Unbalanced Christians
For the last eight months Michael and I have been involved with Thrive (the young marrieds group at our church). It’s been absolutely life changing for us in terms of the caliber of teaching we are exposed to each week, and the quality of people we have met. We have made some very close friends in this group, and they serve as the sharpest of iron on which we can file and hone ourselves. Sadly, yet understandably, Thrive breaks for the summer so this week will be our last weekly gathering for four long months. We’ll still have monthly accountability meetings, and other fun activities. But nothing compares to the weekly dinners and Bible study we’ve grown accustomed to. In eight months together, we’ve devoured the entire book of 1 Thessalonians.
So, a few weeks ago, several of us were chatting about the possibility of continuing to get together weekly or bi-monthly throughout the summer. One person in the group wanted to continue to meet together, but had strong opinions on how it should be structured. Let’s refer to this person as “Bob.”
“We’re a marriage group, so if we get together we need to study the topic of marriage,” Bob said. I found the comment to be rather odd since we’ve spent the last eight months studying 1 Thessalonians, which isn’t a book on marriage. In fact, one of the things that attracted Michael and I to Thrive (and thereby Compass Bible Church) in the first place was that they actually focused on teaching the Bible rather than strictly dealing with the topic of marriage.
Although Bob may have been well-intentioned in wanting to study the topic of marriage, I think that his comments demonstrate just how easy it can be to get off-track in the Christian life. If we open our Bibles and thumb through the concordances looking exclusively for words and topics that are of interest to us—or pertain to our current life stages—we run the risk of becoming very unbalanced people. Trust me, Michael and I tried to plug-in at several young marrieds groups before we found Thrive, and although we may have picked up a good communication skill or two, the experiences left us nothing but frustrated and almost dwarfed. We did not grow spiritually as we learned to repeat catchy phrases like, “My spouse is not my enemy.”
Listen, I’m all about being relevant. I write books to teenage girls, so almost all of the personal stories I use as illustrations come from my own teen years. All of the application in the book is specific to how the lives of teenage girls are structured. But I don’t open up my Bible to a limited number of passages and think those are the only biblical truths that can apply to the lives of teenage girls. The entire Bible applies to their lives, and it’s my job to show them how. So, right now I’m working on a book based on one of the parables of Jesus. The application is still geared to teenage girls, but nothing about the passage itself screams “teenage girl material.” But after teaching the parable at two teen girls’ conferences already, I’ve seen it begin to change the lives of teenage girls. Why? Because the material I am using is the Bible and the Bible has the power to change people’s lives (Hebrews 4:12). My opinions don’t. Sure, I can temporarily sway someone with my opinions if I am lucky, but my opinions certainly aren’t living and active and sharper that a double-edged sword.
The Church is full of many unbalanced Christians today because we are far too topic driven. We’re life stage crazy. It’s almost as if we confuse Christianity with Burger King and think we can "have it our way." Let’s be honest here. Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry ended when He was thirty-three years old. That’s still relatively young (the older I get, the younger that looks). Does that mean there is no salvation for people older than their mid-thirties? Is Christ’s life suddenly irrelevant to them because He never lived to see their life stage? Since Paul, Peter and John were men does that mean I should throw out the majority of my New Testament because men can’t speak truth into my life as a woman? Or what about this—the classic marriage passage in Ephesians 5 was penned by Paul who (most likely) wasn’t married anymore when he wrote that. So, do I throw that out too?
Picking and choosing which parts of the Bible apply to your life isn’t a good practice to adopt. The very nature of arguing that certain passages are more relevant than others is a slippery slope, because natural reasoning can easily whittle away the relevance of any of the Bible’s teachings. Just look at my last paragraph, I completely wiped out the “relevance” of much of the New Testament.
If we truly believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then we need to know and study the entire book. Knowing what the Bible says about being single doesn’t do you any good once you get married. And knowing the ins and outs of all of the marriage passages doesn’t do you any good in the grief of becoming widowed. Life changes. God’s Word doesn’t. So don’t focus exclusively on what may or may not seem relevant to you today. The Word of the Lord stands forever (1 Peter 1:25), and it would do you good to know your stuff.
So, a few weeks ago, several of us were chatting about the possibility of continuing to get together weekly or bi-monthly throughout the summer. One person in the group wanted to continue to meet together, but had strong opinions on how it should be structured. Let’s refer to this person as “Bob.”
