Christchurch Parish News, September 2018
What do we mean when we say we believe in God as described in the Bible and how might we best think about the great variety of descriptions of God found therein?
In the July edition of the CPN, I wrote about a recent report by the Pew Research Centre regarding the beliefs and practices of Christians in Western Europe. As you may recall, I was struck by the finding that 37% of those who attend church in the UK more than once a month profess ‘not to believe in God as described in the Bible but do believe there is some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe’. By contrast, the research showed that 57% do ‘believe in God as described in the Bible’. I then proceeded to explore some of the implications if these figures hold true for us as a parish.
But as I did, I skated around one very big question. Namely, what exactly does ‘I believe in God as described in the Bible’ mean?
It’s relatively simple to come up with a working definition of the first part of the statement, albeit one that has two aspects to it. On the one level, ‘I believe in’ means holding a something to be true. For example, if you remember your RE lessons at school, you will have learnt that God is traditionally understood to be omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing) and omnipresent (present everywhere at the same time). But the second, deeper level of ‘believing in’ is all about trust. So when we say we ‘believe in God as described in the Bible’, we’re saying not only that we believe certain things about God to be true but that we actually trust in this God when we get on with living our lives.
That’s the first part of the statement, and as such it’s relatively simple to define (if harder to put into practice!). But the second part of the statement, ‘as described in the Bible’, which is just as crucial, takes a little more unpacking.
An interesting way to begin is by reaching for your Bible, preferably one that you’ve had for a few years. Don’t open it just yet. Rather, first of all look at the edges of the pages. Depending on how long you’ve had your copy of the Bible, you’ll notice that some pages are more well-thumbed than others.
If I look at my copy, one I’ve had for about 10 years, I can see that the final couple of hundred pages are quite scuffed and marked. That’s no great surprise as that’s the New Testament part of the Bible.
Then the other key part of my Bible that’s well-thumbed is more towards the middle. That’s where the Psalms are — I try to read a few every day, morning and evening.
So, looking at the actual pages of our Bibles can give us a good indication of which parts we’re individually more minded to read. Why is this important? Simply because if we say that we believe in God as described in the Bible, what we’re actually saying is that we believe in God as described in those parts of the Bible that we tend to read more often. And not the ones we don’t.
To continue using my Bible as an example, the above exercise would suggest that there are whole swathes of the Bible where how God is described doesn’t get much of a look in. Therefore these parts of Holy Scripture don’t tend to shape my belief/trust in God.
But what of those parts that I do tend to read. Does it all have the same impact in shaping my belief in God? Do I read it all equally all the time? No, it doesn’t and no, I don’t. I’m sure it’s the same for you, too. We all have our preferred parts of the Bible, even within those parts that we tend to turn to.
Looking at the New Testament, are you more prone to read the gospel accounts or the letters?
If you prefer to read former, which do you tend to read more frequently? Or put another way, which Jesus do you like the best? The Jesus of Matthew, of Mark, of Luke, or of John? Whilst there are obvious commonalities in the first three accounts, there are still many differences, not just in tone but in content, too. For good reason, as each of the writers had a specific audience in mind—for example, Matthew’s audience was primarily Jewish, Luke’s was primarily Gentile—and this led them to shape the telling of the story in ways deliberately intended to convey the theological claims about Jesus that they were making.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the gospel according to Luke is your preferred gospel account. If this is the one that you read most often, then this will be the one which most shapes how you understand God. So when you say that you believe in God as described in the Bible, what you’re really saying is that you believe in God as described primarily in Luke.
Of course, it’s not going to be the whole of the gospel according to Luke that you tend of read. There’ll be particular parts from within it that you’ll gravitate to. It could be the story of the Road to Emmaus when the two travellers encounter a stranger who later turns out to be Jesus after his resurrection.
For many, however, it will be the story of the Prodigal Son, a story that only appears in the gospel according to Luke. For some, this is the story that shapes their understanding of God. If this is true for you, when you say you believe in God as described in the Bible, what you really mean is that you believe in God as first and foremost described in the story of the Prodigal Son.
That’s not to say that the rest of the gospel according to Luke isn’t important. Think of it as a violin concerto. The story of the Prodigal Son is the violinist, with the rest of the gospel account functioning as the orchestra, with the rest of the Bible necessary in the way that the rest of the concert hall is. But during a violin concerto, we tend not to look at the building or the second violins, but the soloist standing out front. In the same way, in the overall context of the Bible, in the gospel according to Luke, many of us put the parable of the Prodigal Son front and centre in our understanding of God.
It might not even be a parable that shapes and determines our understanding of God as described in the Bible. It could be just a single verse. For many, it’s John 3:16, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.’ To continue the violin concerto analogy, a single verse is like a key moment in one of the solo passages played by the violinist which encapsulates the entire piece. Hear that snippet of melody by itself and you’re immediately hearing the entire piece around it. So when viewed like this, when we say that we believe in God as described in the Bible, we’re actually saying that we primarily believe in God as described in this one verse, taken from this one book out of the sixty- six books there are in the Bible as a whole.
What to make of all this? That we have these different preferences for which parts of the Bible we turn to, which in turn shape our understanding of God, is a statement of fact. It’s one of the reasons why churches like ours in the parish use a lectionary, to try and make sure that we don’t end up turning to the same parts of the Bible over and over (or having our readings of the Bible shaped by the theological preferences of the priest). But even then, there are large chunks that either don’t feature at all over the three year cycle of the lectionary, or which appear only very rarely.
So it seems inevitable that even when using a lectionary as a church, we’re each of us drawn to specific books, stories, and verses of the Bible. Likewise, it seems clear that we’re not drawn to the same ones. Given this, how can we understand this diversity of understanding of God as described in the Bible in a way that is helpful?
One way might be this. In the Scriptures a key metaphor for God is that of light. In 1 John 1:15 John writes ‘God is light’. As such, one way we can think of the Scriptures, the Word of God, is as a prism through which this light shines. But as it does the light is refracted. That is, it is separated into multiple different wavelengths. Sometimes these different wavelengths can even appear almost contrary in their description of God but the light source is always the same.
With this image in mind we can then take the step of trusting that our perception of the light happens within the all-encompassing activity of God. In other words, it’s not simply that you happen to see the light of God refracted through the Scriptures this way and I happen to see it refracted that way, as if all this ‘seeing’ is only a matter of personal preference. Instead, we can be confident that it is the Holy Spirit who is guiding each of us to see the different ways God is described in the Scriptures so that we may thereby encounter God more deeply in ways that are suited to us as unique individuals (and over time, these ways may well change, of course).
A second reason why God does it this way is because the Body of Christ, the church, does not exist for its own sake. As the light of God is refracted through the Scriptures, so then it is reflected by us into the world in all its myriad wavelengths. If all of us reflected the light of God in only one way, one wavelength as it were, only those who are able to see that particular wavelength would be able to perceive it. The more we reflect the different wavelengths of the light of God refracted in the Word of God, the greater the number of people who will be able to see this light in a way that they too can receive and encounter.
The wonderful thing in all of this is that we’re not called to be the source of light. We’re just called to be the reflectors! Next Sunday, maybe take a moment to ask your neighbours in church which is their favourite part of the Bible and what that tells them about God’s character. When you see their eyes start to shine with excitement, you’ll know where the Light’s coming from!