Christadelphians’ Obsession with the Bible

We spend a lot of time and energy reading the bible, but do we know why we read the bible? I grew up in a Christian home, like probably most of you, and I grew up being told that the bible is true, that the bible was the true Living Word of God. So I believed that the bible was true before I even began reading it for myself, the way I do so today. Even now, when I continue reading it as an adult, I read it with the proposition that what I am reading is true.

That’s probably just as true for most of you – you grew up in an era where this book was considered to be true. Even by people who did not necessarily read it all the time. But sadly, that does not hold water anymore. I don’t think people come to this book with the same preconceived idea that most of us did. I read an interesting article, that stated that 27% of non-Christian millennials believe the Bible is a dangerous book of religious dogma used to oppress people. I found this astonishing! Not only do they not believe that this book is true, they also believe that this book is dangerous. The sad reality is that the bible has often been used to oppress people. I mean, the bible has been twisted and used to justify war, to justify white supremacy, to justify slavery, or to prop up evil regimes like “Apartheid” in South Africa, and many other evils. No wonder people have grown to become sceptical of this book. But see, the problem is not the book.

With us Christadelphians, biblical knowledge is something that’s highly regarded and valued within our community. Sometimes it’s as if we are obsessed with the bible itself. We have daily bible reading plans that try to get you to read the entire bible in a year (the New Testament twice!). Brothers who appear to have an astute knowledge of the bible are put up on a pedestal. Whereas, brothers who do not appear to know their bible as meticulously, are not given the same level of admiration. You could be the sweetest, most caring brother, having all the characters of the fruit of the spirit, and still not be as valued if your biblical knowledge appears to be lacking. Now imagine being a sister in our community. Sisters are not even encouraged to do deep bible study – they are not encouraged to have a voice in our community. They are taught to be silent. It’s as if bible knowledge is being used as a substitute for living a life of faith when it should be complementing a life of faith.

So having said that, I would now like talk about three things. Two of those three things will be what the bible is not, and the last thing will be what I believe the bible isand the impact it has on our lives.

1. The bible is NOT an instruction manual (or a rule book) for our Christian faith.

2. The bible is NOT the foundation of our faith.

3. What I believe the bible is.

NOT an instruction manual

When I was a kid, I read somewhere that the word BIBLE was an acronym for “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth”. Fortunately, the bible is not that. I have a car user manual, and so if I wanted to know about, say, the brakes, I can go to the section that tells us about the brakes – which will tell me what brakes are, what they look like, where I will find them, how to change the brake fluids, how often I should change the brake fluids and so on. It’s all right there in the manual. So I can simply go there, read it, and figure it out. But that’s not what the bible is. If you wanted to know how to have, say, a great marriage, there isn’t one section in the bible that tells you all you need to know about marriages. The bible is instead a collection of songs, stories, poems, and letters which have been put together. If the car manual was like the bible, and if you went to the section on the brakes, it would probably read something like, “Once upon a time there was a truck driver, and he didn’t know how to use his brakes.” And you’d be confused, wondering what was going on. That’s exactly how the bible is.

Now, imagine a night when it is raining outside. You’re in the lounge, keeping warm by the fire, listening to some slow classical music. How many of you, in that setting, would go open your instruction manual for, say, your microwave? That would just ruin the moment, right? And so if you treat the bible as an instruction manual, you’re only going to open it on days when you don’t know what to do.

On some occasions the instructions given to us are not what we may have wanted to read, so much so that we start picking and choosing which instructions to follow. This is because many of us have made the bible a rule book for our Christian faith. Some people’s mind-set when it comes to the bible is:

• “I want to know if it is okay. Let me open the bible and see if I am permitted to do this or not.”

• “Where in the bible does it show me where the line is, so I may know when not to cross this line?”

• “What are the rules in the bible? What are the penalties for breaking these rules? When do I get a yellow card? When do I get a red card?”

But here’s the thing: if you come to this book with that sort of mind-set, you will be very disappointed, because the rules in this book are too hectic! And here’s another thing: if I use this book as a rule book – which you have to keep, in order to continue being a Christian, because “If you don’t keep the rules you won’t be in the Kingdom” – it then becomes a means by which I can control you, doesn’t it? And as mentioned, the bible has been used for just that. But the bible was never meant for that. I mean, imagine having a stubborn and rebellious teenage son who just refuses to listen to you. You then turn to the bible seeking answers and you land up in Deuteronomy 21:18-21 which reads as follows:

If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you…

As we can see, it would be very hard for anyone to follow each instruction given in the bible. What we need to understand is that these “instructions” in the bible were written at specific times for specific situations, for specific groups of people, in specific contexts. And if you read this book as an instruction manual or as a rule book, it would water down what God intended this book to be.

NOT the foundation of our faith

The bible is notthe foundation of our faith. Some of you, by hearing that, might be shaking right about now, right? That is the kind of statement that would mess with the head of most faithful Christians. I mean, we have always been taught that the bible is the foundation of everything that we believe in. That this is God’s Holy Word and this is the foundation of our faith.

Well I am here to tell you that it is not! The foundation of our faith is not an inspired book, but rather an event that inspired the book. Namely the death and the resurrection of Jesus. That is the foundation of our faith.

And that’s important to know. I mentioned in the beginning that I grew up believing that this book was true before I ever read it. I believed everything in this book was true, exactly like it said. And then… I started reading it. And when I started reading it, there were some really difficult passages to read. Stuff I just didn’t know what to do with. I would read parts of the bible that would freak me out and I’d say, “Really? Did God really say that? Did God really do that?” I would also find passages in the bible that were … contradictory … to one another. And I just didn’t know what to do with all of this. So for years I did what most good Christians would do – I ignored it. I pretended it wasn’t there.

