Wrestling with the Spirit's Role in Interpreting Scripture

I’ve been reading for my Biblical Interpretation class this afternoon and have been excited by, but have also been wrestling with, what it means that the Holy Spirit illuminates Scripture for the Christian.

“The Spirit convinces God’s people of the truth of the biblical message, and then convicts and enables them to live consistently with that truth. The Spirit does not inform us of Scripture’s meaning.” (Biblical Interpretation, Klein, Blombert, Hubbard Jr.)

This makes sense to me and I don’t disagree with it. Though the Spirit could give us supernatural knowledge of what the word “propitiation” means without having to look it up, He rarely if ever does so. No matter how hard we might pray to be able to understand what’s happening in a given story or verse from Scripture, we generally have to do the hard work of looking it up in a commentary or doing some historical research.

I’ve often wondered how, if all Christians are filled with the same Spirit of Jesus Christ (which I do believe), and if the Spirit teaches us the meaning of Scripture, how is it that we come to so many different conclusions and implications based on the same passages of Scripture? How does one congregation in the Bible Belt end up regularly protesting the funerals of soldiers while other groups of Christians choose to love and serve the families of those soldiers? We’re reading the same Bible, aren’t we?

Maybe, in light of what I’ve been wrestling through, Christians can take the same passage of Scripture and do two drastically different things with it because one person has an incredibly incorrect view of that passage’s meaning – regardless of the fact that they’re both filled with the same Spirit.

In my 8 years as a Christian, I have almost always asked the Spirit to “teach” me when I open up the Word, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s what I should be praying for.

Maybe I should be asking the Spirit to reveal the Father to me as I seek to understand Scripture correctly, to increase my passion and conviction that God wants to use the Bible to change my life and the lives of others that He might get more glory, and to help me apply the truths that I discover.

“Though scholars possess an arsenal of methods and techniques with which to decipher the meaning of the biblical texts, interpretation falls short of its true potential without the illumination of the Spirit. Neither methodology nor the Spirit operates in isolation from the other. Neither is sufficient in itself. (emphasis mine)

…Yet in seeking to hear His voice, the interpreter becomes open to true understanding – to allow the text to fulfill God’s purposes for it…We must ask God to assist our study and to speak to us through it so that we might understand his truth and will for our lives.”

I’ll be wrestling and praying that the Spirit might illuminate for me even here and now more of how His ministry works that I might be able to more fully allow Him to use the Word to work in and through me.

-CK

Football, Worship, and Gilbert Brown

Luckily, for the Jews trying to do their best to obey the Law during the time of Alexander the Great, the  NFL and the Green Bay Packers were still thousands of years away from being formed, otherwise they would have been even more distracted. The Israelites would've loved Aaron Rodgers!

But as Greek influence in Israel increased, so did the temptation to let sports get in the way of obedience to the Law and to neglect their worship of God.

Sound familiar?

Often times as I read the Bible, I can't help but identify with the struggles and desires of the Israelites, but I couldn't help but laugh as I was doing my New Testament history reading for class. I feel a little bit better knowing that people have struggled for thousands of years with letting sports affect their relationship with God in some way or another, but it's also convicting.

Just last night I was joking with my wife and a friend that due to NFL games starting at 11 AM out here in a different time zone, I was plotting to find a Saturday night worship service so Sundays could be cleared out for football!

Note taken, God. As I prepare for fantasy football and get more and more excited for football season to begin, the last thing I want is for football to get in the way of my worship of and obedience to God.

Also, I'm glad our sporting events are no longer played in the nude. Imagine Gilbert Brown in nothing but...nevermind. Try not to picture that.

From markandersonprints.com

May God be at the forefront and center of everything that I do!

-CK

A New Wisconsin Tradition

I feel like an outsider here.

When I tell people that I'm from a state school and not a Christian school, reactions range from surprise to raised eye-brows - especially when you say you're from the University of Wisconsin.

I love Madison, and I love the UW. I remember several times, walking home at night or to class in the afternoon and being overwhelmed with joy and gratitude that the Lord had brought me to Madison and that He had been waiting for me there.

I grew up in the church, and who knows how God might have worked in my life had I gone to a different school, but I think I needed the experience of going to Madison to see Christianity in a different light - that it's not a small, exclusive group of Christians who keep to themselves but it can be a community of cheese-eating, beer-drinking, Badger sports-loving people who are crazy about Jesus and bent on living counter-culturally in a place where you might not expect to find God. But it was there, in the heart of a liberal party school, that God found me.