“We’re a marriage group, so if we get together we need to study the topic of marriage,” Bob said. I found the comment to be rather odd since we’ve spent the last eight months studying 1 Thessalonians, which isn’t a book on marriage. In fact, one of the things that attracted Michael and I to Thrive (and thereby Compass Bible Church) in the first place was that they actually focused on teaching the Bible rather than strictly dealing with the topic of marriage.
Although Bob may have been well-intentioned in wanting to study the topic of marriage, I think that his comments demonstrate just how easy it can be to get off-track in the Christian life. If we open our Bibles and thumb through the concordances looking exclusively for words and topics that are of interest to us—or pertain to our current life stages—we run the risk of becoming very unbalanced people. Trust me, Michael and I tried to plug-in at several young marrieds groups before we found Thrive, and although we may have picked up a good communication skill or two, the experiences left us nothing but frustrated and almost dwarfed. We did not grow spiritually as we learned to repeat catchy phrases like, “My spouse is not my enemy.”
Listen, I’m all about being relevant. I write books to teenage girls, so almost all of the personal stories I use as illustrations come from my own teen years. All of the application in the book is specific to how the lives of teenage girls are structured. But I don’t open up my Bible to a limited number of passages and think those are the only biblical truths that can apply to the lives of teenage girls. The entire Bible applies to their lives, and it’s my job to show them how. So, right now I’m working on a book based on one of the parables of Jesus. The application is still geared to teenage girls, but nothing about the passage itself screams “teenage girl material.” But after teaching the parable at two teen girls’ conferences already, I’ve seen it begin to change the lives of teenage girls. Why? Because the material I am using is the Bible and the Bible has the power to change people’s lives (Hebrews 4:12). My opinions don’t. Sure, I can temporarily sway someone with my opinions if I am lucky, but my opinions certainly aren’t living and active and sharper that a double-edged sword.
The Church is full of many unbalanced Christians today because we are far too topic driven. We’re life stage crazy. It’s almost as if we confuse Christianity with Burger King and think we can "have it our way." Let’s be honest here. Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry ended when He was thirty-three years old. That’s still relatively young (the older I get, the younger that looks). Does that mean there is no salvation for people older than their mid-thirties? Is Christ’s life suddenly irrelevant to them because He never lived to see their life stage? Since Paul, Peter and John were men does that mean I should throw out the majority of my New Testament because men can’t speak truth into my life as a woman? Or what about this—the classic marriage passage in Ephesians 5 was penned by Paul who (most likely) wasn’t married anymore when he wrote that. So, do I throw that out too?
Picking and choosing which parts of the Bible apply to your life isn’t a good practice to adopt. The very nature of arguing that certain passages are more relevant than others is a slippery slope, because natural reasoning can easily whittle away the relevance of any of the Bible’s teachings. Just look at my last paragraph, I completely wiped out the “relevance” of much of the New Testament.
If we truly believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then we need to know and study the entire book. Knowing what the Bible says about being single doesn’t do you any good once you get married. And knowing the ins and outs of all of the marriage passages doesn’t do you any good in the grief of becoming widowed. Life changes. God’s Word doesn’t. So don’t focus exclusively on what may or may not seem relevant to you today. The Word of the Lord stands forever (1 Peter 1:25), and it would do you good to know your stuff.
posted by Shannon at 3:52 PM
6 Comments:
This was our first year in Thrive and we LOVED going through a book of the bible. Our marriage improved because we were studying God's word together, focusing on what He had to teach us. :)
I love hearing about your Thrive group. We have so many newlywed couples who are kidless at our church. John and I have talked about starting a group for them, but God has given the red light.
Not that this is totally exactly what Bob was talking about...but have you read: Life in the Redeemers Hands. By Paul Tripp? Great book and he deals with looking at the bible as an index to life issues and not seeing the bible as a general handbook that covers all issues of life.
Heather
I love hearing about your Thrive group. We have so many newlywed couples who are kidless at our church. John and I have talked about starting a group for them, but God has given the red light.
Not that this is totally exactly what Bob was talking about...but have you read: Life in the Redeemers Hands. By Paul Tripp? Great book and he deals with looking at the bible as an index to life issues and not seeing the bible as a general handbook that covers all issues of life.