Because here was the problem: If this book wasn’t true, the whole of my faith might as well be thrown out. If this book wasn’t true, then nothing else was true. And because we had made this book the foundation of our faith, we would have to reject all of Christianity. There are many people who have come to difficult passages in scripture, and instead of ignoring them, have decided to toss the whole thing out. They have rejected being a follower of Jesus because this book appears to be inconsistent. And we see it in our world today, with the increasing number of atheists who were once Christians. Some of us sadly know some of these people.

What I would like to do now is to take you through the history of the church – the timeline of Christianity. There are four dates to remember:

• the first date is AD30, which is around the time Jesus died and was resurrected;

• the second date is AD70, which was when the temple was destroyed;

• the third date is AD312, which was the year that the emperor Constantine made Christianity legal;

• and the last date is AD400, which is when we had the very first bible.

Before AD312 Christianity was pretty much illegal in the Roman empire – which was basically most of the world. You were not allowed to be a Christian. If you were caught being a Christian, you’d be arrested, put into prison, and sometimes even put to death. And that sort of persecution went on for a few hundred years. They would try finding copies of the gospels and the letters written by Paul, Peter, John, and the other disciples – just to destroy them.

They worked hard to destroy this Christian thing that was starting. Until AD312 when Constantine made Christianity legal. Then people could come out of hiding, then people could circulate these epistles and letters. Then in 400AD we have the very first bible. So, in other words, it was only about 400 years later that they took these letters, songs, poems and other writings and put it together in what we now call the bible.

But want to know what’s the fascinating part of this whole timeline? The period of time AD30 to AD312 – a period where the church was under great pressure, under great persecution – was actually when the church thrived, probably more than it ever has in its entire history. And guess what they did not have with them? The bible! That’s right, they did not have with them, the bible.

The letters circulating around were hidden so far away from the authority and everyone, and yet the church still thrived. But how? And why? Well because they did not need the bible. What they needed was the event that inspired the bible – the very death and resurrection of Jesus.

And this is something I wish all Christians, especially Christadelphians, would understand, that knowing that Jesus died for us and that God raised him from the dead, far exceeds knowing the bible inside out. Yes, God speaks to us through His Living Word, but He also speaks to us in many other ways. And I feel as if we get so caught up in our bibles that we neglect other aspects of what it means to be a follower of Christ. I said this before and I’ll say it again: It’s as if bible knowledge is being used as a substitute for living a life of faith when instead it should be complementing a life of faith.

What I believe the bible is

Then what exactly is the bible, and how should we be using it? Well I don’t necessarily have the answer to that. The bible is different things to different people. But what I can try to do is explain how I see the bible and how I feel it should be used. Now, I do not intend to discourage people from reading the bible, in fact I believe in reading the bible regularly. Paul addresses this in his second letter to Timothy by saying:

But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. (2Tim 3:14-15) (NKJV)

The scripture Paul is talking about was the entire Old Testament. The Old Testament was pointing us to Jesus. In other words, Jesus should be part and parcel of the reason why we read the bible. My biggest grudge with the Christadelphian community is that often we read the bible and yet do not always manifest what it means to be a true follower of Christ. Someone once said it’s like we are reading a menu at a restaurant but never ordering or eating the food. Or we are studying a map at the beginning of a hiking trail but never actually hiking. We have before us a wonderful book, and yet as much as we read it, our actions don’t always correspond to being followers of Christ.

Many people have heard the gospel but are yet to see the gospel in us. It’s up to us as followers of Christ to show the gospel to people. And this is where the bible comes in. We should be using it to bring people to Christ, through our actions. The gospels are my favourite section of the bible. The gospels are the closest thing we have to an actual biography of Jesus. It’s in the gospels that we see how he was born, where he was born, how he began his ministry, and the very things he did in his ministry leading up to his death.

As followers of Christ, we are called Christians. And the first time the word “Christian” is used in the bible is in Acts 11:25-26. The church in Antioch was so concerned with the famine at the time that they were moved beyond themselves, and started caring for others, at a great cost to themselves. The church did not decide to call themselves Christians, rather it was the people in Antioch who – after seeing how the church cared for other people – started calling them “The Christ People”. They had heard stories of Christ, and were now seeing his followers carrying out the very things they had heard about Christ. So they called them “The Christ People” – from where we get the term Christians.

Maybe you have heard this question before, but if you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Are we guilty of looking like Christ? Are we guilty of loving those who the world considers unlovable? Are we guilty of welcoming those that others neglect? Are we guilty of breaking down the walls that divide us? Are we guilty of living like Christ and speaking like Christ? Are we guilty of encouraging one another, comforting one another, and caring for one another at a great costs to ourselves?

Unless your answer to every single one of those questions is “yes”, I would suggest you read your bible and use it as a tool to be more Christ-like. Not just for the sake of edifying your scriptural knowledge. If the bible does not bring you closer to Jesus, you’re using it wrong. You can read and study the bible as much as you would like to, but unless you finally place an order from that menu and begin eating, or unless you put on your hiking shoes and venture out for that hike, you’re not utilizing the bible as you should. Jesus says, By this shall all know that you are my disciples – by having love for one another. And that was exhibited by the church in Antioch. It was also manifested by Jesus.

Jesus said that he did not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them. In other words, he is the scriptures manifested. So we have to know Jesus to know the scriptures. In conclusion, I believe that the bible is the inspired Word of God that reveals His story throughout humanity. It is a story that was recorded over a thousand-year span of time, by different writers, with different styles and personalities, at different times, under different circumstances, and for different reasons. But its theme of God’s redemptive plan for humanity is consistent throughout. While it’s not the foundation of our faith, and it’s definitely not basic instructions before leaving earth, it is the inspired guide for how we could be more like Jesus, who is the very Word made flesh.