Favorite Books and Journey Into Humanity - Part 2
I am moving away from writing out my responses to Katrina, and resuming an earlier plan to write about why I listed some books as my favorite books. There are a certain number of books that have had an important place in shaping how I today think and face life. The Bible is the first and foremost of those books, and other books that I will mention have been important because they have helped me to see truths revealed in the Bible that I had not seen so clearly until someone pointed out certain themes. While there will be something akin to book reviews in these articles, these articles will not be so much book articles as a history of how I have come to understand some things. Hopefully there will be readers of this work that will be able to see a little of their own lives parallel to mine, and for others something to think about, and for others perhaps they will simply be able to say, "Wow this guy is really messed up and I am glad I am not like that man."
In the first article of this series, I told of how playing with an electrical fusebox as a child turned into a lesson about the importance of truth. My pursuit of "the truth" started out in those days and early on, the pursuit of truth meant for me that only what was seen could be trusted. As my family was not a religious family, religious concepts were not part of what was to be viewed as true. By the time, I was about seven or eight, I regarded religion, Jesus, the Bible and God, much as others would regard Santa Claus. But then a neighbor lady, Mrs. Taylor, offered to take me to Sunday School. My parents thought that was a good idea because religion teaches people to do good, and anything that teaches people to do good is a good idea.
Although, I initially felt betrayed at having to go to church, when I did not really believe anything about church, the Sunday School classes soon had an impact on my life. I especially liked the little Sunday School paper that had Bible stories. Within a few months, I found myself daydreaming about a whole new group of heroes including David, Moses, Gideon, and others. I began reading the Bible. I was especially impressed by the lives of faith that resisted the tendencies of the people in each generation. I began seeing that the Bible spoke of words from God that motivated men and women to live differently than those around them. In the next few years I would especially read the Old Testament. I did not read as much of the New Testament as the Old Testament. In the Sunday School I attended a lot was made of how the New Testament taught God's love and forgiveness and the Old Testament taught His holiness and wrath. I was impressed by the Old Testament men and women, and believed that by comparison the New Testament did not require near so much from people. It seemed a step backwards from the utter holiness of God found in the Old Testament. But I must also admit that this impression was something of a direct result of reading the Old Testament firsthand, while merely being told what the New Testament taught. By the time I was out of high school I had read the Old Testament at least four times, (although I read real fast and mostly skimmed some of the parts like some of those found in Leviticus.
While I don't recall coming to a philosophical conclusion that the Bible was God's holy inspired word, I can say that increasingly I found myself conquered by the Bible. What started out as a child's love for dramatic figures like David fighting Goliath, or like Moses facing Pharaoh and crossing the Wilderness became more and more someone who was confronted by the Holy God who sent the Prophets and called Israel out of Egypt.
But, my views of religion and of the Bible were often not pleasant. I remember how each week I would decide that maybe this week I would not sin. I would try to live by God's commands both in what I did and also without hypocrisy. That meant not only would I not steal, but also that I would not covet. I would not say bad words or even want to say bad words. I found myself increasingly thinking that God was really demanding. Every act of obedience seemed only to prove that my obedience was not sufficient for a holy God.
During my senior year in High School, in a World literature class, our teacher assigned from our textbook our reading of the Sermon on the Mount. Since I had pretty much not read the New Testament, I was very surprised as I read the Sermon on the Mount. I read the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5 through Matthew 7 and my thoughts were, wow Jesus speaks like the prophets. It was an important breakthrough because now I saw the same burning passion for holiness in Christ that had so impressed me in the Old Testament writings.
But there was still something missing, and I found myself more impressed by the Scriptures but also saw myself increasingly as a sinner who lacked God's holiness. My thoughts were not only depressed because I was a sinner but also angry because God seemed to demand so much of me, and I could not see any way that I could begin to do what His holiness required of me.
It was then that I read a book. It was not a book that I would even recommend now, but the book told me something I had never really given a lot of thought to. In one part of the book, it told how God the Father had sent His Son to die for our sins and that our salvation was possible because Christ had taken our sins upon Himself and had given God's perfect righteousness to us. That was a turning point. I had become increasingly angry with God about all of His demands for perfection. I had even gotten down on my knees once to complain about how I could never keep all His commands, and complained about how I had been created. I even declared my independence from God and had begun to determine to live apart from Him. But this changed everything. God had so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. He had so loved this sinner that He took my sin upon Himself on the cross, while providing His perfect righteousness to become my righteousness before God.
