Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 100

What The Golden Rule Does NOT Mean

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“Just as you want others to do for you, do the same for them.”

This is, as Jesus described it, the second greatest commandment. It is, as society knows it, “the golden rule.” (We dislike commandments, so we go with rules which are viewed as somewhat arcane and archaic, but still a necessary evil.) It is a good standard and one the world would be better for if more people obeyed. But, like many of the Bible’s commands, we have ripped the heart out of it.

We have managed to take instruction on how to best love others made ourselves the center of it. We make ourselves the standard of behavior and value. If I like it so must everyone else. If I respond to it so must everyone else. We treat other as if they were just like us because we’re treating them the way we want to be treated!

Here’s where that goes sideways. I am a sarcastic person and blunt to a fault. I speak directly and tell people what I think, often (especially) when I am critical. I also appreciate that kind of communication in return. Don’t beat around the bush, don’t be passive-aggressive, don’t hem and haw. Just lay it on me. I have thick skin and I treat others as if they do, or should, too. The problem is that many or most people do not appreciate by brand of bluntness. It hurts feelings. It is caustic and leaves them feeling insulted.

But I treated them the way I like to be treated! I followed the golden rule! The fault must be theirs. Get thicker skin, people. Learn to speak sarcasm. Stop beating around the bush and get to the point. Toughen up.

I treat people like they are me. I make me the golden standard and hold people to it. And in that I am wrong. I am not the standard – love is. Respect is. Valuing others’ inherent dignity is, and God did not make them like me. I am not the mold of humanity and neither are you.

What we missed in “love your neighbor as yourself” is that the emphasis is on love not on yourself. How can we treat others in a way that honors them, that respects them, that dignifies them and values their opinions and worth?

“Treat others the way you want to be treated” must be understood as “treat others the way they want to be treated.” This is much more difficult. It requires empathy and emotional intelligence – the ability to put ourselves in their lives and minds and feelings, to know what they value. But isn’t that a key element of love?

As a husband I must work to understand my wife’s wishes and values and desired. I must learn what she hears when I speak (they often are not the same thing) and what she receives when I give. As a father I can only truly care for my children when I place myself in their fears and frustrations and concerns and enjoyment and fun. In the workplace I cannot collaborate well with my team if I do understand how they best communicate and receive communication, either positive or critical. The principle holds true in every single relationship.

We must reemphasize love instead of self and others instead of you. Jesus gave us this command so we could reflect Him and His love – selfless, sacrificial, wise, empathetic (remember, He knows our weaknesses and temptations). He knew hearts in part because He was God and inn part because he cared enough to connect His life to theirs.

Asking questions like these will help:

What do they need to feel valued?

What do they hear when I speak?

What way do they best receive criticism and/or praise?

What need do they have that I can meet?

It is so easy to make my preferences into values and then those values into everyone else’s values. So I must consider their values before my own. If we don’t do this we actually tarnish the golden rule.

Uncomfortable But Powerful Change in Missouri

From my 11/13 article at WorldMag.com:

On Monday, University of Missouri system President Timothy Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, from the system’s flagship campus in Columbia, stepped down. Normally this might make minor ripples in the news, but this story made national headlines.

Over the past several months, minority students at the University of Missouri have raised increasing concerns about how they are treated on campus. Reported instances included a swastika smeared on a wall in human feces and a meeting of an African-American student club being interrupted by a drunken white student using racial slurs. Minority students did not feel that Wolfe was responding with the necessary urgency or force, or really responding at all.

What commenced was a student uprising of sorts, but not the burning-cars-and-throwing-stones variety. A respected student began a hunger strike until Wolfe stepped down. Hundreds of other students gathered for peaceful protests on the campus quad. But the tipping point in momentum seemed to happen when minority members of the football team, with the backing of their white coach and athletic director, said they would not participate in any football activities until the president resigned

. . .

It is a shocking result. In athletic terms, players never hold the upper hand in NCAA sports. They are the pawns in whatever game the administrators want to play, and yet here they were joining together in Missouri to sway a state-run institution.

