Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Making the Bible an Idol
I really appreciate and share John Piper's love of the Bible and I think that underneath his narrow polarizing language there is a valid criticism of "trendy faith". His ability to inspire emotion is amazing and takes me back to my early childhood experiences of faith. However, I wonder if Piper is suggesting that we become blind to the Christ that lives in the world today in many people, places and things. Do you think he is so caught up in the particular stories that opened his own eyes to the love of Christ, that he now discounts the many ways other people find Christ?
It seems to me that sharing culturally relevant stories that communicate the central meanings about God’s love and community is not only ok, it is an act of being true to Jesus by imitating his own love of symbolic parables. Why must we favor our own stories and myths over the universal meanings hidden within them?
"The best way to waste your pulpit is to preach your own thoughts, instead of preaching God's thoughts" - John PiperIsn't this another way for a preacher to say...
"Don't think, just check your brains at the church door. Of course, I can think because my thoughts are really God's thoughts."If Piper really believed what he said, then why does he preach? Wouldn't he just read scripture from the pulpit? What is he really suggesting here?
The Bible is a lens to understand how particular people experienced God. We can learn so much for its texts, but when we make it an idol, it feels like we lose sight of the living Christ that is at work in the world. Christ is present. I’m in complete support of Piper’s devotion to Christ, but we shouldn't have to limit Christ to the works and experiences of the past.
6 comments:
"If Piper really believed what he said, then why does he preach? Wouldn't he just read scripture from the pulpit? What is he really suggesting here?"
This is what he's suggesting:
Piper's thoughts on Scripture (preaching)are God's thoughts since he rightly divides the truth.
“God did not just speak once upon a time to a privileged group of males in one part of the world, making us ever after dependent on the codification of their experience.”-Rosemary Radford Ruether
Another way to look at it is, people are searching for the Truth. Piper knows where that truth is to be found. If we all have "truth" to share, then why bother to listen to Piper? Aren't we all just as valid with our own version of truth? Or, maybe Piper is right, as long as he is delivering Truth from the only reliable source.
Spurgeon wrote, "What contempt hath God poured upon the wisdom of this world! How hath he brought it to nought, and made it appear as nothing. He has allowed it to word out its own conclusions, and prove its own folly. Men boasted that they were wise; they said that they could find out God to perfection; and in order that their folly might be refuted once and forever, God gave them the opportunity of so doing...Before I enter upon our text, let me very briefly tell you what I believe preaching Christ and him crucified is. My friends, I do not believe it is preaching Christ and him crucified, to give people a batch of philosophy every Sunday morning and evening, and neglect the truths of this Holy Book."
That is what I believe Piper is getting at. And we serve others well if we do the same.
r. radewicz,
you said - "My friends, I do not believe it is preaching Christ and him crucified, to give people a batch of philosophy every Sunday morning and evening, and neglect the truths of this Holy Book."
The Bible is filled with many "batches of philosphy". You say "preacing Christ and Christ Crucified". The minute you start to unpack that slogan, you're a philosopher and you've begun giving people a "batch of philosophy".
St. Paul was a philospher. Thank God, he bothered to deliver a "batch of philosophy" and ponder many of life's deep questions rather than simple repeat what was in his Bible. Ohterwise, there would be no Christianity. When we unpack his words, we are philosophers also.
All sermons are bits of philosophy. By suggesting "philosophy" is not for the pulpit, do you really mean to suggest that people shouldn't offer a philosophy that you personally disagree with?
Having listened to a lot of sermons, I know exactly what Piper is getting at.
So many of them are just pop psychology with a scripture or two thrown in to make it seem holy Or Politics, or Social Activism, or ...
This is a waste. The pulpit is for Preaching God's word. Everything taught there should be routed deeply in God's word. It is okay to show how those ideas illuminate God's character, But God's character should be the central theme, not the preacher's idea of the day.
AMEN BROTHER AMEN!!!
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