Over the last couple of weeks I have posted some quotations, from Eugene Peterson's book A Long Obedience In The Same Direction, about reading the bible slowly. In this final post consider what he writes about reading the bible Obediently.
Obediently? We aren’t used to this. We have grown up in a culture that urges us to take charge of our own lives. We are introduced to thousands of books which we are trained to use – look up information, acquire skills, master knowledge, divert ourselves…whatever. But use? Well-meaning people have told us that the Bible is useful, and so we pick it up. We adapt, edit, sift, summarize. We then use whatever seems useful and apply it in our circumstances however we see fit. We take charge of the Bible, using it as a toolbox to repair our lives or as a guidebook for getting what we want or as an inspirational tract to enliven a dull day.
But we aren’t smart enough to do that; nor can we be trusted to do that. The Author of the book is writing us into his book, we aren’t writing him into ours. We find ourselves in the book as followers of Jesus. Jesus calls us to follow him and we obey – or we do not. This is an immense world of God’s salvation that we are entering; we don’t know enough to ‘apply’ anything. Our task is to obey, believingly, trustingly obey. Simply obey.
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