From a broader perspective, the power and influence shown by a collection of college students is stunning. They brought an institution to a halt and captured its attention, and did so with passion, clarity, and dignity. They gained leverage without losing respect.

On the one hand it might be troubling to see how fast and easy it was for a group with momentum and working toward a singular goal to effect massive change. That is a recipe for revolution. It could become a runaway train, an unchecked force. And what if they took aim at a target we hold dear? Such thoughts are very uncomfortable, especially for those of us from the majority culture unaccustomed to having our boat rocked.

On the other hand, what happened at the University of Missouri was a momentous occurrence. Students—including student athletes—stood for a cause. . . . Those students could not be ignored and neither did they commit any actions that would allow the media or the school’s administration to write them off as punk kids or rabble-rousers.

This is how change takes place when those seeking justice are not in a position of power. It is uncomfortable. It is surprising. And it is powerful . . .

Read the full post HERE.

The Most Important Quotes From “The Pastor’s Kid”

The following quotes are the ones I see as most indicative of the message and tone of my book, The Pastor’s Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity. I hope some of them pique your interest, strike a nerve, or rattle your brain and heart a bit.

The life of a PK is complex, occasionally messy, often frustrating, and sometimes downright maddening. It can be a curse and a bane. But being a PK can also be a profound blessing and provide wonderful grounding for a godly life. Often the greatest challenges are the greatest grounding and the biggest falls are the best blessings. This polarity exemplifies the challenge it is to be a PK.

The congregation has more responsibility than it knows to care for and ease the burden of the pastor and his family.

A child doesn’t know the call of his pastor father. All he knows is the effects it has on his life. He doesn’t feel moved to ministry, because he’s not. Yes, it is the call of the child to honor his parents, but that is not the same as a call to vocational ministry.

A PK might hear ten comments or questions on a Sunday from ten different people, each of whom has no intention whatsoever of prodding or snooping. Even the sheer number of people who greet the PK by name is constricting. It all adds up to a feeling of being watched. And watched is what PKs so often do feel, all the time, in everything. It is life in a fishbowl, exposed, on display.

PKs want to be known, not just known of.

We don’t gain relationship with God by osmosis from our dads, regardless of their scriptural studies or dynamic preaching. Our moms’ faithful service can’t do a thing to wash away our sins. No, we need to get to know Jesus and be won by Him.

God’s grace is very big, and there are numerous ministry families that are healthy. But this cannot be assumed. Ministry is a burden on families, one that is worth bearing for many, but a burden nonetheless.

Often the church is not a safe place to have doubts, or at least it doesn’t feel safe.

There is a huge difference between knowledge of biblical facts and confidence in biblical reality.

So often we assume a person has leadership qualities because of the family name or the good looks or the booming voice.

Legalism creates false expectations. It is a false standard of holiness based on some extrabiblical standard, some man-made understanding of morality.

Legalism creates more than just an inability to reach the moral standard. It creates an inability to even figure out what that standard is because it breeds hypocrisy.

There is a straightforward, blunt, in-your-face expectation that PKs will behave “better” than our peers. We will have inherently better judgment, avoid temptations common to our age and gender, express none of our baser thoughts or feelings, and generally reflect positively on our parents and their position. Which is total nonsense.

We don’t drink, we don’t chew, and we don’t go with girls who do. Alcohol is of the Devil. TV rots your brain. Dating is bad, so you should only court—or better yet, have an arranged marriage. Smoking will not only kill you, it will send you to hell. Tattoos are evil. Syncopated rhythm is the gateway for the Devil to enter your body and make you move in sensual ways. If Jesus comes back while you’re watching an R-rated movie, He’ll leave you behind.

Few people can do hypocrisy more smoothly than a PK. On the outside he is devout, polite, and involved. On the inside he is cold, angry, and detached. Or maybe he is simply confused.

