How Prayer Works

A Thought Prompted by the Book of Tobit

Fairly recently someone asked me if I read the Bible and to my answer of 'Yes' they replied 'Including the Apocrypha?'  Now they were teasing me but it did make me think about why I hadn't read it.  For those of you who don't know the Apocrypha is the bit of the Bible written between the Jewish exile and birth of Jesus which isn't in the Jewish scriptures and was removed from the Bible by the protestant reformers because it appeared have been written in Greek and not Hebrew - although they may have just disagreed with its theology.  I had owned a copy of the Bible with the Apocrypha since the early 1960's when my grandparents bought us all a copy of the brand new translation - The New English Bible - although I suspect this has had something to do with my not reading the Apocrypha as I find the NEB even harder to read than the KJV.

Having armed myself with a more readable translation and an introduction to the Apocrypha I started reading it with no clue to what I would make of it.  So far I have read Tobit and for a story about a devout man blinded by sleeping under a nest of sparrows, a woman who is haunted by a devil that has killed 7 men who married her as soon as they got into the wedding bedroom and the angel Raphael I found at least one thing that made it worth reading.  Raphael has been acting in disguise and towards the end of the story he reveals who is and says:

So now when you (Tobit) and Sarah prayed, it was I who brought and read the record of your prayer before the glory of the Lord, ... God sent me to heal you and Sarah your daughter-in-law. I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord.

(I've left part out or I'd have to include most of the preceding 11 Chapters)

What I want you to notice is that when Raphael brings their prayers before God the only thing God does is to tell Raphael to go and sort it out.  This made me wonder about how often we pray to God about situations when what we should be doing is sorting it out.  I know this isn't always the case, e.g. when praying for a sick friend, but I suspect it is true more than we would like to admit.

So there you have it, a lesson from the Apocrypha.

How to Keep Your Brain With You

Today I came across the following on my friend Stephy's Facebook page which I think sums up what I mean by Don't Leave Your Brain at the Door:

Bertrand Russell’s 10 commandments for 
teachers
 everyone with a brain

The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

In my opinion a good place to start using these rules is in Church and when you read the Bible - you'd be surprised what wonders and truths are to found in the Bible if you just approach it with an open mind.

The Bible - Understanding

First let me apologise for taking so long to finish this series on the Bible. At the beginning of November I had some form of breakdown and although I am now a lot better it is a long recovery period. As a result I not only lost time but I also lost my train of thought and it’s taken me a while to get back to it.

Up until now I have mainly being saying what the Bible isn’t so it is now time for me to say what I actually think about the Bible. I have said that I don’t believe that that the Bible is the Word of God, it isn’t literally true, it isn’t infallible, it isn’t authoritative, that the Old Testament may not be exactly as Jesus knew it and, to top it all, we don’t even have agreement on which books should be in the Bible. So what does that leave me? As with so many issues at the heart of Christianity we have to accept that there is always an element of mystery that we have to accept without being able to fully understand.

What we do know is that the Bible is a collection of writings by various people, using different sources, over a long period of time which, in some mysterious way, has become a whole - telling a single story. Not the story of the writers or their subjects but the story of God and his work in creation and re-creation of the world. What is more God doesn’t ask us to read His story passively but invites us to join Him in this story!

So how do we approach this book that is so central to the Christian faith? First I want to say that there isn’t just one right way of doing this; it has been disappointing to read a book on one way of approaching the Bible only to find it also criticises other, equally valid, approaches. I would suggest that every Christian should take time to read about the Bible finding out as much as you can about who wrote which books, why and what the social setting was at that time. Often there won’t be definitive answers but even reading the different views can be helpful.

Regular (daily?) reading of the Bible is an important part of the Christian life helping us to grow in faith and understanding; I have found it helpful not to follow one scheme all the time but to chop and chop and change to keep it fresh in my mind. All this has to be under the guidance of the Holy Spirit who alone can open up the written words and turn them into God’s Word pointing at Jesus, God Incarnate.

Finally I can witness to the power of God working through the Bible in my own life. For several years my faith was very weak and it was probably just routine that kept me attending church. The odd thing was I knew this and did nothing about until one day I bought the NIV Bible in a Year and started reading the Bible everyday. There was nothing magical about it but the Holy Spirit was able to use that to fan my faith back into life.

No matter what else I may think about the Bible I know that God used it to change my life.

I believe that God the Holy Spirit can speak to us through the Bible in ways we cannot understand or foretell, surprising us and pointing us to Jesus, God in human form, and guiding us to live our lives like His. It is the book God intended us to have telling the story of His relationship with the Jews leading up to the climatic moment of the crucifixion. In view of this I believe that reading and studying the Bible are an important part of the Christian life.

Is The Bible Authoritative?

