Seven things I didn’t know about the Bible until I started Seminary

I’ve been a Christian my whole life, gone to Church regularly yet I didn’t realize how little I actually knew about the Bible until I started seminary. At Fuller Seminary during my first quarter there (I still have much to learn and may have to put my foot in my mouth a year from now about all this) I learned a great deal about what I didn’t know and wanted to pass it on;

1.     The Bible readings on Sunday mornings just scratches the surface

 

       The Bible is more complicated than what can be taught Sunday mornings at Church. Church taught me very little about the Bible. That’s not to say it didn’t teach me anything. It did. The trouble is one day a week for twenty minutes isn’t much time to get into any depth. Also often in childhood classrooms the ratings of PG and G interferes with the actual lesson. They didn’t actually have this rating system during the New Testament era. Also church doesn’t want to scare people away by confusing them, which I often felt in seminary. Unlike seminary church is a milder atmosphere not for ultra-serious study but low study as I like to call it. Paul spoke of this in one of his epistles that he was giving a congregation milk like for babes to nourish them in their innocence. I need vegetables now hence the going to Seminary. Bible Studies are also good places to get the vegetables. I like to say if you're not scratching your head or angry ever while studying the Bible something is wrong. Faith is challenging that’s what makes it strong in the end.

2.      The Bible Deals with Real stuff

 

      The Bible is full of real people with real concerns, economic, political, what to eat how to live. I knew this going in but I couldn’t show it before I started. Notice how Jesus is concerned with healing people and feeding them. He understands we have needs that are basic and wants to fulfill those. The prophecy of his coming made that clear—that he would fulfill these basic needs. It’s not just the basic needs that are in the Bible, it’s very political Jesus dies on a Roman cross as a political prisoner, as King of the Jews. Back then one can’t get more political than talking about a King. And there’s economics too. In Acts is a wonderful portion about a man who is upset that Christianity is taking off because it’s hurting his business of making the statues of Idols. That’s the politics and economics of religion for you.

3.     The Bible's inconsistencies and inaccuracy are not what you think...don't miss the point.

 

      Many people complain about how the Bible is full of inconsistencies and inaccuracies, while I could see what they were talking about I knew there had to be some explanation. My faith was too strong, my experiences of God too vivid for me to just cast off my faith. Did you know that accuracy wasn’t treated the same way during the writing of the New Testament as it is now? The meaning of the texts were more important than the details. Allegory, metaphor, all the literary devises we use today were used then to communicate a truth beyond the words. Passages should be taken in context to really understand what is being communicated not just through the words but the structure of how the passages were laid out. For the writers that was the greater truth. They knew then that perspective clouds everything, nothing is without bias so they showed the story of Jesus in a way that portrayed yes their bias, but in a way that showed the reader what Jesus was all about. Luke, at the beginning of the book is very clear on this. He did his research gathering “witness” accounts and put everything together in a form he felt was best to provide an “orderly account”. And no this doesn’t make the Bible fiction, the raw material, the testimony no one could change and I got to say once you get to the core of what things mean it’s impossible to say someone invented all this. They really weren’t capable of it: the scope, the fact the writers demeaned themselves in the process it’s counterintuitive to say they made it all up.

4.      The Bible makes it clear: all Christians are Jews

     

      Judaism is as important if not more important to Christianity as Christ is. After all Christ himself was a Jew, he was never a Christian. That word wasn’t invented until after his death. Being Jewish all Christians have become: we’ve accepted the God of the Jews and the prophecies of what was to come, which were fulfilled in the New Testament. Where did these prophecies come from? You guessed it—the Old Testament. It’s so important to learn about that history it is our history too—as Christians and in reading it, it will shed light on what actually happened in the New Testament. Like did you know the Pharisees aren’t bad guys, they are just scared traditions that people bleed for are being weathered away and they wonder what will become of them and the people. I’ve been watching the second season of Downton Abby and the Pharisees remind me of the Butler Carson, who is always so insistent on tradition. He’s a lovable character for all he wants is to maintain tradition or else what will become of civilized life. That’s how the Pharisees are. Knowing things like that and understanding that much of what Jesus says is actually already taught in the Old Testament, just rephrased by Jesus should make us see how the Old Testament can’t be chucked away for not only does it contain God’s promises (the prophecies) but also lessons (aka Laws, of what I like to call cause and effect) serving as the foundation for Christianity. 

5.      The Bible has been interpreted so many different ways there's no new way.

     

      The Bible can be interpreted in many different ways, most likely if you have a specific way of looking at it, someone else thought of it before you. Early Church History, The Era of the New Testament through 500 has its fair share of different ideas many ranging into the Science Fiction, yet even these shouldn’t be judged for they, as we are in what we do, were reacting to their environment of intense persecution, immortality, pear pressure (also known as political corruption). Be merciful and kind and please don’t hate your body to its detriment—we’ve seen too much of that over the centuries.

6.      In the Bible Judgment rarely =Hell 

 

       All that judgment in the Bible, while it shouldn’t be ignored, isn’t always referring to that big bad people think it is. For all the talk today about Heaven and Hell, there’s very little talk about it in the actual Bible. Judgment is found on Earth, that’s mostly the kind Jesus speaks of. The Judgment came to the Jews and those who didn’t accept Jesus and his ways. It is a very important ‘and’ (his ways) because Jesus was teaching a way of peace when many wanted to overthrow Rome violently, which in the end cost them everything. That was the judgment coming, would they be able to accept this peace and flee from the violence? In the end the answer was no, which cost the Jews their temple in Jerusalem. Even prominent Rabbinic (Jewish) teachers see how foolish violence was for it tore everything apart. This is simplifying things a lot perhaps too much but I think it’s relevant for our lives. Can we accept what is going on with peace (which isn’t necessarily a quite peace just not a violent one) or are we gnashing our teeth? And yes that, gnashing teeth, is how Hell is described but one doesn’t have to die to gnash their teeth. One can do it easily in life. I have. It is hard going against the grain, gnashing aka moaning and cursing is perfectly natural, yet though Paul and the other Apostles did go against the grain they weren’t gnashing their teeth, they had God on their side (or rather they were on his), the Spirit with them, and Christ as their savior. They fought against the system, for a system that had been set up long ago (in creation), and they used the system to do it.—Acts makes this apparent, “I’m a Roman Citizen” Paul says, to avoid unjust imprisonment.

7.      The Bible makes it clear it’s World Without End!

       I’ve been told many times the world is going to end, the rapture will come, the apocalypse is the end of the world and I knew this was wrong, I could feel it in my gut, but I had no evidence or knowledge of how to combat it. Now I do. Jesus spoke of bringing about the Kingdom of God, and where was he going to do it—that’s right on earth. The Kingdom has no end and it will be on earth. That's why it's so important for us to look after the planet. In class we actually spent quite a long time on Mark 13, which many people have thought referred the end of the world. I knew better now that I have actually looked over it. [The one thing a new seminary student should keep in mind when they’re in seminary is they know nothing, every assumption must be tested—some will pass and some will not. Anyway…] Mark 13 talks about the destruction of the temple, not the end of the world using quotes from Daniel so that language is colorful and seems supernatural but it’s just from a different generation like how you talk to your grandparents about megabits and pixels. So if anyone says the world is coming to an end you can be sure to tell them no it’s not, the Kingdom of God is here among us and the time of Jesus and even now is just the “Birth pains”, ask them to explain why that’s in the Bible if it’s not.

That’s how I’ll end it, not with the end but with hopefully a new beginning for some people. Don’t worry about the birth pains, for the joy to come in the Kingdom is like the joy a newborn child brings.