I spent all those years knowing all the right answers about everything, convincing everyone I was all good. But at no point did I know what I believed. I knew answers, but not reality. I knew cognitive truth, but not experiential truth.

It is only grace that has restored me. It was the awful power of God’s grace that peeled back layer after layer of hypocrisy, my onion self, to expose my heart to what I knew answers about but truly needed to believe.

A more important identity question faces PKs than “Who am I?” and that is “Who is Jesus?”

Being around Jesus-related teaching, literature, and events all the time makes Jesus rote in the minds and hearts of PKs. Rote is mundane. When Jesus becomes mundane, He ceases being life-changing and life-giving.

Jesus is Dad’s boss. Jesus is the job. Jesus is boring. Jesus is all seriousness and no fun. Jesus is judgmental. Jesus is a religious blowhard. Jesus is legalistic. Jesus is a soft-spoken wimp. Jesus cares about poor people and despises the rich. Jesus cares about rich people and ignores the poor. Jesus is a hard-line teacher with no room for questions or doubts. Jesus is white. And so on. Every one of these descriptions is a reflection of a church culture or a caricature of a single aspect of who Jesus is. But none of them is Jesus.

Dads put on a good face, but most of us spend most of the time scrambling to figure out what it means to be a good father. Without grace from both God and our families, we would be lost.

What the PK needs is parents who not only admit to being sinners but actually admit to sins. It is far more powerful for a child to see his parents admitting, apologizing for, and working to correct real, actual sins.

Shame is guilt compounded so many times over that it becomes unbearable and begins to shape us. It is guilt as an identity, the feeling that I am bad because of all the things I have done.

Sin turns everything on its head; it makes truth look like a lie and makes lies look appealing.

Even as Jesus showed such mercy to the dregs of society, He was hard on one set: the self-righteous prigs who burdened others and withheld grace. These were the people who made it harder for others to draw near to God or know Him.

Christianity is full of mystery and unknown depths because God is deeply mysterious. That’s why this faith is so amazing. If everything can be explained in clear terms, the impression the PK is given is that Christianity is a nicely buttoned-up, black-and-white construct.

Partial forgiveness is not forgiveness at all. In fact, that’s a nonsense phrase because partial forgiveness is false forgiveness.

The pressure of keeping my father in his job by being “submissive” is not something that makes me (or any other PK) want to follow Jesus. The tacit reminder that our rebellion may cost Dad his job is not an expression of grace leading to repentance and restoration. It is a cause for resentment.

Jesus’s grace was so profound that it unlocked hearts, evicted evil, and won sinners to Him time and again.

Jesus walked every mile He has asked me to walk.

Pastors, your children need a parent, not a pastor. They don’t need you to bring the expectations of your job into the home.

I believe in callings. I believe God pulls people toward particular positions and occupations. I do not, however, believe that the pastoral calling is a higher calling than any other. Unique? Yes. But not higher.

Sermons at home are even less effective for PKs than those from the pulpit.

We don’t need a prefab faith but rather the learning and materials to build a strong faith in any context.

The pastor needs to be a parent at all times—in the pulpit, the board room, the office, at the Little League diamond, the dinner table, and his kids’ bedsides. His church and his family both need to see his devotion to parenting, to family.

The church must create an expectation of acceptance. Accept that the pastor is finite and fallible. Accept that he makes mistakes, and accept his admittance of making them. Accept that he does not have time for everyone and he never will. Accept that his family is more important to him than the church members.

New Happy Rant: Ranting about Ranters (and red Starbucks cups), Homeschooling Saves Lives, and College Students Rising Up

We’re settling in with our new co-host, Ronnie Martin, so much so that we decided to tackle some monumental rants in this episode. And we brought it strong. Listen in as we tackle the following:

What’s the deal with people ranting about red cups and ranting about ranting about red cups. We respond by ranting about ranting about ranting about red cups.
We read through some iTunes reviews and discover that Homeschooling saves lives.
We discuss the uprising at the University of Missouri and, being white and reformed(ish) tell you precisely how to feel and think about it.

