Experimenting with God - #15 – Test Tube #1

          In the previous entry, I told you where I was heading with this series of entries.  I’m discussing the ways that God could make clear to us what He wants to do for us.  I suggested three avenues (three “test tubes”) <*here*>, and this entry will address the most important of those test tubes.

If you’re really seeking God, then there is at least one important thing you have to add into your life:  reading from the source.  Specifically, I’m talking about reading the Bible. 

Ugh!  Why the dusty old Bible?  Well, Christians claim that the Bible is the Word of God.  You might not agree with that claim at all, a lot of people don’t, but you can’t consider yourself an honest seeker of God without a serious attempt at reading the Bible.  Here’s my analogy:  it’s like Jack saying to Jill, “I can’t find my car keys.”  Jill says “Oh - I put them in the drawer by the sink.”  Jack says “no, I don’t think you did” and then proceeds to look everywhere except in the drawer by the sink.  That’s Jack being stubborn.  If Jack is really serious about finding his keys, he should look everywhere, and especially places where someone (like Jill) provides a clue.  It just doesn’t make sense to do otherwise.  Maybe Jill is wrong, but Jack still has to look in the drawer.

Christians may be wrong about the Bible, but you can’t ignore it and not read it.  Many Christians claim that God “speaks” to them from the Bible.  If you say you are seeking God, then it doesn’t matter how skeptical you may be of the Bible, you have to at least check it out with some seriousness. 

By seriousness, I don’t mean just blindly plopping the Bible open and reading a verse and then closing it and saying “that didn’t work.”  That’s fake seeking. 

By seriousness, I don’t mean searching on the internet to find out what other people say about the Bible.  Or searching for a list of all the contradictions in the Bible and then reading only those.  It’s fine if you do all that…but you still have to read the source!  If you’re living in any reasonably free country, then a copy of the Bible is readily available.  If you’re reading this blog, then you have access to the internet, where copies of the Bible abound.  It’s not hard to find, so that is (for most people) not an excuse.

By seriousness, I mean reading more than a few short passages here and there.  I have some detailed suggestions below about how to approach reading the Bible because, honestly, it’s hard to start on page 1 and read all the way through.  You can do that, but there are easier ways to go about it.  Obviously there are no hard and fast definitions of a “serious attempt”.  Personally, if you read about ten minutes a day for three months, I’d call that a serious attempt.

You may feel it necessary to give equal time to other religious or related documents.  I tried a “serious attempt” (according to my definition above) at reading the Quran and something I thought was called “the Atheist’s Bible” (but now I can’t figure out if that was the real title).  I found the Quran very hard to read and understand even after reading “The Cow” a couple of times, but maybe “The Cow” is not the best place to start.  And the Atheist’s Bible I found lame and boring, but maybe, since it doesn’t appear to be very popular (since I can’t find it anymore) I just didn’t pick the right atheist book.  I haven’t read the Upanishads or Sutras.  So, the end result is that I just don’t feel qualified to offer much guidance with respect to how to approach any of those books or those general beliefs.  I would welcome any thoughts on the matter, especially if you have a strong background in one of those belief systems.

The bottom line is that serious seeking requires you to search out the “source documents” whenever you can.  The Bible is the source document for Christian beliefs and claims.

Note that I’m not suggesting that you read the Bible to determine if it is true or not.  I’m suggesting you read the Bible to see if God will “speak to you” through it.  That is part of the experiment.  Remember that the experiment we are proposing is not about whether the Bible is reliable.  The experiment we are proposing is seeking to answer the question we evolved to previously <*here*>:

“What would Jesus have to do to prove to you that He is still alive, still God, still active in people’s lives, and can be known by those who seek Him; proof sufficient that you would live the rest of your life on His terms?”

We are seeking to have God/Jesus to tell us what it is that He is willing to do for us.  We are using the Bible as the starting point for that journey.

In light of all that, I’d like to offer some very practical suggestions regarding reading the Bible.  These are not prescriptive, and if you don’t feel you need any further guidance, you can stop reading right here and move on to the reading the Bible.

