Ever meet a Bible-thumper? I have. In my first encounter, I was late getting to my history class and noticed a friend, also late, being cornered by a real
"Jesus freak." It looked as if he was being hit over the head with a Bible, and as I approached closer that was exactly what was happening.
   "Don't you know that the Bible says you have to be born again!" Thump. "Jesus said, ?I am the Way, the Truth, the Life.'" Thump, Thump. One verse after another spewed forth. I got my first Bible lesson ever. I also got my first
taste of what a terrible weapon the Bible can be when it is misused.
   I love the Bible, but Bible-thumpers make me mad. I've met far too many Bible-toting Christians who know chapter and verse but treat the Bible as if it were a religious hobbyhorse, riding on it but not living by it.
   One of the worst sins today is bibliolatry: revering the Bible as if it were a paper Pope. Fundamentalists or not, too many Christians revere the Bible more than the author of it.
   Recently a good friend of mine, a youth worker, along with her pastor, were getting beat up by a contentious group in their church all because they were not
"biblical enough." Though the youth group was flourishing and lives were being turned around not enough was being done to teach them "the basics." So with Bible in hand, these zealots launched a foray of "e-missives" on the
Internet and managed to stir up quite an uproar. My friends kept quiet, only replying to those who came directly to them. But the Bible-vanguard chose the
tactic of subversion, ignoring Jesus' command to speak directly in love (Matthew 18:15) as well as his prayer to seek unity (John 17: 20-23). In the name of being "biblical," these self-appointed Inquisitors almost managed to rip apart my friend's church.
   If Bible-thumping is scary so is its twin opposite: Bible-bashing. Bible-bashers also take the Bible into their own hands. Though less inclined to beat people up with it, they spend their efforts cutting and splicing, dissecting and deconstructing it. According to these folks, the Bible needs to be liberated from an encrusted, archaic shell of cultural prejudice, and unscientific presuppositions.. Utilizing the latest historical-critical methods, they see the Bible as little more than a document, albeit a useful one, which is errant and relative. For them, the Bible may be a guiding light, but not a unique authority. It must be judged by norms deemed relevant today.
   Such "liberated" Christians, no longer bound by outmoded doctrines or tradition, assert new interpretations: Paul was gay, Mary a prostitute, Jesus a wondering cynic or mystic, not unlike other Mediterranean gurus of his day. Not only this, these Christian revisionists claim that both the Gospel writers and Jesus himself were mistaken?at least the Jesus as recorded by bigoted, Jewish males who inadvertently distorted his message. Firing off their own barrage of arguments, they tell us that the Bible's message, along with its meaning, is essentially one that we give to it. Any "word" we hear in it must ring true to our own experience.
   While engaged in doctoral studies, I often heard budding scholars poke fun at the Bible. "How could Jesus speak to a deaf and dumb spirit and then the spirit
talk back to him?" or, "Paul must have been schizoid: he tells women to shut up when in church on the one hand and then commends them for preaching the gospel
while at his side." I found such talk not only offensive, but bewildering. Did these theological upstarts know the context of Jesus' or Paul's words? Rarely.
   Often they hardly even knew where they could be found.
The basis on which we come to the Bible or to Jesus is absolutely critical. If we come to the Bible with our own agendas or with norms received elsewhere (be it science or philosophy or politics or sociology), then neither the Bible nor Jesus possesses authority. They are held captive by our experience, our logic, and our value-schemes. However, if we come to the Bible with the readiness to
have our assumptions and norms transformed (and yes, "judged"), then Christ can freely direct our lives. Jesus and his kingdom, not doctrine, or holiness, or justice, or equality, or peace, or inclusion, or any other ideal must set our agenda.
   In the Bible, God's reveals himself. God's revelation is an event where Christ addresses, encounters, redeems, and transforms us. It is not a repository of "truths" and "facts" necessary for us to formulate disputable doctrines and detailed theologies. God's Word is "living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword" (Heb. 4:12-13), a power able to transform and equip us (2 Timothy 3:15-17). It is not something to analyze and argue over, but to respond to with our hearts and wills.
   While on the road to Emmaus, after his resurrection, Jesus broke bread with his disciples. Their eyes were finally opened. Amazed, they asked each other, "Were
not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" When Jesus appeared to them again, "he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures" (Luke 24). Only when the living Jesus speaks to us can our hearts and minds be opened to the Truth. Jesus alone is the key to the Bible?for everything that took place prior to his coming pointed to him, and all that followed afterward pointed back to him.
Perhaps this is why as far as we know Jesus never wrote a thing, with the exception of scribbling something in the sand that would soon be erased (John 8:8). True, Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom. He had something
important to say. Yet his message was not a "teaching," but the news that God is on the march, remaking and realigning our twisted worlds into life-giving deeds
of divine mercy and justice. This is why God sent us his Word in person. Through his very life, Jesus demonstrated the presence of God's rulership in the world. And it was this Word, this deed, which wrote itself first and foremost on the personalities of his disciples, who through the Holy Spirit became bearers of God's new thing.
   The apostle Paul, often the brunt of criticism and misunderstanding, boasted not in his knowledge of the Scriptures, but in knowing Christ, "and him crucified"
(1 Corinthians 2:2). He did not worry whether his churches were "biblical" or "relevant," but whether they were faithful, showing themselves to be "letters from Christ...written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" (2 Cor. 3: 1-3).
   What Bible-thumpers and Bible-bashers alike fail to realize is that the Scriptures retell God's history?a story that beckons us to obedience and change. The Bible, therefore, must not be a sounding board for our ideas, nor is it a divine data bank that provides answers to our questions. As French social philosopher Jacques Ellul reminds us, "Faith consists in heeding God's questions
and risking ourselves in the answers that we have to give." The Bible should "read" and interpret and question us, for it is we, not the prophets of old, who are in the dark.
   Sadly, too many of us either imprison Christ between the pages of our Bibles, bound by the letter (and our favorite modern translation), or we yank him out of
God's history altogether by turning him into some image or construction of our own making, exalting and trumpeting our own unique brand of spirituality. In
either case, Christ is not Lord and his word cannot speak.
Obscure passages aside, few of us want to be held accountable to any word other than our own. In fact, we want the last word, not because we don't understand,
but because we refuse to surrender our autonomous wills and obey. Kierkegaard once wrote, "What is the New Testament? A handbook for those who are to be
sacrificed." This is what we don't want to do. We're happy to receive a "biblical insight" but not the sword that cuts and convicts. To quote Kierkegaard again:
  Can't we be honest for once! We have become such   experts at cunningly shoving   one layer after another, one interpretation after another, between the Word and our lives (like a boy putting padding under his pants when he is about to get a spanking). And we then allow this preoccupation to swell to such profundity that we never come to look at our lives in the mirror. All this  interpreting and re-interpreting is but a defense against God's Word.
  It is all too easy to understand the requirements contained in God's Word ("Give all your goods to the poor." "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the left." "Count it sheer joy when you meet various temptations" etc.). The most ignorant, poor creature cannot honestly deny being able to understand God's requirements. But it is tough on the flesh to will to understand it and to then act accordingly. Herein lies the problem. It is not a question of interpretation, but action.