Give Me the Bible?

Reflecting on those rare people who use the Bible to inspire rather than beat down

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

(A five-minute read.)

I have an admission. It’s probably going to be a startling and troubling admission coming from a pastor, but it also may not be a surprise to some people who’ve been reading my stuff for a while.

But here’s the admission: I’ve gotten a little cynical about the Bible over the last few years.

Shocked? Worried? Surprised? Upset?

Please don’t misunderstand me. I still excitedly read the Bible every day, and believe—in ways I don’t fully understand—it’s God’s Word for his people and for the world.

But I kind of get triggered when most people talk about the Bible or make a big deal of it.

Some might assume this is because I am a graduate student at one of the world’s greatest universities, where secularism reigns supreme.

But that’s not it. I take no classes, I have no professors, I have very little interaction with people from the university, and my supervisor is a Bible-believing, evangelical Christian.

But my cynicism does stem to some degree from my graduate research—though in a way that also overlaps with my job as a pastor as well.

Because what I’ve found from my research is the same thing I’ve noticed from my pastoring: there are so many people, both historically and in the present, who are so certain about their interpretations of the Bible and are willing to go to war over those interpretations.

They may not go to physical war—though that does happen on rare occasions. But they certainly go to religious and theological war about their interpretations, vilifying and demonizing and excluding those who see things differently.

They, in short, use the Bible as a weapon—abusing people with their dogmatic interpretations of it.

And, though I know it shouldn’t, that has made me cynical about the Bible.

After all, there’s only so much interpretive arrogance one can encounter (which happens to me a lot—since my doctoral research basically looks at how Christians in the nineteenth century related to the Bible) before one gets a little jaded.

Similarly, I struggle with people who seem to be obsessed with the Bible—obsessed with meticulously combing through every nook and cranny to make some sort of novel biblical discovery—but who struggle to relate to other human beings in healthy relational ways.

They are—to play off another common phrase—so biblically minded that they are no relationally good.

All this has led me to be a little skittish around people who make a big deal about the Bible (admittedly, I negatively judge them and generally give them a wide berth—which is an area where I need growth).

So it’s not necessarily that I’m cynical about the Bible (though it’s probably led to that a bit as well), since I still regularly consume it.

It’s that I’ve become cynical about those who make a big deal about the Bible.

I explain all this to give context to what I really want to say in this piece: every once in a while I come across someone whose approach to and excitement for the Bible doesn’t make me cynical but instead inspires me and makes me want to bathe myself in Scripture.

I had that experience a couple weeks ago.

My family and I were driving to Nova Scotia, Canada, making our annual pilgrimage to our favorite place on earth—the property and home my extended family has owned for over 50 years—and something beautiful and profound happened.

With an eight-hour drive in front of me, I loaded up on podcasts and began to imbibe.

Much of what I started listening to however wasn’t hitting the spot and actually did the opposite: it left me feeling discouraged about life and about faith.

So on a whim, I decided to flip to a podcast I’d listened to a handful of times before, though it had been a few years.

And for whatever reason, I instantly felt like I was transported into heavenly places.

The podcast?

“The Bible Project,” with Tim Mackie.

I don’t know why, but the picture Mackie was painting of the Bible—and specifically God’s grand and beautiful story as expressed in the Bible—was so glorious, so beautiful, so magical, so alluring, that I felt enraptured and inspired to participate in it.

And here’s the great irony: the episode was a 60-minute long exposition on the book of Leviticus.

Of all books!

Over the next week or so, whenever I’d find myself driving around town by myself, I’d turn on “The Bible Project” and listen to Mackie wax eloquent about another aspect of the Bible (and usually the Hebrew Bible, since that’s what his PhD is in), talking about God’s redemptive purposes, summed up in Christ, and his invitation to humankind to participate in those redemptive purposes.

I just kept thinking to myself: could the story of Scripture be this beautiful?

Could it really be true?

I really, really, really hope so—because it’s everything my heart longs for.  

As I said, it’s rare for me to come across a pastor, preacher, or teacher who inspires me to immerse myself in Scripture, but that’s exactly what Mackie did—which I think is one of the greatest compliments a biblical expositor can get.

More than dazzling an audience with eloquence, I think the greatest thing a preacher can do is inspire people to get into Scripture (and to get those people into the world to live out Scripture in loving and tangible ways).

So if you’ve never listened to “The Bible Project,” I’d strongly encourage you to check it out.

And I’d also point you to two other people who consistently inspire me to get into Scripture: my good friend, Ty Gibson, and my kind-of-friend-though-more-of-an-acquittance-though-not-really-even-that, N. T. Wright.

Those two, along with Mackie, are probably the only people who consistently inspire me to lose myself in the story of God as found in Scripture, inviting me to explore the nooks and crannies of the Bible in edifying and uplifting ways.

So, yes, give me the Bible.

Just give it to me in a way that inspires me with the grand, beautiful, loving story of God as found in Scripture—and inspires me to explore and participate in that story.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.