Newspaper Columns by The Rev. Canon Bill Lewellis
Disarm Your Bible: It's Not A Weapon
By Bill Lewellis
March, 1999, The Express-Times, Easton
There are people who have felt the Bible used against them as a weapon. When they hear "Bible," they expect to get hurt. There are people who suggest, when others disagree with them about an important issue of life, that the others don't take the Bible seriously.
We trivialize and demean the Bible, I think, when we develop an issue-oriented approach, when we read the Bible as a rulebook or a manual on morality rather than as a love letter from God written by men and women about the very diverse ways that many before us have responded to God's love.
Cloth tears easily at a frayed edge. Likewise, when faith-related questions are not dealt with from the center, faith communities easily tear apart.
At the edges are found continually changing important issues through which we seek a path. Is it a sin to possess a nuclear weapon? What about capital punishment? What about capitalism and Christianity? What about abortion? What about same-sex unions? At the center is prayer, awe, wonder, respect, and mystery.
There will always be parts of God's sacred revelation that many of us -- all taking the scriptures seriously -- will understand differently.
I take the scriptures seriously, trying to integrate my life with what I understand from my reflection on God's word. It has taken me perhaps 40 years to recognize that when I read the scriptures I need to listen for God's word to my inner self, not God's word to another's inner self. I think "40 years" is not unusual. A two-week freedom march from Egypt to the Promised Land also took 40 years. The journey toward liberation is often long, and sometimes frightening.
If I may continue to speak metaphorically, the devil wants us to attend to the passages in the Bible that have little to do with us. Those of us who are liars should attend to the passages about thieves. Thieves should attend to passages about liars. Heterosexuals should focus on what they might hear about homosexuality.
Diabolical advice on reading the Bible. God forbid that God's word touch our inner being.
It helps me, when reading God's word, to think of Nicodemus who thought he had things pretty much together. He came to Jesus looking for an answer. Jesus proposed a question. Nicodemus came to hear a new thought. Jesus suggested a new way of thinking. Nicodemus walked.
God's word comes with image ("The kingdom of God is like...") and commission ("Go and make disciples...") and mystery ("Unless you are born from above...") and question ("Who do you say that I am?"). It is more about response ("Here am I, send me.") than about hard and quick answers.
Reading the Bible can be a walk with Nicodemus or a walk with Jesus.
It is crucial to seek our path through important issues of life from the center. There we might come to understand how broad and long and high and deep is God's love. There, in God's safe embrace, we might open our minds and hearts to the fullness of God.
May we discern what is central and what is peripheral to being disciples of Christ. At the center is prayer, worship, wonder, repentance and transformation -- hearing God's word, doing God's mission, caring for one another, and building community. May we deal with peripheral issues from the center. May we rest at the center and speak to one another in love.
Bill Lewellis, Communication Minister/Editor, Diocese of Bethlehem
Be attentive. Be intelligent. Be reasonable. Be responsible. Be loving. Develop and, if necessary, change. --Bernard Lonergan
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