeness in the smog of our own stories, and give all that we are to seeing God's dream of shalom become reality in this world, just as it is.