How Will We Use the Bible?

CAC faculty member Brian McLaren highlights how reading the Bible through a lens of love has inspired many Christians to works of goodness and compassion in the world:

Biblical Christians have thrived when we’ve used the Bible with the goal of becoming good people who, because we follow Jesus, do good works in God’s good world. And we have languished and wandered when we have used the Bible as a weapon to threaten others, as a tool to intimidate others and prove them wrong…. Sadly, sometimes the very people who most love the Bible have been those who have used it for these other purposes, sometimes to the neglect of its essential purpose.

But again, think about what truly biblical Christians (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, liberal, conservative, charismatic, whatever) have done when they have understood the profitable purpose of Scripture. Instructed by Scripture, they have … built hospitals and schools to heal bodies and strengthen minds. They have given money to needy people around the globe…. They have crossed racial, ethnic, and class barriers, seeing all people as brothers and sisters. They have chosen to suffer rather than betray their faith or make others suffer…. They’ve done their work as teachers, farmers, bricklayers, nurses, scholars, mechanics, sellers, public servants, scientists, homemakers, cab drivers, and cooks with a special sense of purpose, love, and joy. Their “good works” included doing “good work” from day to day … as part of their holy, sacred vocation in God’s creation.

Why? Since they understood the real purpose of Scripture, they let Scripture equip them for good works in our needy world. Their words and deeds together have qualified them to be bearers of good news. Sure they have never been perfect, but they have often been wonderful.

McLaren invites us to read the Bible through a lens of love:

We also have a choice today: Will our readings betray the way of Christ in our day, or will they set our course toward God’s dreams? Will we let the story continue in and through us, along its intended trajectory, toward God’s undying, embracing dream called the kingdom of God?

This … approach does not lessen the agony one feels reading the conquest of Canaan with the eyes of one taught by Jesus to love all, including enemies. But it helps turn the Bible back into what it is, not a look-it-up encyclopedia of timeless moral truths, but the unfolding narrative of God at work in a violent, sinful world, calling people … into a new way of life…. This is the struggle of common people in the journey of faith, hope, and love. And it challenges us: To be truly biblical does not mean being preoccupied with some golden age in the ancient world and God’s word to people back then. It means learning from the past to let God’s story, God’s will, and God’s dream continue to come true in us and our children.

Read more about the Center for Action and Contemplation at cac.org