First – pick an easy version or translation of the Bible. If you’re going to be reading the Bible in English, then there must be a couple dozen or more versions of the Bible you could pick from.  It can be confusing!  But unless you’re a real Shakespeare buff, don’t pick the old King James version – that is very difficult for the modern reader to understand and you’ll spend more of your time battling with the language than understanding what is being said.  Personally, I most commonly use what is called the New International Version and I would recommend that as a good start.  About the only thing I would say is:  do not pick the “summaries” – like the Reader’s Digest version of the Bible.  Go to the real source.

Second – where to start?  The Christian Bible is generally organized chronologically, but that is not the easiest way to break into it.  I would strongly encourage you to start with the New Testament.  Further, I’d encourage you to start by reading the Gospel of John and then the book of Romans.  As far as “primers” on Christianity go, those are pretty good.  After that, I think the combination of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts (they are Part I and Part II of Luke’s writings) are really good to read.  After that, if you’re still reading, I’d go back to Matthew and work through the rest of the New Testament books in order.  Again – those are just my suggestions.

Third, consistency is good – just like exercise.  I’d suggest trying to read say 10 minutes of the Bible a day.  That should be pretty easy to do.  Or read a chapter a day – that usually comprises about three paragraphs or so and shouldn’t take long.

You should write down your thoughts about what you read.  I know that is hard to do for many of you.  I find that it really helps me to focus on the point of what I just read.  So often it is pretty easy to just mindlessly read the words and two seconds after you are done, if someone asked “what was that about”, you would have no clue.  What should you write about?  Anything that comes to mind, really.  But I have some questions I often ask myself as I read something in the Bible (or any other non-fiction book, actually).  Here are some of those questions:

How is God described?  What are God’s characteristics?

How are human beings described?  What are their characteristics?

What makes sense?  What doesn’t make sense? 

Are there things that God does differently than what I would do?

Is there any practical thing that I can learn from this?

          It’s also useful to keep track of some of the themes you see.  For example, as you read through the Gospel of John, you could write down all the miracles that you see listed and maybe try to categorize them in terms to their degree of physical impossibility.  Are they like magical tricks?  Are they always some kind of healing?  Is there a purpose to the miracles or are some of them just for fun?  Something like that.  Another thing to write down are the words and phrases that Jesus uses to describe Himself.

          This will take some serious effort.  It’s not hard, but it takes some discipline.  And, especially if you really don’t like the Bible, or if you hate Christians, it can sometimes rub you the wrong way.  Maybe all you can do is write down everything you don’t like about it.  The point is, we’re making a serious attempt here to open the door to the lion outside <explanation>.

          What’s the point of this relative to our experiment?  Remember we’re looking for God to speak to us – we need to know what it is He wants to do for us.  So, the first thing we learn as we read the Bible is what kinds of things God generally does and doesn’t like, or does and doesn’t do, or does and doesn’t support.  This starts to put reasonable bounds on what we might expect God to do.  For example, in the Gospel of John, Jesus makes some pretty broad statements about what He will do for His disciples.  These statements might be quite relevant.

          Sometimes you will find that you read something and it is so directly relevant to your current personal experience that you are certain it was written there for you.  Those are passages to start taking notice of.  Is that God speaking to you?  Of course you should be skeptical of such a thing.  But, from personal experience, it can be pretty compelling when it happens. 

          The other thing that happens is that the things you read in the Bible keep popping up during the day.  It might be something you see or hear, or it might be something someone else brings up.  It may be that reading the Bible alone will identify something promised by God and this alone will be directly relevant to the experiment we are conducting.  But generally speaking I would expect you to be skeptical of these things.  They can always be just chance – just coincidence.  So that is why we are not stopping here – we’re going to need more.  But this is an important starting point – test tube #1 is opened.

Next we’ll take a look at some practical, historical situations that provide examples of God speaking in this way.  I always like to go back to practical examples to try to help understand things.