There was a time when I looked back at how I had become a reader of the Bible before I ever embraced the Christian faith, and thought it meant I had come to God through the Bible alone. But, now I look back at the same time in my life and see that though I learned many things through the Bible, that I had no real understanding of faith in Christ until Christians told me of what Christ had done in His death, burial and resurrection.
In recent years I have come to appreciate that the Bible is truly the Word of God but also that it is a book that is meant to be taught by a living church. St. Paul expressed it in a letter to Timothy when he wrote, "But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." I Timothy 3:15,16.
In those words Paul informs Timothy that he wishes to remain around Timothy and those around Timothy so as to first instruct them how they should behave in the Church. The Church is a non-negotiable place where Christian obedience to the Word of God must be worked out. The Church is the pillar of the truth that enables the truth to not fall to the ground or into utter chaos.
F.F. Bruce once commented on the Scriptures and their relationship to the life of the Church known as the living tradition. He writes these words:
The living tradition, the continuity of Christian existence and witness is indispensible. Without it, the interpretation of Scripture would lose its context. Suppose the church had been wiped out in the last imperial persecution about the beginning of the fourth century and all her Scriptures had been lost, to be rediscovered in our days like the Dead Sea Scrolls, what would their effect be? Would their witness prove even so to be God's power of salvation, as we know it in our experience, or would the Scriptures, like the scrolls, be little more than an archaelogical curiosity and a subject for historical debate? It is a question worth pondering. (F.F. Bruce, A Mind for What Matters, Eerdman's Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1990, p.277.)
Bruce's question fortunately is a theoretical question because God has declared that the church would prevail against the Gates of hell and has declared that His Word is settled in the heavens. The Scriptures and the Church continually live forever together. Wherever the Bible becomes a churchless book it becomes an individual's book of quotations to be used to further a man's own opinions. Wherever a church forsakes the authority of Holy Scripture that church becomes a parody of faith pursuing every latest folly fancifully dreamed to be progress. But where the Church lives in obedience to the Scriptures as taught to her by the Holy Apostles under Christ's authority the Church is the pillar and ground of truth that acts like Phillip with the Ethiopian eunuch who needed someone to explain what he was reading.
So, it was in my own experience. I was invited and sent to Sunday School, where I was introduced to Bible stories. The Bible taught me about a holy God, and yet I was unable to put everything the Bible taught me in a way that enabled me to see God as my Redeemer or Christ as my Savior. But then Christians came into my life to explain the way more carefully. I became part of a Christian group in my early days in college and by my sophomore year in college was baptized into the church, which is appropriate for baptism into Christ is also without hesitation baptism into the Church, which is His body.
In the first article of this series, I told of how playing with an electrical fusebox as a child turned into a lesson about the importance of truth. My pursuit of "the truth" started out in those days and early on, the pursuit of truth meant for me that only what was seen could be trusted. As my family was not a religious family, religious concepts were not part of what was to be viewed as true. By the time, I was about seven or eight, I regarded religion, Jesus, the Bible and God, much as others would regard Santa Claus. But then a neighbor lady, Mrs. Taylor, offered to take me to Sunday School. My parents thought that was a good idea because religion teaches people to do good, and anything that teaches people to do good is a good idea.
Although, I initially felt betrayed at having to go to church, when I did not really believe anything about church, the Sunday School classes soon had an impact on my life. I especially liked the little Sunday School paper that had Bible stories. Within a few months, I found myself daydreaming about a whole new group of heroes including David, Moses, Gideon, and others. I began reading the Bible. I was especially impressed by the lives of faith that resisted the tendencies of the people in each generation. I began seeing that the Bible spoke of words from God that motivated men and women to live differently than those around them. In the next few years I would especially read the Old Testament. I did not read as much of the New Testament as the Old Testament. In the Sunday School I attended a lot was made of how the New Testament taught God's love and forgiveness and the Old Testament taught His holiness and wrath. I was impressed by the Old Testament men and women, and believed that by comparison the New Testament did not require near so much from people. It seemed a step backwards from the utter holiness of God found in the Old Testament. But I must also admit that this impression was something of a direct result of reading the Old Testament firsthand, while merely being told what the New Testament taught. By the time I was out of high school I had read the Old Testament at least four times, (although I read real fast and mostly skimmed some of the parts like some of those found in Leviticus.
While I don't recall coming to a philosophical conclusion that the Bible was God's holy inspired word, I can say that increasingly I found myself conquered by the Bible. What started out as a child's love for dramatic figures like David fighting Goliath, or like Moses facing Pharaoh and crossing the Wilderness became more and more someone who was confronted by the Holy God who sent the Prophets and called Israel out of Egypt.