Heather
Heather:
While I'm sure Tripp's book offers good insights, and there are occassions where it is appropriate to locate a verse that speaks directly to someone's situation(i.e. Biblical counseling, or being in the midst of temptation or trial, etc...), I don't think it's ever a good idea to set out to actually "study the Bible" on a topic by topic basis. I believe this for several reasons:
1) You lose the context and it is far easier to misinterpret what was written. If you really want to know what a verse buried somewhere in 1 Corinthians is saying, you've got to study the verses and passages around it (that may focus on a different "topic"), you need to study what the Corinthian church was like so you can figure out why Paul may have felt the need to address a topic in a certain way, and you need to use a study tool that can help you study in the orignial language (Greek for the NT, Hebrew for the OT). Without doing the above things, people aren't really studying the Bible but are simply applying Biblical passages to situations where they may or may not actually apply.
2) When people set out to examine the Bible exclusively on a topic by topic basis, they tend to avoid hard topics or topics they may not fully understand. So, they don't really learn and grow in areas where they might actually need the most help. For instance, in high school Michael's youth pastor openly said he would never preach through Romans or any other hard books because they were too difficult to understand. So he only stayed in the gospels because they were "easy" to preach through. So for four years an entire youth group never looked outside of the gospels. So having never even opened the book of Romans, Michael and his peers were never taught that the heart of the gospel message is that we are sinners separated from God. The messages always focused on immitating Christ and being a good person, which is good if you are actually preaching to Christians. But the majority of Michael's old youth group friends now openly admit they aren't Christians and never were--because no one told them how to become Christians.
3) A topical approach to reading the Bible leaves people prone to drawing incorrect or incomplete conclusions about God. If I only study passages in which the Bible talks about God being love, then I cannot fathom that a loving God would send anyone to hell. Therefore, I must determine that hell cannot be a reality. However, if I studied God being holy and God being just I would be left amazed that heaven is even an option for someone like me, and I would see that my sin didn't even allow me access to God before the atoning sacrifice of Christ. So, the real question isn't how God can send anyone to hell, but why a perfect and holy God would want to invite anyone into heaven.
4) People who approach the Bible in exclusively a topical manner really miss the point. If we're always asking, "How does this apply to me?" and we never ask other questions we have a very self-centered view of Christianity. The Bible wasn't written for the 21st century American Christian. There is a lot it can say to the 21st Century American Christian--it is timeless truth inspired by God Himself--but if we read it through the lens of how it applies to us, and only how it applies to us, we run the risk of doing violence to the text and grossly misinterpreting the Bible.
So, all that to say that since Bob expressed an interest in only wanting to learn about marriage, he missed the point. Because in our year of studying 1 Thessalonians together we were challenged to do more than just be good spouses. As each couple did homework together each week the focus wasn't inward ("How can we make our marriage better?"). Instead it was outward ("How can we glorify God together and invite non-Christians into our home, minister comfort to someone who is hurting, show respect and appreciation to our pastors, etc...") And most (if not all) of our marriages were better for it.
So, thanks for your insights and opening up this dialogue. Hopefully, I clarified what I meant by my original post. The purpose of the Bible was never to be an index to life issues, and our goal as Christians should be to be completely Bible saturated rather than just schooled in knowledge of topics that are "relevent" to us.
If you (or anyone else reading this) have more questions about this topic, feel free to email me off the blog so we can keep up the dialogue.
I couldn't agree w/ you more Shannon. As Pastor Mike has said before, we must allow God's word to speak through us and not us speaking through God's word. We can't use scripture to teach what we want it to at any given time. I hope your small group opted to continue in a study of the Bible. Our small group continued meeting in our home after P Mike left PCC. We chose the book of Acts to go through. We took turns leading - which meant one couple read through a John MacArthur commentary for that verse or few verses and they also researched it beyond that a bit. It was fantastic. Line by line study of a book of the Bible all with the help of a doctrinally sound pastor's commentary. It was basically like having weekly Bible study with John MacArthur.
This is a great post, Shannon. Until I was under Pastor Mike's teaching, I had always been at churches which held topical sermon series. Needless to say, I wasn't growing much and, since the gospel wasn't correctly addressed, I didn't become a Christian until after college.
Thanks for bringing this topic to light, as it seems fundamental, but, unfortunately, is not at a majority of churches.
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