Jesus Brand Spirituality by Ken Wilson

Author:Ken Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2012-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

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BIBLICAL DIMENSION

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7

A STORY RUNS THROUGH IT

One of the reasons people are nervous about reading the Bible, let alone allowing the message of the Bible into their inner world to shape the whole of life, is the glibness with which Christians say things like, “If everyone just followed God’s plan in the Bible, everything would be fine.”

The thought of everyone doing any one thing makes me nervous. Mobs are formed by everyone doing one thing. Everyone doing any one thing doesn’t leave much room for error. Whatever one thing they understand themselves to be doing really needs to be precisely the thing that ought to be done.

The Bible refers to its own words as “sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow” (Heb. 4:12 NKJV). Picture the entire human race picking up the sharpest conceivable scalpel and seeking to make the world a better place by using it with the best of intentions.

I don’t know about you, but I would take cover.

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I think Jesus would advise us to take cover too. Jesus warned against people using the scalpel to take a speck of sawdust out of their brother’s eye (Luke 6:41–42). He was used to the disciples approaching him with the best of intentions, their vision obscured by an ophthalmic plank of their own, armed with a rusty set of tweezers to go after the speck of dust in his eye.

FUNDAMENTALLY, THE BIBLE IS THE LOVE STORY OF GOD IN SEARCH OF HUMANITY.

Let us all blink a few times and then relax.

Anything understood to be inspired by God should be understood as very powerful. Anything that is very powerful should be handled with caution.

What is the Bible fundamentally? Not what does the Bible include or contain, but what is it? Is it a book we can pick up and use as though it were a patently obvious instruction manual for life? The Bible: How to Be and What to Do in Every Situation. Is the Bible God’s plan for humanity in the way that an engineering blueprint is a plan for the construction of a building?

No. The Bible includes plans and instructions, but it is not fundamentally that.

I’m trying to be careful here, because this next part is important. I hope I’m not wrong. I may be, so please discern for yourself whether or not this make sense.

Fundamentally, the Bible is the love story of God in search of humanity. The Bible is not God’s plan so much as it is God’s plot.

A plan is a limited way to guide us as we encounter the incredible complexities of life. A plan is a static thing. In the military, a battle plan must often be thrown out once the battle is actually engaged.

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A plot, however, is part of something living, adaptable, and richly textured: a story. A plot is the unfolding of a story. It can speak to a wide variety of people in a wide variety of circumstances. It can speak across the ages.

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