How to read “the Book” - Walter Wink The Human Being 16

“I listen intently to the Book. But I do not acquiesce in it. I rail at it. I make accusations. I censure it for endorsing patriarchalism, violence, anti-Judaism, homophobia, and slavery. It rails back at me, accusing me of greed, presumption, narcissism, and cowardice. We wrestle. We roll on the ground, neither of us capitulating, until it wounds my thigh with "new-ancient" words. And the Holy Spirit (the power of transformation) is there the whole time, strengthening us both.

Such wrestling ensures that our pictures of Jesus are not mere repetitions of the prevailing fashion. They can be a groping for plenitude, an attempt to carry on the mission of Jesus, and an effort to transcend the influence of the Domination System. In the end, we may not just be conforming Jesus to ourselves, but in some faint way conforming ourselves to the truth revealed by Jesus.

My deepest interest in encountering Jesus is not to confirm my own prejudices (though I certainly do that), but to be delivered from a stunted soul, a limited mind, and an unjust social order.

No doubt a part of me wants to whittle Jesus down to my size so that I can avoid painful, even costly, change.

But another part of me is exhilarated by the possibility of becoming more human.

So I listen in order to be transformed. Somehow the gospel itself has the power to activate in people that "hunger and thirst for righteousness" of which Matt. 5:6 speaks (whether it is Jesus or someone of the same mind speaking).

There are people who want to be involved in inaugurating God's domination-free order, even if it costs their lives. Respondeo etsi mutabor: I respond though I must change. And in my better moments, I respond in order to change.”

Truth is, had Jesus never lived, we could not have invented him."

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A few interesting notes:

A favorite way of illustrating facts in the Bible is with words used by a native American story-teller. Each time he tells his tribe's story of creation, he begins, "Now I don't know if it happened this way or not, but I know this story is true."

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Somebody said: the Bible is like a lens through which we can see God; still they're telling us that it's important to believe in the lens."

I look at that person and say, "Yeah, that's what I'm trying to tell you. Many Christians have thought that being a Christian meant "believing in the lens" in spite of many reasons for not doing so. For them Christian faith began to mean "believing in the Christian tradition." The lens became the object of belief rather than ‘a way of seeing’, a sacrament, a mediator of the sacred, a means by which God becomes present to us.

The point is, not to believe in the means, but to let it do its work. As I see it, the Bible is not simply a lens through which we see God, but also a sacrament - a means whereby the Spirit of God continues to speak to us to this day.

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Bible is the Word of God. But "Word" is being used here in a special sense, indeed it is being used metaphorically. A word is a means of communication, a means of disclosing oneself, a bridge. To speak of the Bible as "the Word of God" is thus to affirm that it is a means whereby the Spirit continues to speak to us to this day.

In short, as sacrament, the Bible is "Word of God" in its function, not in its origin.