In the Sydney Morning Herald today:
Did it occur to anyone that the decline in people reading the Bible might have something to do with it being a lousy read ("Confession: fewer know their Bible", September 10)?
The Bible says lots of things, few of them clearly, all of them open to different interpretations, and many of them irrelevant to a post-industrial world. Add to this that it is a series of compounded translations many times removed from the original, and no doubt some translations have been corrupted through the ages by self-interested power-mongers.
Ian Waters Surry Hills
And here's Greg Clarke weighing in.
3 comments:
What I love about this is how many objections Ian Waters has managed to cram into one letter: lack of clarity, hermeneutical relativism, cultural irrelevance, translational infidelity (perhaps his most ignorant assertion), and a hermeneutic of suspicion to boot.
Thanks for the link to Greg Clarke.
What concerns me more is the ignorance of the Bible in churches.
I teach the Bible in a public high school. It's not just "Scripture lessons." We actually let the Bible stand on its own. We get through more Bible in one week in a class of un-churched teenagers than many local churches get in months. Why is this?
Christians aren’t dumb. Are we starving the sheep because we are afraid of offending outsiders? We need churches that teach all of the Bible to all of the people. It really isn't that hard. People are so hungry for it that Hollywood has filled the gap. The Bible isn't much more complex than a long-running prime-time show if we spend the time on it. But most Christians don't even have a basic framework so they get sucked into things like "The Shed." Church is so dumbed down.
The Bible only seems irrelevant because we don't teach it. When we actually teach its narratives (and not just systematic theology), it creates its own relevance. The narratives themselves (obviously with some helpful exposition) communicate the systematics in context, and very powerfully.
I love watching my students put the pieces together. Just teach the book and watch people change. As we teach it, they learn how to read it, and then interpret the world by it.
I wonder what would make it not lousy?
Post a Comment