Sunday, October 17, 2010

Reading Bible stories

We visited a church recently where there was a very good family service. The service sought to engage both parents and children, and invite them to participate in all sorts of activities together. It's very creative and I really appreciated the effort they put into it.

On this day they looked at Daniel 3. The main points, I gathered, were that Christians needed to stand up for their faith in adversity and that they could trust the all-powerful God as they did so. They worked out some very simply points in the passage, and delivered their message through various interactive activities that made the whole service very engaging for young and old alike. It's a job well done.

But I keep thinking that this way of reading Scripture is typical of how we are taught to interpret the Bible. Certainly the main points were captured aright, and indeed applied beautifully to daily life. But I wonder whether we do recognise the most natural reading of Daniel 3 here - that is, the chapter is first and foremost a story. Our sophisticated ability to analyse Scripture helps us to jump to the key themes of the chapter, and apply them in everyday life. But in doing so we miss out on experiencing some of the most important aspects of the Scripture.

Let us enter into the stories in the first chapters of Daniel together. That is, let us join Daniel and his three friends in their journey.

The first thing we realise is that we are fellow Jews in exiles. We are slaves as a result of the conquest of the Babylonian Empire. We have been displaced from our homeland. We and our beloved families have been on a long journey to a foreign country. We are well aware of God's covenant with Abraham, our ancestor. And we are aware that it is because of our people's unfaithfulness to that covenant that we are now in exile, as the prophets foretold. Our story in recent times has been a sad one indeed. Our life is full of struggles, pain and tears. We experience social, racial and political oppression, and there is no way out.

But like Daniel and his friends we seek to be faithful to the God of our ancestors. As we seek to remain faithful to him, we experience God's faithfulness despite our rebellion. We watch Daniel and his three friends risk their lives to follow our God, we see God perform signs and wonders to deliver them. Even though we remain in captivity, we see signs of God's blessing and faithfulness.

By entering into the stories of Daniel and his friends, we identify with their sadness and pain, as well as their hope and joy. We struggle with them. We learn to trust God as we watch them - because they are willing to sacrifice and suffer for their God.

As we walk the journey with them, inevitably we relate their experiences with ours in our everyday life. As we allow the Holy Spirit to touch us and speak to us, we worship our faithful God just like the Psalmists in the Bible. We learn to persevere in our own journeys as we seek to remain faithful to Christ in our own daily struggles.

We may want to relate to stories that took place after Daniel: The (partial) return from exile of Israel; the coming of Christ, and above all, his life, death and resurrection. We can go on to relate to the earliest church in Acts, other New Testament epistles and in Revelation.

If we know how to interpret culture (the culture in which we live) and social issues, we would quite easily relate the stories to various social justice issues both in Australia and overseas.

Much more can be said. But I hope I have painted a picture of how much we can experience by simply reading the Bible on its own terms - and in this case, in terms of the fact that we are reading stories.

Again, nothing wrong with the service of the church that we visited. Indeed they did a good job in running the service. My question is around how we have been taught to read the Bible. My suggestion is that our sophistication in analysing the Scripture can potentially mean that we miss out on reading the Bible as it really is - in this case it is "stories". How amazing it could be if we travel into the stories and let the stories travel with us!

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