Is the Bible authoritative; can we use it to guide and direct our lives telling us how to behave?

Earlier in this series I’ve pointed out that I don’t believe that the Bible is The Word of God, I don’t believe it’s literally true or infallible and that there are doubts about whether the Old Testament we use today is identical to the books that Jesus would have called scripture. In light of this you may realise that I have a problem treating the Bible, as it stands, as authoritative.

In the past I have had 2 Timothy 3:16 quoted at me as proof that scripture was authoritative but let’s look at what it actually says:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness

Notice scripture is described as “useful” and not authoritative but, oddly, I think this is only part of the story. To explain I want to look at another, longer passage, from Luke 24.

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’ Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’

There are so many things that can be said about this passage but I want to pick out two important verses: “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” and “‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’” It seems to me that the scriptures came alive when Jesus explained how they pointed to Him and that in that very act the power of the scriptures was released so that Cleopas and his colleague (Mrs Cleopas?) said that their hearts were “burning” while this happened. I believe that something similar should happen to us today if we read the Bible as pointing to Jesus under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

Authoritative? Yes and no. No - in itself the Bible is not authoritative. Yes – by the power of the Holy Spirit the Bible can point us to Jesus who is the ultimate authority. In a way it’s like the bracelets that my children used to wear with WWJD on them; read properly Bible asks us “What Would Jesus Do?”

I believe that God the Holy Spirit can speak to us through the Bible in ways we cannot understand or foretell, surprising us and pointing us to Jesus, God in human form, and guiding us to live our lives like His. It is the book God intended us to have telling the story of His relationship with the Jews leading up to the climatic moment of the crucifixion. In view of this I believe that reading and studying the Bible are an important part of the Christian life.

Jesus Knew the Old Testament

Some years ago, around the time of widespread changes to liturgy, I came across a cartoon of a man in church turning to his neighbour and saying “When we used to say ‘We believe…’ I thought we all believed the same thing but now we say ‘I believe…’ I think we all believe something different.”

The problem with saying Jesus knew the Old Testament is that it didn’t actually exist at the time. The Jews all ‘knew’ which books they regarded as scripture but as it hadn’t been formalised there is more than a suspicion that everyone had different ideas about what they meant. However because ‘everyone knew’ and most of the Jews were still in Palestine there didn’t seem to be any reason to define what they meant.

This all changed after the Second Jewish Revolt against the Romans (or the Third Jewish Revolt depending if another revolt is counted as the second) in AD 132–136 when the Jews were dispersed from Palestine and it became important to define what books ‘everyone knew’ to be scripture. Since this is around 100 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus it is possible that the books Jesus regarded as scripture during his earthly life are not the same as the ones we have in the Old Testament (with or without Apocrypha.) This could explain why Jesus (and Paul) appears to quote scripture that isn’t in the Old Testament, he was quoting what he believed to be scripture but that hasn’t made it into our Bibles!

Now this becomes a big problem if you believe the Bible to be the literal, infallible Word of God as instead of a set text we have something of a more fluid nature. However viewed as a book telling God’s story and the story of his evolving relationship with mankind it doesn’t matter – what matters is the book we have now. Let me explain that point – I believe we have the Bible that God intended us to have; the right books with the right text we need in them (I’m thinking about things like the end of Mark’s Gospel and the story in John’s Gospel of the woman caught in adultery neither of which seem to be original.)

So do we have the Old Testament that Jesus knew? It seems unlikely but it doesn’t matter if we read the Bible as God’s story and not ours.

I believe that God the Holy Spirit can speak to us through the Bible in ways we cannot understand or foretell, surprising us and pointing us to Jesus, God in human form, and guiding us to live our lives like His. It is the book God intended us to have telling the story of His relationship with the Jews leading up to the climatic moment of the crucifixion. In view of this I believe that reading and studying the Bible are an important part of the Christian life.

The Bible - Infallible?

I have noticed that Christians who insist that the Bible is the Literally True Word of God say that the Bible has to be infallible or their interpretation of it falls down; it’s either right or wrong. This is a very modern way of looking at the Bible and of defining truth which is not how the Bible has traditionally been interpreted.

The Bible contains various types of books and they need to be read in different ways. Whilst the history books should be generally accurate (but don’t forget ‘spin’ is not a modern invention) the books of prophecy and poetry have to read in a different way and problems come when people muddle them up – a lot of Genesis is a poetic book about creation and not history. The main issue with reading the Bible is to read it as God’s story and the story of his interaction with mankind, in particular, but not always, the Jews. I know I have said this before but it is something that I have come across many times and, when I remember, I always find it helpful.

If the bible is infallible it shouldn’t, by definition, contradict itself so let’s look at couple of examples where I think it is clear that it does.