And, of course, we want to highlight our sponsor – Lemon Street Mobile. Lemon Street Mobile is a local business run by an awesome guy named Brian who takes fantastic care of customers and also uses his business as an opportunity to reach his community for Jesus. Now he’s taking the business national and wants you to be part of it. He offers a sweet protection plan for phones (including repair and/or replacement options) for just $5/month and a $69 deductible. That’s less than 1/2 the price of the ones offered by service providers. AND for podcast listeners Brian is offering a 10% discount of that killer price All you have to do is use promo code HAPPYRANT at checkout. Visit Lemstreet.com. Not only this he does trade-ins. Use the same code at checkout to get a 10% increase on your phone’s trade-in value.

We also want to thank Resonate Recordings, the fine folks who make us sound listenable. If you are looking for great people to help your church put out recorded sermon audio or help you with a podcast they’re your people. They’ve also recently put out a couple albums for artists Whitney Bozarth and Adrian Mathenia and you can listen to those for free.

EPISODE #62

When We Monetize Mission

I come from the “follow your dreams” generation, the generation that rejects the notion of grinding away at one career until retirement. Many of us work for larger organizations, but even as we do we work for ourselves too. We contribute to the company as the company contributes to us. It will be loyal to us so long as we uphold our end and we’ll be loyal to it so long as it meets our needs and desires. It’s a tenuously symbiotic relationship.

But when our dreams find friction with our employer then we break ranks. We find a new symbiotic “host organism”. We branch out and start something. We chase our dreams because they are driving, defining factor in our lives.

Somewhere along the way “chase your dreams” naturally and logically became “get paid for your dreams.” The ideal existence, then, is to fulfill one’s passions in the most lucrative way possible – thus the flood of entrepreneurship, creative endeavors, start-ups, platform building, and self-employment. We want to do what we love when we love to do it and get paid for it. And there’s nothing wrong with this. So much good has come from this – art, creativity, productivity, genius, inventions, good causes, people helped. When this balance is found it’s beautiful.

It gets weird, though, when this mercenary mindset merges with ministry oriented dreams. Every cause becomes a non-profit business. Every speaker and writer is a sole-proprietor seeking to build a platform and define their personal brand. And of course there are a thousand “branding experts” waiting to take their money to help them make more money. People doing gospel work end up making decisions based as much on business principles as ministry impact. We want to do good and get paid for it.

My aim is not to condemn or judge the motives of Christian entrepreneurs but rather to draw attention to the tension and oddity that exists when we take good causes and biblical messages and monetize them. Being fairly compensated for good work is right. Always demanding or expecting compensation is not. Determining when each is right is not a simple matter with clear lines. Here are some questions to consider as you chase your dreams and consider turning your cause into a 403-B.

What if not every dream is a job?

Maybe it’s a hobby. Maybe it’s a volunteer effort. Maybe someone else has already made a job out of it and you can contribute in some way. Maybe your church or another ministry is turning your dream into reality and you can be part of it.

Isn’t it worth doing good for free?

Good is still good and the gospel is still the gospel even if we can’t make money off it. If we find ourselves hesitating to start a venture, write an article, create art, or help someone until we can earn a buck we’ve gone far astray.

Can you be generous and ask “How can I get paid for this?”

I am not entirely sure. I think you can be generous in other things. But if we are looking to get paid we are not looking to give. We’re looking for an exchange of goods or services not a sacrifice of self.

Is something worth doing something if we’re not in charge?

Starters have a hard time joining “someone else’s” cause. It’s much easier for them to build something than join it. But if someone else is doing the thing you’re passionate about and doing it well might it be worth being part of the work? The “I must do it my way” mindset might be a hindrance to both your dream and doing good.

Is getting paid for my dreams what God had in mind?

