The Bible is the world’s best selling book! We own tons of them. Most folks that will read this will most likely own more than one Bible. Why do we own so many Bibles but read so little of it? Unlike other books that we often read, the Bible needs special care in reading. Below is a small bibliography that can help you get the help you may need to read the text of Scripture itself for both enjoyment and spiritual life. Living in God’s Grand Narrative as his new creation brings new meaning to why we live. Just move your mouse over the book to see more information about it.

• The Art of Reading Scripture
• The Beauty Behind the Mask: Rediscovering the Books of the Bible
• The Bible: A History: The Making and Impact of the Bible
• The Bible As Literature: An Introduction
• The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity (The Bible in Early Christianity , So3)
• Birth of the New Testament
• The Book: A History of the Bible
• Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts
• The Cambridge History of the Bible
• The Canon of Scripture
• The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance
• Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
• Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Second Edition (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities)
• The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations
• The Formation of Christian Biblical Canon: Revised and Expanded Edition
• A History of the Bible as Literature
• How the Bible Became a Book: The Amazing Story Behind the All-Time Best-Seller
• How the Bible Came to Be
• How the Bible Was Built
• How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book)
• How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour
• How We Got the Bible,
• The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford Bible Series)
• The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible: An Introduction to the History of the Bible
• The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and Development of the Bible
• How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
• The Literary Guide to the Bible
• The Literature and Meaning of Scripture
• The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture
• The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text & Canon
• The Making of the New Testament Documents
• Making Sense of the Bible: Literary Type As an Approach to Understanding
• The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning
• The New Testament in Its Literary Environment
• The New Testament in Literary Criticism (Library of Literary Criticism)
• The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism
• The Origin of the Bible
• The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible (Oxford Illustrated Histories)
• The Septuagint (Understanding the Bible and Its World)
• Studies in Early Christianity

Have fun reading and learning!

It’s been a week since Jerry Falwell went off into the next phase of life. Some thoughts have been roaming around about his life. I did and do not ascribe to his form of fundamentalist theology. Having said that, his life and ministry seem to me to try and bring together what is often a dualism of Church and State. As a pastor, he entered into the realm of politics where the church has been so silent while the American state has become secularized.

He has passed and followed a rather contemporary cultural practice of leaving his ministry to sons. As I understand it, one son will become pastor of the church in Lynchburg while the other will assume duties as the head of the university. This is just another incident in which father-son inheritance in ministry secession has occurred. I am sure there are many. Some come to mind: Oral to Richard Roberts, Robert Sr. to Robert Jr. Schuller, Billy to Franklyn Graham, John to Joel Osteen. I wonder why that is.

I also wonder why there are not more pastors involved in political situation at the local, state, and national level. The belief of the founding fathers that there should be no regulated church by the state has turned into a dualism of Church and State. There is now a deep ugly ditch between the Church and the State.

I’m not advocating that we return to a former state of being that caused our forefathers to seek church freedom. In England today, N. T. Wright, who is Bishop of Durham, is also a member of the British Parliament and actually attends session of the Parliament while remaining a pastor of his local church in Durham. I realize that is an English model.

What I wonder is: what if pastors of USAmerican churches entered the realm of politics and remained pastors of their congregations at the same time. How would that change the ugly ditch between Church and State?

Well, Dr. Jerry Falwell has gone on to his life after death awaiting his life after life after death. I wonder what he thinks about where he is and if it is what he thought and taught it would be. I wonder if he could return what he would believe and teach differently. I wonder!

Want a good read? Want to see how folks act and react to the Christian message of the Resurrection? Here is an article written by N. T. Wright for washingtonpost.com. Read the short article and then read comments. It’s an education in itself. Everyone thinks they are right!

It is easy and dangerous to distort the telling of the story of Jesus. Within American Conservative Christianity we have come to think of Jesus in one of two ways. First, an embodiment of divinity like a computer avatar rather than the unique incarnate son. We think of his death as an example of great sacrifice and his resurrection becomes a way of thinking and talking about God’s continuing work in the present world. Second, we think in a dualistic way. Jesus is someone who is from the outside of our world, a superman of sorts who has come from another sphere to tell us that our true home is someplace else, namely heaven. His coming was to teach us how to follow him to that distant and unearthly destination.

There is something wrong with that picture. Neither way of thinking comes close to the Story of Jesus as presented in the Gospels of the New Testament. American Conservative Christianity, served up on a regular basis in America and exported to the global world, simply ignores what the Bible actually says about Jesus in favor another story that has been created out of bits and pieces of perception and refracted through various biblical passage which misreads the text of the Biblical Story.

