Is the Bible history? If we read the Bible with a linear sense of time past, time present, and time future, if we read the Bible looking only for words God spoke and deeds God did once upon another time, then we may miss God speaking and God acting through the scriptures today. When we read the Bible and place it in the past alone, we may try to trap God between the covers, seeking a simple check-your-brain-at-the-door morality with definitive interpretations and implications. We may even profess, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” Instead of saying like Mary and Isaiah, “Here I am,” and like Samuel, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”
If we only ask, “What happened?” What did God do?” or, “What did God say?” then the few will answer while the many snooze, following along without personal responsibility or accountability, like sheep with the wrong shepherd, as if all is settled. Making the Bible history, a once revealed and never revealing scripture, has the opposite effect on us compared to God’s word and presence in the Bible. In Scripture, God’s Word unsettles. God’s presence shakes the foundations of certainty. When God speaks, no one sleeps.
Instead of asking, “What happened?” when we approach the Bible, a better question is, “What happens?” and instead of “What did God say?” ask, “What is God saying?” For example, in Genesis 1, instead of trying to go backward wondering just how God created the world, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s approach is more biblical, Creation… is not an act that happened once upon a time, once and for ever. The act of bringing the world into existence is a continuous process. God called the world into being, and that call goes on. There is this present moment because God is present. Every instant is an act of creation. A moment is not a terminal but a flash, a signal of Beginning. Time is perpetual innovation, a synonym for continuous creation…
To witness the perpetual marvel of the world’s coming into being is to sense the presence of the Giver in the given, not one who once did but who still does, not one who once spoke but still speaks. When Moses encounters God at the bush that burns but is not consumed, God points toward God’s place above time in what God says to Moses in Exodus 3. “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” God speaks not as if they were old friends from long ago but current companions. Even though Moses was limited by time God points to God’s place beyond time. God didn’t say, “I was,” but “I AM.”
The Bible is as God wishes it to be, for still today, God speaks, acts, calls, commands, heals, teaches, leads, and loves, not once upon a time long ago, but today, here and now. The Bible doesn’t point toward God’s work in history alone but in all times, all places, all people. God still is, and if God is still speaking, then God speaks through the Bible as God spoke through the bush, not in the past but in our presence.
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Books and Blogs by David W. Jones
