Thursday, December 3, 2009

The Problem with Bible...

...is that we've heard the story before. If we've grown up in the church or even lived in a culturally Christian area, we've gotten a taste, of sorts, of what this whole bible/christian thing is about. Everything seems repeated and a little boring. Dot dot dot, Jesus was a cute baby, dot dot dot, did some nice things, dot dot dot, something about dying and then not dying, dot dot dot, boy those christians sure are annoying. Over 2000 years the story of Jesus Messiah becoming the Messiah for the whole world has become routine. Since we know the ending and have heard it all before, we don't really care how the story unfolds.

But as an unrepentant English Lit major, I think that the story matters. How Jesus (and for that matter all of Israel) gets to the resurrection affects what the resurrection means. And then how Peter, Paul, et al share the story shapes the meaning of the story. To understand the Bible and to shake it out of its routine I need to live in the story. I need to feel the free and terror of the Marys at the tomb. I need to accept (and not sanitize) Paul's anger that other disciples believe you need to get circumcised to become a follower of the way.

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