Firstly in Ezra 10 you find the Jews who have returned from exile in Babylon expelling the foreign wives they had taken along with any children as they believe that this is what the Law commands them to do. However the Law may not have been as old as they thought and was probably written down during the exile, from earlier oral traditions, and was being written by a people who saw themselves as a persecuted people who were the only ones loyal to God. I had thought that the book of Ruth (and Noah?) was written as a counterblast to this showing that David was descended from a “foreign wife” but modern scholarship has put the Book of Ruth well before the exile and so the Jews should have realised that God was for everyone and not just them. Certainly the Law and the Book of Ruth do not seem to be in agreement.

The other passage I want to look at in Matthew 5 where Jesus gives a series of “You have heard it said… but I say to you…” statements; in particular v 38 to 42.

You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Here Jesus directly contradicts a command given in the Old Testament (Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20 and Deuteronomy 19:21) and replaces it with his law. So who is right? On the face of it they contradict but if you read this as God’s story and of his interaction with mankind you get a different picture of a growing awareness of God’s character. An eye for and eye comes from a time of tribal tensions when if someone from one tribe insulted or injured a member of another tribe they would see it as a matter of tribal honour and not just go after the person concerned but the whole tribe and inflicted considerably more injury than they had suffered. In this context “an eye for an eye” is a moderating influence (to stop the tribes of Israel wiping each other out?) but read as part of God’s story it is a partial revelation and the first step towards Jesus command to “Love your enemy.”

Is the Bible infallible? It doesn’t appear to be because of internal contradictions. However if it is read as God’s story and of his interaction with mankind it becomes the story of how we respond, including getting it wrong, and how God’s revelation is partial until fulfilled in Jesus. At that point, and only then, does it become infallible.

I believe that God the Holy Spirit can speak to us through the Bible in ways we cannot understand or foretell, surprising us and pointing us to Jesus, God in human form, and guiding us to live our lives like His. It tells the story of God’s relationship with the Jews leading up to the climatic moment of the crucifixion. In view of this I believe that reading and studying the Bible are an important part of the Christian life.

The Bible - The Word of God? Update

Since writing about this my thinking has undergone a slight change. The sharp eyed among you may have spotted that might have noticed that my finally paragraph has gained another sentence: “It tells the story of God’s relationship with the Jews leading up to the climatic moment of the crucifixion.”

This comes from a slightly different way of looking at the Bible. We often look at the Old Testament as telling the story of the Jews and the New Testament as telling the story of Jesus, a Jew. However if we look at the Bible as telling God’s Story (something that I have recently found helpful) we in effect have “The Word’s Story” which I think I prefer to The Word of God.

I believe that God the Holy Spirit can speak to us through the Bible in ways we cannot understand or foretell, surprising us and pointing us to Jesus, God in human form, and guiding us to live our lives like His. It tells the story of God’s relationship with the Jews leading up to the climatic moment of the crucifixion. In view of this I believe that reading and studying the Bible are an important part of the Christian life.

The Bible - Literally True?

I have changed the order and decided to tackle literalism next.

One of the things that really annoys me is when people claim that the Bible is literally true – every word directly inspired by God and absolutely correct. It annoys me for many reasons but mainly because a literal reading of the Bible gives rise to 7 day Creationism which, in my opinion, damages the Church’s witness by making us look stupid and old fashioned.

Of course the first question is which Bible? The Jewish, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Slavonic all have different books in the Old Testament so if you say the Bible is literally true you need to say which Bible you mean. Besides what we have are only translations and even then we don’t have a single original text. This in itself puts the idea of a literal Bible on shaky ground.

The really odd thing is that taking the Bible literally is a relatively modern idea that wouldn’t have occurred to earlier generations. As far as I can tell people who unwitting brought this about are John Wycliffe, the Reformers, Robert Raikes – who isn’t as well known today as he should be – and, oddly Islam.

John Wycliffe had the dangerous idea of translating the Bible into English and the translation that bears his name is the forerunner of the King James Bible – the first official translation made available to those who could read. Of course this wasn’t many of the population in the 17th century and this is where Robert Raikes comes into the story as he is regarded as the founder of the Sunday School movement. Now this wasn’t Sunday School as I remember it but it also included teaching all the children to read and write leading to a situation where the common people could increasingly read the Bible.

The Reformers, as I mentioned in looking at the Bible as the Word of God, decided that scripture alone was the guide for the Christian Church (Sola Scriptura) and promptly threw out books in the Old Testament which they didn’t think came up to scratch; Martin Luther even questioned some books in the New Testament. They had placed the Bible at the centre of their faith and encouraged everyone who could to read it in their own language while ignoring the historic tradition of what constituted the Bible.