The concept of pursuing income for our dreams seems to have taken a bizarre prosperity gospel shape. God gave me a dream, therefore it is good, ergo I should pursue it for money. Really? What if that’s not what God had in mind? What if my dream is not God’s dream for me? Where was income promised for doing ministry in the Bible? It’s certainly not wrong, but if we base the pursuit of good dreams on the level of potential income we are decidedly divergent from the Bible.

The crux of the issue is motivation. What drives us in our pursuit of dreams? Is it to use the passions and gifts Gd has uniquely instilled in us to do work that honors Him by helping others [full stop]? OR is it to use the gifts God has uniquely instilled in us to do good work by helping others so long as it is semi (or extremely) lucrative?

I wrestle with this every week. I think about platform and content marketing and books sales. I also think about readers and truth and tone and connecting with people. I think about page views and site traffic, but I also think about individuals reading my work. The questions I come back to are these: Would I do this for free and would I do it like this for free? For me, if answered honestly, these filter out the greed and pride that seep in.

All of us in the dream pursuing, entrepreneurial, self-employed, cause-driven world need to check our motives. We need to gauge our actions against standards and filter out our pride and self-service because those traits will kill our service to God and others.

Bringing Out the Worst in Sports

From my 11/6 article at WorldMag.com:

The essence of sports is the pursuit of excellence expressed as competition. Athletes compete against opponents alongside teammates and under the guidance of coaches. They compete on behalf of one another, themselves, and their fans. Athletes push to master their minds, bodies, and an array of skills.

The benefits of sports are not found in isolation or in short order. They are communal, a group of people training, practicing, and working together toward a common goal and against a common opponent. This takes time. Goals take time to achieve. Obstacles are not quickly overcome. That’s part of the gratification—the effort and progress over an entire season. Sports teaches so many lessons about sacrifice, perseverance, depending on and defending others, setting and pursuing goals, having fun, and so much more.

But you know what is diametrically opposed to of all this? Those one-day fantasy sports leagues with the obnoxiously ubiquitous ads on TV during every sporting event, with DraftKings and FanDuel being the most prevalent. They promise instant gratification and financial reward. They emphasize how you don’t have to be committed or stick with anything. It’s so easy and with such a huge chance for payout too.

Everything sports offers, one-day fantasy leagues undermine. They are quintessential American indulgence—isolated, instantaneous, easy, selfish.

. . .

It would be unfair to say there is no skill involved. Top players can win enormous sums of money. The problem is that only a tiny percentage of players are actually winners. Most lose, and if they do win they lose their winnings in short order. Sounds very much like a casino . . .

Activities like one-day fantasy sports leagues take all that is good about sports and competition, strip the value, and leave only the vice. Instead of community and teamwork, faceless participants compete in cyberspace against strangers. Instead of working together toward a common goal, the only goal is financial gain. Instead of seeking to better one’s self and pursuing something bigger than one’s self, participants only chase the almighty dollar. Even the seemingly noble effort to improve one’s abilities only benefits one person, and in benefiting it feeds on the losses of others.

True competition can and should be done for the glory of God, but this kind of mutation of it makes that nearly impossible. We can make anything greedy, even the noblest opportunities. . .

Read the full post HERE.

If Paul Were Persecuted Like an American

Imagine if Paul faced the same persecution we do – or should I say “persecution”. What id he had to deal with the same daily difficulties you and I do? How could he have managed? It would change scripture just a bit. Here’s a sampling. It’s much more applicable.

2 Corinthians 11:24-28 ARSV  (American Revised Suburban Version)

Five times I received verbally abusive tweets.

Three times I was handed a latte in a red cup.

Once I was misrepresented on a blog.

Three times I was flicked off for my fish bumper sticker.

I have spent a night and a day

At my daughter’s dance recitals where they played secular music.

On frequent efforts to “be a witness”, I faced

dangers from disinterested people,

dangers from the gay agenda,

dangers from Obama supporters,

dangers from Catholics (and Episcopalians),

dangers in my upper middle class subdivision,

dangers in the carpool lane,

dangers on Facebook,

and dangers among my cubicle mates;

Holiday instead of Christmas,

many liberal talk shows at night, legalized marijuana and cussing pastors,

often without my evangelical echo chamber, ill at ease around non-Christians, and lacking my Kerusso T-shirt.