It's not that I have anything against Christian schools - I'm currently attending one. Both state schools and Christian schools have their pros and cons. But going to Madison exposed me to different kinds of people, ideas, and real-life situations that I might not otherwise have gotten. I also got to be a part of sharing the good news of the Gospel with some of the top college students in the world - the next CEOs, politicians, and leaders of our country. I will probably be in the minority of Christian parents who encourage their kids to go to a large, state school.

Who knows, maybe my experience was the exception to the rule, but I will forever look back fondly on my time in Madison and will love many of the close friends that I made there for all of eternity. I'm incredibly grateful for the people that made my experience what it was and that I got to be a part of the University of Wisconsin's newest tradition - men and women who leave a legacy on campus and carry the Gospel to the ends of the Earth!

We're Badgers and we GO!

On Wisconsin!

-CK

Is God Violent?

At times, certainly. For anyone that’s read through the Psalms or parts of the Old Testament, it would be difficult to argue otherwise. But is it fair to portray God as a violent, war-like God whose awful, impending wrath we need to be saved from?

One controversial author in a recent book asked the question this way:

“What gets subtly taught is that Jesus rescues you from God. But what kind of God is that, that we would need to be rescued from this God? How could that God ever be good? How could that God ever be trusted? And how could that ever be good news?”

(Many of you will know who I’m referring to, and while there were certainly many questionable things about this book, I bring up this quote not to promote him or say I agree with him but as an example that there are, in fact, preachers conveying the Gospel in this kind of way.)

My wife and I recently sat through a church service where this kind of doom and gloom message was preached for about an hour, using Psalm 18 as a reference point. It wasn’t all bad and it certainly wasn’t on the same level as many street preachers, but I found myself feeling thoroughly uncomfortable. Not because of simply dealing with the wrathful, violent part of God’s character, but because of what the message was insinuating.

That God is violent, that we’re in the midst of a war (our enemy went largely unnamed), and that we’d better beg Jesus for help to save ourselves from this wrath.

That we need Jesus to save us from God.

Though I think that there are aspects of the above statement that one could argue are true and while I certainly believe in sin, the consequence of sin, God’s holiness and wrath, and the necessity of faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in order to be saved from our sins, communicated poorly, a message on God's wrath can lead to incredibly dangerous conclusions.

I don’t think Scripture conveys God as an old, mean, angry God who begrudgingly created mankind only to hold the threat of torture and wrath over their heads for as long as they live.

Scripture says that he takes no pleasure in the death of a man, that his desire is that all be saved, and that he created a beautiful, perfect world for us to live in and created us in his own image. Jesus, God in the flesh, comes to earth and loves and serves and shows compassion instead of looking to pour out wrath at the slightest misstep. He even dies on a Cross and takes the wrath of the Father upon Himself so that those of us who believe will never have to experience that.

And yes, Jesus will come back, evil will be defeated, and there will be punishment for sin, but that will be a display of God’s justice against all people, powers and authorities that have sinned against God and fallen short of his holiness. Jesus has saved us from our own sin, failures, and shortcomings, not from God himself. God’s wrath is a consequence of sin – not something that he longs to pour out on us.

A God that we need saving from would be the one towering over the Cross and pounding in the final nail himself. A God that is just, gracious, and merciful and that saves us from the sin and the wrath that we're deserving of would take the form of a servant and humbly hang on a Cross. That's the scandal of the Cross, and that's what the preacher's depiction of Jesus in Psalm 18 was missing yesterday.

Psalm 18 is one of my favorite Psalms. The way I read it, it speaks of God’s love and compassion and mercy upon those who follow Him and trust Him, despite even the “worst”, most despicable sins and failings we might commit. And it portrays his power and majesty in response to even the slightest cry for help from those who love him.

I thank God for His grace and mercy, that though I am deserving of God’s wrath and violence, Jesus came to save me - not to save me from God, but to save me from myself and the decisions I’ve made.

Your thoughts?

-CK

The Church Search

Along with moving to a new city comes something I've really never had to do before - searching for a new church. With that comes plenty of excitement surrounding meeting new people, hearing from different kinds of pastors, and the prospect of being involved and seeing God move in new ways.

But there are also a lot of questions.

Should we search for a big church or a small one? Something that's comfortable or takes us out of our comfort zone? Somewhere in the suburbs or in the city? A place where we already know people or one where we can build a different community for ourselves?

And ultimately, how will we know when we've found the "right" church for us?

Yes, all of those little dots are individual churches. So many choices!

I doubt there are right or wrong answers to these questions, and like most things in life, it will probably just come down to making a decision and trusting the Lord to use that decision.

