Context is everything

To grab a few lines of Jesus and drop them down on someone 2,000 years later without first entering into the world in which they first appeared is lethal to the life and vitality and truth of the Bible.-Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis

Have you ever overheard part of a conversation then run off and told someone something based on what you thought you heard only to find out later that that wasn't it at all?

Have you ever started watching a movie in the middle and then get to the end and not understand it at all because you missed something key at the beginning?

Context is so important in these and other aspects of our lives. Why wouldn't it be important in our understanding of the Bible?

Sure, the Bible can bring meaning and enlightenment into our lives wherever we are...whether we are Bible scholars or first time readers. But, to take bits and pieces of the Bible and proclaim them to be speaking truths to us today without also understanding the context in which they were written is only getting part of the picture. The Bible is so much more vibrant when we get "the rest of the story".

One study I read, for instance, discussed the social climate that existed in Jesus' day that would have made the fact that the father of the Prodigal Son ran to his son to greet him more than just a visibly emotional way for him to say "welcome home". In that society, it was humiliating for a person of his age to run...much less to pull up his robes and run! The father risks humiliation to welcome his son home. When we read the story without understanding the full context in which the story was being told, we only get a shallow understanding of this father's actions. And since this father is a representation of our Heavenly Father, we aren't grasping the full depth and breadth of His love for us until we know the full social context of the parable.

In Movement Two of  Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith, Rob Bell gives several wonderful examples of this sort of depth that can be added to the Bible through more thorough understanding of the culture in which the books of the Bible were written. He says,

The Bible originated from real people in real places at real times...To take statements made in a letter from one person living in a real place at a moment in history writing to another person living in a real place out of their context and apply them to today without first understanding their original context sucks the life right out of them.

But, how do we get this additional understanding? I wish I could tell you. But, I have found that Beth Moore breathes life into the scriptures beautifully when she writes a book or study guide*. She will fill in gaps in your knowledge that make Jesus' actions as a Jewish man in a Jewish culture facing Roman occupation so much more meaningful that what it means when read through just the filter of your own modern situation.

Is the story of Jesus' life powerful even if you don't know these things? Sure it is.

But it is so much MORE if you do.

*I recommend Beth Moore's Jesus the One and Only study highly.

The smackdown

The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. We are dealing with somebody we made up. And, if we made him up, then we are in control. And so in passage after passage, we find God reminding people that he is beyond and bigger and more.-Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis

My latest lunchtime reading material is a book by Rob Bell called Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. I came to know Rob Bell through his video series, Nooma, which our Sunday School class uses occasionally during those Sundays we are in between studies. Bell is the founding pastor of Mars Hill in Michigan. His videos are spiritually motivating and thought provoking (and they are visually pleasing, too).

Yesterday was a Nooma Sunday in our class. We watched the latest in the series, Whirlwind. In this installment, Bell discusses the seldom asked question, "Why do bad things happen?" He, as a lot of these sorts of studies do, goes to the book of Job for guidance. Of the 11 minutes in the video, 9 minutes are Bell reciting the questions that God asks of Job after Job has questioned God as to why all the bad stuff has happened to him. You know, the sorts of things like, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?" and "What is the way to the place where lightning is dispersed?" On and on, God points out the length, depth and breadth of his might, power and glory. In our discussions after the video, Steve referred to it as the "smackdown".

Appropriate.

Job's response? He put his hand over his mouth and said no more.