Not to mention other things, there is the daily pressure on me: my care for my Instagram account.

Win a Signed Copy of “Help My Unbelief”

Who doesn’t like the chance to win free stuff? Well, here’s your chance. I am giving away three signed copies of my latest book, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith. You can find out more about the book HERE if you are interested. You can also check out 20 of the most important quotes from the book.

Winners will be selected on November 17, and the books will be mailed within two business days.

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Help My Unbelief
by Barnabas Piper

Giveaway ends November 17, 2015.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

New Happy Rant: Gospel-Centered Laws, Whiney White Guy Music, and Why Coaches Won;t take Risks

Well, Stephen is gone, but we soldier on. In this episode we introduce our new co-host, RONNIE J.MARTIN! Will he be with us for all eternity or for only a few weeks? That is as much up to Stephen’s whims as it is anything else. But in the mean time we will continue spitting hot takes like it’s our job. In this episode we rant (in a slightly less home school manner) about the following.

Why do “gospel-centered” people make so many laws about their gospel?
As a 30-something white guy, why am I expected to like whiney depressive music by guys like Ryan Adams?
What’s with professional sports coaches refusing to try new things or take risks?

And, of course, we want to highlight our sponsor – Lemon Street Mobile. Lemon Street Mobile is a local business run by an awesome guy named Brian who takes fantastic care of customers and also uses his business as an opportunity to reach his community for Jesus. Now he’s taking the business national and wants you to be part of it. He offers a sweet protection plan for phones (including repair and/or replacement options) for just $5/month and a $69 deductible. That’s less than 1/2 the price of the ones offered by service providers. AND for podcast listeners Brian is offering a 10% discount of that killer price All you have to do is use promo code HAPPYRANT at checkout. Visit Lemstreet.com. Not only this he does trade-ins. Use the same code at checkout to get a 10% increase on your phone’s trade-in value.

We also want to thank Resonate Recordings, the fine folks who make us sound listenable. If you are looking for great people to help your church put out recorded sermon audio or help you with a podcast they’re your people. They’ve also recently put out a couple albums for artists Whitney Bozarth and Adrian Mathenia and you can listen to those for free.

To listen to the podcast you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
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Listen using the player below.

Reading the Bible to Meet God

In my book Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith I wrote about how important it is to read the Bible to meet God, to read it relationally and as sustenance for the soul. Often we simply read it for information, to follow a rule, or as an academic pursuit. Reading to meet God sounds like a great idea and the ideal for a Christian, but how do we actually do it? How can we change our mind-sets to view Scripture as a living, rich revelation instead of a religious tome of instructions and history? Here are seven ways.

Read the whole story.

Many of us learned to read God’s Word from children’s Bible storybooks made up of individual stories—Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, Jonah and the big fish (of course it was Jonah and the whale back then), the boy’s five loaves and two fish, and so on. We learned to look for stories, snippets of Scripture. And usually these came with a moral lesson about trusting God, making the right decisions, being honest, serving others, or something else.

The other main way we heard the Bible taught was character centric, like a series of mini-bios. We studied the lives of Abraham, Joseph, Ruth, Saul, Solomon, Esther, Peter, and Paul. We were taught about their shortcomings and their faithfulness. We learned that they were examples for us to follow, just not perfect ones.

While we gleaned a lot of truth from these lessons, the teaching method actually misguided us. We learned to read the Scripture similar to how we skim through a magazine: a story here, skip the boring bits, a profile there, and some good info throughout if you know where to look. But the Bible is not like that at all. It is a narrative made up of different parts. It must be read in full.

