Respect the Scripture and those who have suffered for it

Tonight I read a book with my son. It's about how the Bible was handed down to us. One person it mentions is John Wycliffe, who translated the Bible into English and was condemned by the religious and political institutions at the time as a heretic. I told my son that people like him suffered and/or died for the Bible, because they considered it as God's Word, and that it was to be respected and was important for our faith. Then my son said that those who persecuted people like Wycliffe were very mean.

It's true, isn't it? It comes from the mouth of an innocent child.

In my circle of friends I have increasingly come across sincere and lovely Christians who believe that certain Scriptures should be "deleted" because they cannot be from God. For example, they think that certain passages in Isaiah cannot be from God because those passages say that God is a God of vengeance. For them, these passages are incompatible with the message of love that Jesus teaches. They cannot come to terms with the tension between God's judgment and the grace of God found in Christ.

I do very much respect these Christian friends, for I know them personally and they are among the best Christians I have come across in my life. But I wonder whether their thinking stems from a Western modern worldview in which a belief system (as it is often assumed) should have as few internal tensions as possible, and that we (human beings) can get to choose which parts of the Scripture can be "deleted" when we want to resolve certain tensions. I think the earliest Christians did not have this problem. People like Luke and Paul did not seek to resolve those tensions. The biblical writers (e.g. the author of Job and Habakkuk) saw those tensions. They struggled with them. They even lamented and protested. But they learned to live with them and put themselves in the hands of a faithful and loving God.

Sometimes I think my friends are trying to deal with certain Christians/churches/doctrines that have turned the Bible into an idol and used the "authority of the Bible" as an instrument to abuse people. My friends are right in realising that there is a real problem there. The gospel message, as revealed in the Scripture, is about setting people free, not putting them in bondage. We submit to the Bible - not a particular interpretation of the Bible, a particular statement of faith or confession - as the rule of faith.

But one must respect people like Wycliffe, and many Christians in the world who have suffered and/or died for the Bible (for translating it into the common language or for keeping in their possession). They do so because they have experienced the transforming power of the Scripture as it is the revelation of the Creator God and the teaching of Christ through the Spirit.