Many of my generation grew up being wary of those who see every story of the Bible as being a picture of Jesus.
We were warned by our teachers that the practice of typology (i.e. seeing people and things as a foreshadowing of Christ), if not kept in tight check, could be more about our imagination than about the Bible itself.
We learned from church history about ancient Christians like Origen who found hidden allegorical meanings in Scripture that robbed inspired words of their historical and grammatical meanings. We heard examples of how spiritualizing the text could result in wild and crazy ideas.
In the process, with or without such concerns, many of us learned to read the Bible through the eyes of whatever particular church, denomination, or theology we either inherited or chose at some point to be a part of. We read the Bible the way our group read it.
Group think meant that some of us learned to read the Bible as a book of absolute truths that mean what we saw in them. Some saw it as a handbook for social action. Some saw it as being ancient tradition that needs to be reinterpreted through the enlightened eyes of science. Some of us saw it as a good book that finds its highest ground in the golden rule of doing to others as we would have them do to us. Still others learned to read the Bible like a spiritual horoscope of daily devotional impressions, hopes, and dreams; or like our own personal letter from God as if every promise in the book is mine, or like our owner’s manual; or like a handbook for solving problems; or primarily as our own apocalyptic window into the events of the last days.
More than a few of us found ourselves and our spiritual world defined by what our group believed, didn’t believe, did, or didn’t do. Our Bible meant what it meant to us… until we suddenly found ourselves in a global community, overwhelmed with information that earlier generations didn’t have to deal with, and trying to answer questions that our own group couldn’t answer and therefore didn’t want us to ask—about the Bible, ourselves, or those who disagree with our take on what is really true, good, beautiful, loving, and worth living for.
Somewhere along the line, some of us found ourselves looking again at the Bible and realizing that, just like the first disciples of Jesus, there is a basic perspective that gives meaning to everything else—not by turning our imaginations loose—but by letting what is most certain, most true, most good, most important, and most life-changing about the Bible give us a way of putting everything else in perspective.
In that light, I’d like to get your impressions on a 3 minute and 50 second YouTube video by Tim Keller (Pastor of New York City’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church). See if you agree with me that, while being far more expansive than the old typology we learned to be wary of, Keller’s approach is, in its own way, far more measured, particular, and inspiring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
In case you are not able to access the link, Keller asks and answers– in a most inspiring way– what is the Bible basically about? Is it about us and what we are supposed to do? Or is it, first and foremost, about Jesus and what he has done for us?
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