This brand of Christianity passes itself off as authentic because it believes the items that have come to be thought of as orthodox, namely incarnation, atonement, resurrection, spirit, and second coming. But, what has happen is that all these beliefs have been joined together into the wrong narrative sorta like a kid who is drawing a “draw by numbers” picture but decides to follow another sequence rather than following the numbers. The result of this activity: of not following the right sequence, is drawing a picture other than the one intended. If you put all the elements of Conservative Christianity within a story of a deist God who sent his superman son to undergo some redemptive violence in order to satisfy his primal vengeance, then raise this dead body to life in order to show followers a way back to heaven and away from earth only to come again and snatch them away from earth as earth finally rolls toward rotting in hell. If that is the narrative that one sets incarnation, atonement, resurrection, spirit, and second coming into, then that production produces a violently distorted parody of biblical Christianity. Alas, this is the story of American Conservative Christianity.

So What Biblical Story?
A fresh way of understanding the Story of Scripture is to understand it as a story where humankind, though created good, became radically flawed by sin. Into this flawed world, Jesus came as the long awaited King of the Jews, who themselves had been the redemptive promise of God for some two thousands years. Jesus came to do what Israel had failed to do. Jesus took on the weight of sin and exhausted it, not so those following him could escape this world because it was bad or evil, but because of his resurrection could become part of the project of new creation, a new heaven and earth, or one might say a new garden. This project started after the first created beings chose to follow themselves and not God. The second coming then, is not a day in which Jesus will snatch away his bride from this evil earth and take them to heaven forever, but a time when the rule of Jesus which was already established in his first coming: birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, will finally be established in peace and justice in a transformed heaven and earth. It is this Biblical narrative that should replace the present conservative Christian narrative, so that this narrative can make a fresh impact on the world in this present time. N. T. Wright was influencial in these thoughts.

What if John when he was writing his Gospel was saying by his opening words, “In the beginning,” that his book was a Genesis 1 sorta thing, a rewriting of the story of Genesis 1 with a new Adam (although he doesn’t use the term). What if we read John in that way? Of course, Genesis 1 is about creation given to us in an account of “days” not necessarily twenty-four hour days. On the sixth day, God created humankind in his image. In John’s Gospel on the sixth day, Jesus appears before Pilate and Pilate says, “Behold the man.” Could we understand that as John’s way of saying here is the true human being giving his life for the world God created. Remember, at the conclusion of the sixth day in Genesis, God finished all the work of creation. On the cross Jesus says, “It is finished!” On the seventh day God rested. In the tomb on the sixth day Jesus rested from all the work of recreation.

O Sabbath rest by Calvary,
     O calm of tomb below,
Where the grave-clothes and the spices
     cradle him we did not know!
Rest you well, beloved Jesus,
     Caesar’s Lord and Israel’s King,
In the brooding of the Spirit,
     in the darkness of the spring. (N. T. Wright)

On the first day of the new week, resurrection, a new creation.

What if we read John and understood John that way and became part of that story instead of the story that so many of us find ourselves living in.

What if…

Year 2003, Month 1 almost done. Time marches on. We don’t think about how quickly it passes. A friend of mine died last month and another this month and my sister is dying of cancer. Death all around has caused me again to stop and reflect on time and how precious little of it we have to be about the call that God has placed in each of our lives. It reminds me of the days right after my open-heart surgery 4 years ago. Time is precious, a look at the trees (which we have lots of here in the Seattle area), the smell of fresh air, the face of my wife, the faces of my kids (older but still my kids), reading a book for pleasure, eating banana sandwiches (these days with Splenda), watching a movie with my son, etc. Time is precious. Tim and Leann have met the baby of Bethlehem in all his splendor and glory.

Here is a prayer that I have abducted from N.T. Wright and edited. It is as easy as breathing in (first line) and breathing out (second line). Actually prayer should be as effortless as breathing. This prayer reminds me of that point. It is constructed to be prayed together as a community or as an individual.

Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth
Set up your Kingdom in our midst (my life).

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of he Living God
Have mercy. Save me from the idols of our/my making.

Holy Spirit, Breath of the Living God
Renew us/me and through us/me renew your world.

I was warmed by the allelon gathering in Eagle, ID. It is good and right to discover others on a similar journey who are not separated by age, creed, race, etc., but find a certain wholeness in diversity. Uniformity sucks! Big Time!! Unity and diversity is the underpinnings of life together. May it be so and may God bless our lives together as we learn to allelon each other for the sake of his world.