Going to the Bible Buffet

Last time, if you’ll recall, we talked about the Bible as a “Magic Book.” A friend of mine summed that attitude up well in his comment: “It was okay not to read it or ever incorporate it into your life, but DON'T EVER put anything on top of it!” The problem consists of having an outward reverence for the Bible but no actual use for it. However, for many people, this is not the issue. Many evangelicals have managed to get away from the legalism that says, “Don’t set anything on the Bible” but are still stuck in some extremely unprofitable and even dangerous ways of using it. I’m going to talk about one of those today.

One of the places we often take lunch meetings is at the Sushi House. It’s a good place – the sushi isn’t as good as some places, but it’s actually affordable. It’s done buffet-style and only costs about $7 to eat lunch there, so we go - if not every week, then at least every couple of weeks. You’ve got your choice of sushi (various vegetables and cooked fish with cold rice rolled up in seaweed), sashimi (raw fish on cold rice), various cooked Oriental foods (sweet and sour stuff, fried noodles, so on) and soup. Even people who don’t like sushi can find something they like, usually, so it’s a good place to go.

I usually get tekkamaki (smoked tuna rolled up in rice and seaweed) and kappamaki (sliced cucumber rolled up in rice and seaweed), tamago (scrambled egg layers on rice), various other vegetable rolls that I don’t know the names of, sake nigiri sushi (not the drink, smoked salmon on rice) and some of the cooked food. It’s really good. Other people get different things. Some of them can’t stand any of the sashimi or nigiri sushi, the kind with the raw fish on it. Some don’t even bother with any of the sushi, and instead just eat the fried vegetables and chicken on a skewer and stuff. That’s okay though, because it’s a buffet. You’re supposed to pick and choose, to take what you want and leave the rest.

Sadly, that’s how many of us read the Bible. We look through it, trying to find things that sound good to us. Searching endlessly for “a verse that will speak to me.” And when we find something that sounds good, we rip it from its context and enshrine it in our pointy little heads in a box labeled “God Says …”. Then, anytime we’re seeking “God’s will for our lives” we look in the box and pull out whatever verse we’ve cherry-picked that seems to fit.

We may find Jeremiah 29:11 – a very popular verse - and put that in the box. “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD , "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” What’s not to like? God wants us to prosper and for us to have hope and a future. Hallelujah! Now let’s get back to whatever we were doing when something intruded on our normal lives.

This is the error that lies behind the Word-Faith movement. Creflo Dollar, Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer and their kind all teach that if you “claim” the promise given in that verse – that is, if you have faith and ask pray for prosperity using the right words (hence “Word-Faith”) then God has no choice but to give it to you. Still not prosperous? You must not have enough faith. A good way of getting more faith is to send Creflo or Kenneth or Joyce your money.

This is a terrible distortion of how we are to relate to God. Instead of treating God as a person whom we can know, it makes him a force that can be manipulated. It reduces him to a Cosmic Candy Machine: if we put in the right sort of prayer, then we get what we want.

Most of us don’t fall into the trap that far – but we do start down that path. Anytime we start taking a verse (or verses) to be “what God says” without considering the context of the book – and indeed of the whole Bible – we start to set up a false idea of what God is telling us. In the verse quoted above, what is God talking about? Who is he talking to? He’s speaking to the exiles in Babylon, the last remnants of his people who have been taken captive to punish them for whoring after false gods. This is the spot where God intends to burn the flaw out of them. The specific verse is referring to the future plans God has for Israel, to restore them to their land in 70 years. Can it also refer to us? Maybe. God is infinite, and there’s no reason that the prophet’s words shouldn’t have meaning for us as well. On the other hand, in what way? Does it refer to earthly prosperity? And if so, then why are there so many poor Christians?

Maybe it refers to God’s ultimate plans for us, that we will be redeemed from sin and live with him in heaven forever. And maybe it just refers to Jewish exiles in Babylon in the 6^th century BC. Whatever it’s talking about, the thing to realize is that verses need to be read in their context, as part of a book that was written at a specific time for a specific purpose, and as part of the Bible as a whole, which was given by God so that we would have knowledge of him down through the ages. If the meanings we put into a verse go against those two contexts, then they are (almost certainly) wrong.

If we don’t consider things in light of the whole Bible, we run the risk of developing a very incorrect view of God. When we look for a verse that “speaks to us” (or a promise to claim, if we’ve been watching Kenneth Hagin for too long) we don’t ever pick the harsh ones. We only pick the ones we like. You’ll probably never hear someone say “Lord I claim your promise from John chapter 15, that ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ Since they persecuted Jesus, I want to be persecuted as well.” No, we all want to be prosperous and normal, and live safe, happy lives – just like the rest of the world, the world that hates Christ and all he stands for.

I understand that sometimes a single verse speaks to us, and even brings out things we didn’t understand from the rest of Scripture, and I believe that God does sometimes use single verses or even passages to speak to us in a way that may go contrary to the meaning of the book in which they’re found, and that’s okay. Where we have to be really careful is when we start considering those verses to be the sum total of God’s revelation, or (and this way lies heresy) we start to use a verse or passage in a way that contradicts Scripture as a whole.

The Bible is not a buffet. Like a properly done formal meal, all of its parts work together to produce a greater whole. And also like a formal meal, all of it comes from the same kitchen. We are not allowed to pick and choose, to say, “Oh yes, lots of mercy and love for me, but hold the repentance and the suffering – I’m trying to cut down.” We are not allowed to take what we want and leave the rest. When we treat God’s word as less than the whole, we treat him as less than God.

In part III, we’ll take a look at another error, one that is less obviously bad but may lead to lots of subtle misunderstandings.