But, my views of religion and of the Bible were often not pleasant. I remember how each week I would decide that maybe this week I would not sin. I would try to live by God's commands both in what I did and also without hypocrisy. That meant not only would I not steal, but also that I would not covet. I would not say bad words or even want to say bad words. I found myself increasingly thinking that God was really demanding. Every act of obedience seemed only to prove that my obedience was not sufficient for a holy God.
During my senior year in High School, in a World literature class, our teacher assigned from our textbook our reading of the Sermon on the Mount. Since I had pretty much not read the New Testament, I was very surprised as I read the Sermon on the Mount. I read the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5 through Matthew 7 and my thoughts were, wow Jesus speaks like the prophets. It was an important breakthrough because now I saw the same burning passion for holiness in Christ that had so impressed me in the Old Testament writings.
But there was still something missing, and I found myself more impressed by the Scriptures but also saw myself increasingly as a sinner who lacked God's holiness. My thoughts were not only depressed because I was a sinner but also angry because God seemed to demand so much of me, and I could not see any way that I could begin to do what His holiness required of me.
It was then that I read a book. It was not a book that I would even recommend now, but the book told me something I had never really given a lot of thought to. In one part of the book, it told how God the Father had sent His Son to die for our sins and that our salvation was possible because Christ had taken our sins upon Himself and had given God's perfect righteousness to us. That was a turning point. I had become increasingly angry with God about all of His demands for perfection. I had even gotten down on my knees once to complain about how I could never keep all His commands, and complained about how I had been created. I even declared my independence from God and had begun to determine to live apart from Him. But this changed everything. God had so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. He had so loved this sinner that He took my sin upon Himself on the cross, while providing His perfect righteousness to become my righteousness before God.
There was a time when I looked back at how I had become a reader of the Bible before I ever embraced the Christian faith, and thought it meant I had come to God through the Bible alone. But, now I look back at the same time in my life and see that though I learned many things through the Bible, that I had no real understanding of faith in Christ until Christians told me of what Christ had done in His death, burial and resurrection.
In recent years I have come to appreciate that the Bible is truly the Word of God but also that it is a book that is meant to be taught by a living church. St. Paul expressed it in a letter to Timothy when he wrote, "But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." I Timothy 3:15,16.
In those words Paul informs Timothy that he wishes to remain around Timothy and those around Timothy so as to first instruct them how they should behave in the Church. The Church is a non-negotiable place where Christian obedience to the Word of God must be worked out. The Church is the pillar of the truth that enables the truth to not fall to the ground or into utter chaos.
F.F. Bruce once commented on the Scriptures and their relationship to the life of the Church known as the living tradition. He writes these words:
The living tradition, the continuity of Christian existence and witness is indispensible. Without it, the interpretation of Scripture would lose its context. Suppose the church had been wiped out in the last imperial persecution about the beginning of the fourth century and all her Scriptures had been lost, to be rediscovered in our days like the Dead Sea Scrolls, what would their effect be? Would their witness prove even so to be God's power of salvation, as we know it in our experience, or would the Scriptures, like the scrolls, be little more than an archaelogical curiosity and a subject for historical debate? It is a question worth pondering. (F.F. Bruce, A Mind for What Matters, Eerdman's Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1990, p.277.)
Bruce's question fortunately is a theoretical question because God has declared that the church would prevail against the Gates of hell and has declared that His Word is settled in the heavens. The Scriptures and the Church continually live forever together. Wherever the Bible becomes a churchless book it becomes an individual's book of quotations to be used to further a man's own opinions. Wherever a church forsakes the authority of Holy Scripture that church becomes a parody of faith pursuing every latest folly fancifully dreamed to be progress. But where the Church lives in obedience to the Scriptures as taught to her by the Holy Apostles under Christ's authority the Church is the pillar and ground of truth that acts like Phillip with the Ethiopian eunuch who needed someone to explain what he was reading.
So, it was in my own experience. I was invited and sent to Sunday School, where I was introduced to Bible stories. The Bible taught me about a holy God, and yet I was unable to put everything the Bible taught me in a way that enabled me to see God as my Redeemer or Christ as my Savior. But then Christians came into my life to explain the way more carefully. I became part of a Christian group in my early days in college and by my sophomore year in college was baptized into the church, which is appropriate for baptism into Christ is also without hesitation baptism into the Church, which is His body.
posted by Dan McDonald | 3:12 PM
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