What's at the center of Christianity? (2 of 3)

This is part 2 of 3 on Christianity’s center. I suggest reading Part 1 before you read this part.

After posting yesterday that we need to depend on what the Bible says about Jesus (and then depend on Jesus for everything) instead of depending on the Bible for everything, I realized that sounds like I don’t take the Bible seriously. I do take all of it quite seriously, and I think we’re lost without it. I think the whole thing from Genesis to Revelation is the Word of God. But I have a beef with what other people sometimes mean when they say the Bible is the “Word of God.”

I never want to jump to conclusions that since the Bible is the Word of God, the Bible is more or less God’s substitute teacher for us. God does have important messages for us in the Bible but to use the Bible to confront other things besides those messages is nonsense.

Imagine a religion where people believed Shakespeare was God. Clearly, even if he’s God, his plays are for entertainment. If you started using them for other purposes, you might end up becoming a cannibal, biting your thumb at people, talking to your friends in early modern English or thinking the best result of a conflict is for everyone to just die. It would be downright crazy.

Yet think about the way we approach the Bible with questions. If we take it as our ultimate authority on all matters, then we end up assuming every possible issue is in there if you just look hard enough.

At The Bible Answer Machine you can do just that, asking any question about anything and getting the Biblical answer. Luckily, it barely works, so not too many people are running their life via the Bible Answer Machine. Still, the perspective of that site is very much in line with how most of us use the Bible.

On the other hand, if Jesus is the center of Christianity, and the Bible is our “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jesus,” then what sort of questions should we be asking it? I would argue for these sorts of questions:

Who is Jesus?
What did Jesus do?
What sorts of principles and values does Jesus emphasize?
How should I respond to Jesus?

Of course, only 12% of the Bible, generously, is directly about Jesus’ life. Much of the Bible is about our faith in Jesus or the history of faith. So when reading those parts, we should ask these sorts of questions:

What are the implications of what Jesus did on earth, in terms of who I am and how I live?
What are the implications of Jesus being God in terms of the way the world is and my role in it?
What are the implications of Jesus being the fulfillment of the Old Testament?
What kind of life should I live, and what should I do, in view of who Jesus is?

Since the Bible is about Jesus, all these questions, and others like them, are questions the Bible is designed to answer, questions that the Bible expects you to ask. The more I read the Bible asking these questions, the more blown away and taken in I am by both the Bible’s message and, more importantly, Jesus of Nazareth himself.

Tomorrow I’ll wrap up what’s going through my head on this topic.

(Click here for part 3.)