2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
All scripture is God-breathed, this is the root of the Greek which is written here. So often we have taken this phrase to mean something concrete, something which is cast in stone. Something that says every word found here is right and we have avoided looking at inconsistencies which occur or that some things have changed. Even we change. So what does it truly mean that scripture is God-breathed?
We can't answer this question without looking at the different places where God breathes. In the Greek and Hebrew breathing is not only life-giving, it is also the way the Holy Spirit moves. God breathed into Adam and gave life to the first human. If breathing we have life isn't this what scripture should mean, that it is life giving.
In many ways it was just that. The scriptures we have came from an ancient people struggling with ways that were radically different from the surrounding culture. It was radical to follow the ten commandments because they asked people to be fair, to treat each other with respect. They were a ground breaking change for an ancient people and we mostly don't understand where these changes fit in. Rob Bell in his book What is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything explores all of these ways in which the Bible was groundbreaking. It had life and has life when we start pulling away the layers of concrete we have set this word into.
If scripture was so set as right and wrong we would not be able to come to it time and again and find new meaning. There are times when something I never noticed before stands out and I wonder how I missed it after all these years of reading. There are places are hearts can sing, mourn, wish bad things on our enemies. Places where we cry or where the beauty and mystery of God cannot be contained. We follow, just as the disciples did with Jesus and watch in awe as we are healed, challenged, and changed along the way to the cross. We find what it is to live the Christian way without ever really meeting Jesus in Paul's letters, which describe spiritual gifts and then wax eloquent about the most important being love.
We cannot avoid the way certain passages move us or work in us anew and this is exactly the point. Breath, wind, Spirit in the Bible come from the same roots. For the words here to be God animated means they have life, can give life, can open us up to the ways in which we can be and are radically changed every time we read it. Doesn't that mean we should open our hearts to it? Listen with other than our ears and a hardened heart? There is so much the English doesn't convey to us when you start poking around in the Greek and Hebrew it changes the hearing. This is what listening to different interpretations helps us to hear. This word anew and alive, working in the Spirit's breeze and blowing through us in new ways. That is something to listen and live by.
All scripture is God-breathed, this is the root of the Greek which is written here. So often we have taken this phrase to mean something concrete, something which is cast in stone. Something that says every word found here is right and we have avoided looking at inconsistencies which occur or that some things have changed. Even we change. So what does it truly mean that scripture is God-breathed?
We can't answer this question without looking at the different places where God breathes. In the Greek and Hebrew breathing is not only life-giving, it is also the way the Holy Spirit moves. God breathed into Adam and gave life to the first human. If breathing we have life isn't this what scripture should mean, that it is life giving.
In many ways it was just that. The scriptures we have came from an ancient people struggling with ways that were radically different from the surrounding culture. It was radical to follow the ten commandments because they asked people to be fair, to treat each other with respect. They were a ground breaking change for an ancient people and we mostly don't understand where these changes fit in. Rob Bell in his book What is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything explores all of these ways in which the Bible was groundbreaking. It had life and has life when we start pulling away the layers of concrete we have set this word into.
If scripture was so set as right and wrong we would not be able to come to it time and again and find new meaning. There are times when something I never noticed before stands out and I wonder how I missed it after all these years of reading. There are places are hearts can sing, mourn, wish bad things on our enemies. Places where we cry or where the beauty and mystery of God cannot be contained. We follow, just as the disciples did with Jesus and watch in awe as we are healed, challenged, and changed along the way to the cross. We find what it is to live the Christian way without ever really meeting Jesus in Paul's letters, which describe spiritual gifts and then wax eloquent about the most important being love.
We cannot avoid the way certain passages move us or work in us anew and this is exactly the point. Breath, wind, Spirit in the Bible come from the same roots. For the words here to be God animated means they have life, can give life, can open us up to the ways in which we can be and are radically changed every time we read it. Doesn't that mean we should open our hearts to it? Listen with other than our ears and a hardened heart? There is so much the English doesn't convey to us when you start poking around in the Greek and Hebrew it changes the hearing. This is what listening to different interpretations helps us to hear. This word anew and alive, working in the Spirit's breeze and blowing through us in new ways. That is something to listen and live by.
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