We must learn to read the whole story of Scripture from beginning to end. The Bible is God’s story of redemption, the revelation of Himself and His plan for the world. All those stories and all those characters are parts of the whole, characters in the drama, but none of them are the point. They all point to the point: Jesus Christ came, lived a perfect life, died an innocent death to save sinners and kill death and sin, and will one day return to right all the wrongs. Sure, some parts of the Bible are confusing and dry, but they fit in the whole too. And when we understand that there is a whole narrative, even those parts start to make sense in their context.

Reading the Bible this way may seem like a tall task, especially if you haven’t been in the habit of reading it much at all. If so, start small, bit by bit. Take notes. Ask questions. In the next appendix, I recommend several books, some of which can help explain how it all fits together. Piece by piece, little by little, you’ll begin to see the big story of the Bible and it will become so much greater than you thought possible in Sunday school.

Look for Jesus.

It was the advice that helped change my perspective on Scripture and the advice I would suggest to any Christian who finds the Bible to be stale and lifeless: look for Jesus. So much of what we miss in Scripture is because we look for characters and themes and lessons other than Jesus. But He is both the primary character and the primary plotline of Scripture. To look for anything else first is to rip out the heart of God’s Word. Because Jesus, as John 1 tells us, is the Word made flesh.

Every page of Scripture points to Jesus. It all fits together to point to Him and to glorify Him and depict Him and reveal Him. In the first point I said to read the whole story. Well, that’s because the whole story is the story of the need for Jesus, the promise of Jesus, the life of Jesus, the work of Jesus, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and ultimately the victory of Jesus.

When we read the whole story and see Jesus throughout the pages, we see Him afresh, not as whatever preconceived notions we had. We see Him as more than a teacher, more than a healer, more than a model character. We see the breadth of Jesus from the man who sat with children and loved widows to the sword-wielding King of justice and glory.

When you see Jesus, get to know Him.

Observations about Jesus are the stuff of sermons and Sunday school lessons and Christian books like this one. But in the Bible we have the means to get to know Jesus. We have the means to move past observation and awareness and fact finding to a real, personal connection with Him. How? Like we do in any relationship.

Make it a regular thing. Go back to those Gospels over and over again. God’s word is inexhaustible and can always deepen your understanding and belief. We don’t limit ourselves in conversation with our loved ones because we “talked to them already” and neither should we limit ourselves in the reading of the Bible because we “read it already.” It is as dynamic and deep, in fact even deeper, than any person we seek to know.

Ask questions of Jesus in Scripture. Ask about His character. Ask about His values. Ask about His life. Ask about His priorities. Ask about His weaknesses. And let Scripture respond to you. The answers you find will lead you to want to know more, to be closer, to be with Jesus. And the more we are with Him, the more we will find ourselves wanting to and learning to be like Him.

Don’t shy away from the hard stuff.

One of the most significant weaknesses of most Bible teaching in the traditional church is the void where all the hard stuff in the Bible happens. Not until I got to college did I ever hear mention of the rape of Dinah or God commanding the destruction of entire people groups. Nobody talked about the flood except as a means to a rainbow. Nobody answered questions about where Cain found his wife if his parents were the first people ever. Nobody explained what it meant for an omnipotent, omniscient God to relent and change His mind or how He could harden Pharaoh’s heart, then judge him for rebellion. What in the world are we supposed to do with that stuff?

Well, I can tell you what we’re not supposed to do: ignore it. Pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t delete it from the Bible. If God hadn’t wanted us to see it, know it, and think on it, He wouldn’t have filled up His self-revelation with it.

We must read it and consider it. We must be willing to wrestle with it. We have to look at it not as a bunch of isolated incidents and texts that might be problematic but as part of the whole. If we are going to read the whole story and look for how it all points to Jesus, then we need to see how the hard stuff fits in. It likely isn’t a straight-line connection, but each difficult passage connects to something else that connects to something that points to Jesus. It is all there on purpose because it all paints a picture of God.

Just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean we can reject it. As we looked at throughout the book, thinking that way is to determine who God is based on our own intellectual abilities. We don’t get to do that. We must see what Scripture says, look at it in context, see it as part of the whole, and recognize that it is all part of a portrait of God that expands far beyond our minds and hearts.