The Reformers were, generally, educated men who had been taught to read The Bible as literature and to read the truth within the literature not within the words. Let me explain that; in my dictionary there are 4 consecutive words; literal, literary, literate and literature which all stem from the same Latin word ‘littera’ – letter. When the reformers talked about truth in the Bible they, as literate men of letters, were talking about it being literarily true (truth contained within the literature) and not literally true (truth contained within the words.)

I think Islam comes into the picture at this stage as they believe the Koran was literally dictated to Mohammad and, somehow, this idea has moved into Christianity with some Christians believing that the Bible is, in effect, dictated directly by God word for word – despite most of reading a translation.

Since the Enlightenment the Bible has been read as it was a text book full of facts which is not the way the Jews or the Early Church would have read it. The Old Testament is a story about the relationship between God and the Jews; a love story that, in common with a lot of love stories, it is written in poetic, not literal language. The story of the creation, to the Jews, is just that, a story, but one which contained the truth that God created and that He saw that it was good. Talking of the creation stories I have never worked out how the literalist can explain man and woman being created in Genesis 1 and then again in chapter 2.

The Bible should be read as a story which tells God’s story (not ours) and, like the parables of Jesus, isn’t meant to be literal – what would the bride look like in the Song of Solomon if it was meant to literally true! Beside do you really think the Pharisees walked round with planks in their eyes?

I therefore do not believe in the Bible literally but literarily – looking for the truth intended by the original writers to tell God’s story – and using this to guide us on our walk of faith.

I believe that God the Holy Spirit can speak to us through the Bible in ways we cannot understand or foretell, surprising us and pointing us to Jesus, God in human form, and guiding us to live our lives like His. It tells the story of God’s relationship with the Jews leading up to the climatic moment of the crucifixion. In view of this I believe that reading and studying the Bible are an important part of the Christian life.

The Bible - The Word of God?

The first time I heard someone suggest that the Bible isn’t “The Word of God” I thought they were mad, stupid, a heretic or all three. I had been taught in a Baptist Sunday School and subsequently in the church that The Bible was God’s Word and that the Christian faith was based on this and nothing else. However, the people who said that it wasn’t were people I knew and respected so it wasn’t easy to dismiss the idea.

The first point to note is that this isn’t an historic way of describing and looking at the Bible; it only appears in the Protestant church at the time of the reformation. The Synod of Trent, an attempt by the Roman Catholic Church to counter the reformation, had declared that unwritten church traditions had an equal authority with the Bible and, in reaction to this, the reformers declared that the Bible was the only authority. It was probably this that led them to refer to the Bible as “the Word of God” even though the Bible makes no such claims for itself. .

The phrase does appear in the Bible; usually when referring to Spirit inspired prophetic utterances in the Old Testament calling God’s wayward people back to Him. These are specific words from the prophets to God’s people and not a reference to the Old Testament as a whole.

So if the Bible is not the Word of God what is? Take a look at John 1 v1:-

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Notice that “the Word was God.” – nothing more and nothing less.

The in v14 we have:

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only [Son], who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The Word of God is God Himself who became human and walked this planet as the man Jesus. As mind shattering as this is I believe it goes a stage further; if Jesus is the Word of God so is the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. I am not saying that everything a Christian says is God’s Word but there are times when the Holy Spirit works through us to speak God’s Word into a situation.

So is the Bible the Word of God? I don’t think so; I think that is to limit the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the world today.

I believe that God the Holy Spirit can speak to us through the Bible in ways we cannot understand or foretell, surprising us and pointing us to Jesus, God in human form, and guiding us to live our lives like His. In view of this I believe that reading and studying the Bible are an important part of the Christian life.

The Bible 1 – Introduction

I’m not sure why the idea came to me but I felt I ought to blog a bit about what the Bible is and what its rôle is in the journey that we call the Christian life. I hope that means it was the Holy Spirit’s prompting

I am not a theologian or Bible scholar just someone who was brought up in the church and has thought and read about Christianity since his mid teens. As a result these blogs can only be my understanding of what the Bible is at this point in time; I would have written differently in my teens and, I hope, I would write differently if I re-visited the subject in 10 or 20 years time.

The subjects I’m proposing to look at (briefly) are:

1. The Word?
2. Authoritive?
3. Literal?
4. Infallible?
5. Jesus knew the Old Testament
6. Understanding (mystery)

Any other ideas are welcome but I don’t guarantee that I will be capable of including them.

To try and avoid misunderstanding I will end each blog with a statement of why I think the Bible has an important rôle to play in the Christian life. This is not set in stone so it may change.

I believe that God the Holy Spirit can speak to us through the Bible in ways we cannot understand or foretell, surprising us and pointing us to Jesus, God in human form, and guiding us to live our lives like His. In view of this I believe that reading and studying the Bible are an important part of the Christian life.