The Bible is More Than a Book of Facts

 

The last Sunday in July, many churches will read the story of Jacob wrestling with a mysterious figure at the steam, the Jabbok. Some collect it as part of the story and stop there. That is rarely a good way to go when reading the Bible. After all, the Bible is a collection of material told, shaped, and reshaped over the centuries. Sometimes, I fear that  we don't read it as much as we look for familiar passages to serve as bumper stickers to attach to an issue in life. Reading the Bible for all it's worth is not a "scientific" examination of facts; it is an art form of interpreting language. Far too often, we use the Bible as a hammer, instead of seeing it as a doorway in the another world. Sometimes we come close to making the Bible a sacred object, instead of seeing it as a pointer toward the God whom we worship and that God's constant, unrelenting struggle to bring a fractious humanity on the road to salvation, happiness, peace and justice.

 

The stories, poems, and proverbs  may shine a new light on us, our virtues and vices. It may help us to discover ourselves, or our condition may be found in its pages. Read yourself into the story as an observer; pay attention to your senses: the sights and sounds, the fragrance, the the feel, the food. In the Jacob narrative, one could say that Jacob is wrestling with two alternative futures. One would be the way life will continue to be if he relies on deception as his primary way to manipulate people. The second would be the new emerging self, a self seen by God, that could make Jacob a new person, with a new name, Israel, the patriarch of a people. There at the shores of a river, Jacob is being born again.

As one reads, take the place of different characters and note your reaction, your thoughts, through them. This is not the only way to read the story, of course, but it does illustrate that we can bring different angles of vision to more fully appreciate the depths of these ancient classic accounts. Respect the genres.This is not a book of facts like the old World Almanac, or an account that emphasizes accuracy.The translations make all of the Bible sound the same, but they were not written in Hebrew and Greek that way. To mirror the richness of human experience, we get a variety of styles and approaches.

 

The Biblical imagination has us look through it as a pair of glasses. It then gives us a new way to approach culture. Instead of fearing, say, the Harry Potter books and movies, we can smile at how it may complement the biblical or religious thoughts or feelings in a new way. We can look at the scar on Harry's forehead and think, "oh, that is similar to the mark of the cross we make on someone's forehead in baptism", and consider it as a mark of love. That opening of the mind to images rebounds back to Bible reading. Jacob's new name Israel has the sense of wrestling/contending with God, and maybe we think of the movie, The Wrestler's, search. At times, reading Scripture can be a wrestling match between our interpretations being challenged or confirmed. I am consistently enlightened that the same scripture passages speak in remarkably different way depending on the circumstances in which I read them, whether it is my own state of mind, or differing situations. The Bible creates a world of its own. that world serves to question and even judge our assumptions and desires. When we read the Bible, pray with the Bible, we become part of a dialog, a conversation, yes. a struggle, that has persisted through millennia.

 

We have a treasure between the covers of a book. Sometimes ti releases its riches easily, but sometimes it takes care and effort, perhaps a lifetime to have some emerge from its pages.