Start small, perhaps with children’s books, and mix in other resources too.

Sola Scriptura: by Scripture alone—one of the foundational doctrines of Protestant Christianity. It means that our only holy book is the Bible, our only word of God is the Bible, our only doctrine is found in the Bible. The Bible is the foundation on which our faith is built. But it does not mean we read only the Bible. In fact, other books by godly writers can serve to open up our minds and hearts to Scripture.

Some of the best materials are those written for children. (I know, I know; I pointed out the weaknesses in children’s Bibles earlier.) In appendix 2, I recommend two children’s Bible storybooks in particular, The Big Picture Story Bible and The Jesus Storybook Bible. After graduating from college and gaining a theology degree, after working in Christian publishing for several years and reading mountains of biblical teaching books, I still find these the freshest, best entry points into the message of the Bible. They make it fun by bringing out the story, and they make their points with clarity and gentleness. I am sure other similar resources are out there as well. They make an ideal starting point to begin enjoying Scripture and piecing together its message.

Additional resources and books will be helpful too. Some will prefer commentaries; others will gravitate to Bible study curriculum. Each serves a great purpose in helping us dig in and understand more. Don’t shy away from them. Find the ones that fit your learning style and take full advantage of them. The thing to always remember is to not let the study of the Bible become the end. Knowledge of Scripture can be an idol all by itself, but it must always be a means to closeness to God.

Don’t read the Bible as a set of rules but rather as a book.

So many Christians lose touch with the heart of Scripture because for so long they have approached it under the rule of law. “You must read your Bible every day.” Reading your Bible every day is a great thing, but within its very pages it describes how the law introduces us to sin. When we make rules out of things, we tend to take the life out of them, no matter how good they are.

We need to approach the Bible as a book. After all, that is the form in which God gave it to us. For those who love to read, this means conscientiously moving it to the category of great literature in our minds, a great story, deep philosophy, a rich biography. When we think of it that way, we will see different things in its pages, yes, but more importantly we will practically be able to overcome the greatest mental block to reading it at all.

For those who do not enjoy reading, I wonder how you made it all the way to this point in a book! More seriously, though, think of the Bible the same way but find a different format in which to consume it. Reading is not for everyone, but the Bible is. So find a way to eat up this wonderful story, teaching, and biography. Audio Bibles are great tools. They may be the perfect answer for you or they may be the gateway you need to get into the written text. Either way, avail yourself of them!

Regardless of how you do it, though, no matter the medium, distance yourself from the legalistic guilt of reading the Bible as law. That robs it of its wonder and steals the joy from your heart. It is so rich and deep; read it to discover and wonder!

Pray for the Spirit’s help.

We have a helper and a teacher. Jesus even said we would be better off if He left because this helper is so amazing. Really? We’re better off without Jesus on earth with us? Yes! Because the Holy Spirit dwells in every Christian, moving us toward being more like Jesus, teaching our minds, and softening and convicting our hearts.

Only by the Spirit will anything I just wrote about reading the Bible matter at all. If you seek to do any of this in your own power, you will dry up, run out of motivation, get bored, become arrogant, lose faith, get confused, and turn from God. It is inevitable. The Bible is not a normal book. It is a book spoken out by God to be interpreted to our hearts by God the Spirit. It is a supernatural book.

To connect with God through His Word is a miracle of the Spirit and not something that can be formulated. All the suggestions I just made are not the equation that adds up to relationship with God. They are ingredients that must be present, but only the Spirit can mix and prepare them in such a way that we see God in His glory and are moved to follow and honor Him. So beg the Spirit to open your eyes when you read. Plead with the Spirit to give you the inspiration to read. And He will. Maybe not in a flash, but He will. And as you delve deeper into God’s Word, you will find that the Spirit and God’s message in the Bible will change you.

This post is modified from the appendix in  Help My Unbelief.