God speaks to us through many means, not merely the Bible. God speaks to me through other people. I have realized that I am very much influenced by those people whom I admire and like. I conform myself to them. I hear wisdom and truth from them. God speaks truth into our lives through the lives of men just as he shines light into our lives through the Scriptures. Are you aware of what God is saying to you through his servants? Do you believe we can see truth? Do you believe there are people wiser than you in the world? Are you listening to their lives and conforming to their examples?
God speaks through the events of our lives; what we might call coincidence. Are you observing the little things that happen in your life and straining to hear God’s voice in the whisper of wind? In the way things work out or don’t work out?
God speaks truth through the written words of godly men, past and present. Do you seek to hear God speaking through men past, their words, wisdom, and practical insight into truth revealed in their writings? I must believe that they heard truth from God just as he speaks to me, and it would be irreverent of me to ignore such beacons of light that he provides me with.
God reveals himself through beauty and creation. Every little piece of creation reveals some aspect or fragment or splinter of God’s energies. God cannot create without somehow leaving a little flicker of himself, some little insight into his nature and character. Just as everything I create reflects me, so on a much grander scale God’s creation reflects him. It cannot be otherwise.
God can even speak within my own heart and mind. He can guide my thoughts gently and place various thoughts together in my mind at the right moments. He will guide us into all truth and work a work of light right within us. And while we may not be able to speak “Thus saith the Lord,” somehow I know from experience that I can know with assurance that indeed God has spoken in my heart.
Another one of God’s means or channels of revelation to us is the Bible. Perhaps the one most familiar (or the only one ever thought abou) to many. It is easy to see God’s gift of Scripture as a static set of facts and a system of doctrines and theology. This is dangerous.
To do so, as my brother Sam points out, is to adhere to a cold, stale, unchanging system of theology; and as I would like to point out, a cold, stale, boxed in God. God’s essence cannot be comprehended or touched in any way. He is the holy one, the one completely set apart and completely other. To imagine that anyone could encase him or define him or set boundaries for him… well. God is an ever progressive revelation, not a fact or set of doctrines or knowledge to know. To see scripture as static is to see God as static. To see Scripture as something that can be merely read and understood is to see God as someone who can be merely seen and understood. While God is unchanging, we are constantly changing our understanding and revelation of him. Thus, a view of static revelation instead of progressive revelation is demeaning, perhaps blasphemous to essence and energies of God.
What I coin ‘Bible Worship’ results from this view of God and Scripture. It refuses to recognize that God speaks in a multiplicity of ways and claims the Bible as the sole and static revelation of God. This ‘Bible worship,’ oddly enough, tends to lead to what I see as a trivialization of the power of the Scriptures. Because it sees the Bible as the sole and static source of God’s revelation, it tends to perceive Scripture not as a channel through which God pours out his revelation, but as an unchanging construct of doctrines and theology. Thus there is no need for other means of revelation within this framework. In fact, there really isn’t much of a need for revelation at all, as long as one understands the doctrines and theology revealed by the Scriptures. But God never meant the Bible to be a static construct to be understood, he meant it as a channel through which he could pour his revelation. A valuable and precious channel added to the many others we have surrounding us. God gives revelation in so many ways and through so many means. Are you listening, or are you trying to understand a static construct? Quit worshipping your dang Bible and listen to God.
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Unfortunately this will probably seen as controversial.
Jesus warned the Pharisees about it though. I read something yesterday that nicely aligns w/ this, I think: We tend to think about Jesus ‘being in Heaven’ when, in reality, the opposite is true. Which is why He could say that even now, we represent and partake in His Kingdom here, on earth, when we abide in Him. Historically, it has been pointed out that with the ‘desanctification’ if you will, of the priestly office, (at the Reformation) it was merely replaced with the sanctification of the theologian or seminarian. It does seem that some worship due only to God has been refocused on Sacred Scripture. Good post.