During my time in Madison, I only regularly attended two different churches in almost eight years. One for about a year followed by my eventual home church, Blackhawk, for almost seven years.

It's hard to leave a church that you love and has felt like home for such a long time. It can be even more difficult when looking for a new one to not constantly compare the church you're visiting to the one you just left. And though we don't need to find a new church that's exactly like the one we came from, as I've processed through the things that I appreciated most about Blackhawk Church, here are some of the unique things that I experienced there and will look for as we continue our search.

-A genuine current of humility that runs throughout the whole church. I don't need to see the most flashy preacher or the most hip worship band, but I do hope to find a church with leaders who genuinely love Jesus and don't have to fake that they know everything and have it all together.

-Teachers who pursue learning and encourage a culture of constantly taking God out of the boxes that we have Him in so that our view of Him might increase. (It helps that all of the teachers at Blackhawk are really smart and gifted at teaching!)

-A church focused on the whole Gospel and fostering the coming of the Kingdom in all the different ways that might entail. Personal salvation, restoring and rejuvenating our communities, seeking justice, loving the world - the list goes on.

That's certainly not a comprehensive list and there are obvious non-negotiables that I didn't include, but as we've been in the midst of transition, these are some of the things that I've missed most and will continue to value for a very long time. Thanks, Blackhawk Church, for all the ways that you've helped draw me closer to the Father and have shown me what Gospel-centered ministry looks like!

-CK

God Is Not In a Hurry

I drove to a meeting in the city the other day that should’ve taken about 25 minutes to get to, but as is often the case with the traffic here, it took much longer. Over an hour in fact.

It’s easy when you’re in a new place to blame things like bad traffic and long waits on the city itself. Who designed those stoplights to stay on green for all of 10 seconds and let about four cars through at a time anyway!?

I was in a hurry and was not happy about the snail’s pace at which traffic was moving and quickly got very frustrated. I hate being late to things, just ask my wife!

But as I approached my destination, it became evident that the slow traffic wasn’t the city’s fault or the person who created the timing of the stoplights, but that what looked like a fairly serious (or at least destructive) car accident had occurred at one of the intersections. I quickly repented of my frustration and said a prayer for those involved in the accident.

It feels like I’m in a hurry most of the time and I’m willing to bet that you feel that way too. Our schedules are packed with places to go, people to meet, and things to get accomplished.

In fact, my hurriedness almost deterred me from coming to seminary school.

I’m a strategic person, who aside from the laziness of my Saturday mornings watching college football (okay, and Sunday afternoons during the Packers game), generally tries to fit as much into my daily schedule as possible, not wanting to waste a single second that could be used to be productive. It was hard for me at first to want to “give up” 3-4 years of my life where I could be involved with ministry to go away to school somewhere. I’m in way too much of a hurry.

But God is not in a hurry. His redemptive plans do not depend upon time and He is exceedingly patient. Whether I’m 26 and embark upon full-time ministry or I take a few years to gain the knowledge and skills that will help me to more fully glorify Him and I’m 30 when I begin my ministry, God is not hindered.

Take the Bible, for instance. God knew from the beginning of time that He would one day send Jesus to Earth, but He doesn’t do so until approximately 2000 years after His initial promises to Abraham and the nation of Israel! What patience it would take to see the destructive behavior of His own people yet be able to wait to send Jesus on his rescue mission.

Take it back even further, and according to modern day scientists, the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago. It took close to a billion years before there were even any signs of life on Earth. So God had a majestic plan to create life and people in His own image that would love and glorify Him, yet He had the patience to wait 4.5 billion years after the initial creation of the Earth!

I’m thankful for God’s patience in my own life. As eager as He probably is to send Jesus back to restore all things and live on Earth with us, He is patient, giving me and billions of other people time to respond to the Gospel. Had he come back when I was 2, or 7, or 17 years old, I wouldn’t get to spend eternity with Him.

I’m also thankful that He continues to be patient with me. The human heart changes slowly over a long period of time and mine is certainly no exception. Praise God that he does not flinch at my daily failings and is instead able to see who I will become as I continue to follow Him.

Let me leave you with a quote from Henri Nouwen as he was processing through whether to continue working with students at Harvard Divinity School (his “ministry”) or to join a community that serves adults with disabilities.

“I feel a tension within me. I have only a limited number of years left for active ministry. Why not use them well? Yet one word spoken with a pure heart is worth thousands spoken in a state of spiritual turmoil. Time given to inner renewal is never wasted. God is not in a hurry.”  -The Road to Daybreak

-CK