I propose the following red herring: "if we read any book by any author the way the churches read the Bible we would be hauled to court for infringing on the immaterial rights of the author."
Of course: the bible is in the public domain, no copyrights exist maintained by the original writers or the editing bodies that put it all together in the volume of a minilibrary that it is. So this status of being ancient and seemingly having no-one to claim the usual rights that fill the frontispice of every modern day book with die-hard affirmations of being the intellectual property of the author, is not prevalent when it comes to the one most important book ever written.
(Every modern bible translation as such is copyrighted by the producers but that is for the translation only and not for the original.)
Whereas every other work is to be seen as a whole, read as a whole and considered to have an underlaying masterplan and perspective that runs through the entire work, the bible has fallen into the office shredder of theologians and church potentates and is mostly presented in what can only be considered "confetti fashion". Confetti is snippets of multicolored paper thrown at parties and weddings and is great fun in that arena. But when it is the general feeding pattern of the church it has lost all content of being funny. Then it is a poison. How?
The issue of authorship
It is not any old book. It is not merely a set of varying different literary works collected willy nilly. It is not a librarians whimsy private collection of old time favorites. It makes entirely different claims for itself. The authors, or rather the secretaries that they were, were conscious of writing "what no eye has ever before seen or ear heard", they knew that they were on duty to the Word of God, they also knew that the very text they wrote could always be treated as mere human words and then they would lead to a situation where people would twist and pervert what was written. But they would do so to harm their soul.
Now by example: Hemingway could not care less whether you believe what he wrote, nor will he lay your life in the balance against his writings. God does.
Adding or subtracting from the words written was warned against as it would have dire consequences. The very continuation of your name and place in the eternal roll call is connected to your respecting what has been written as being on another level than the ordinary millions of books written. See to it that you read and divide the word correctly or you endanger your eternal life. There is no escape from the wrath of God if we ignore the promises made through the work of God as it is written.
The veracity of the author is testified to in a myriad of ways. The things written, although by no means saying everything we could know, are sufficient that whosoever believes what was written will have the very life of which the texts truly speak. To read, to listen and to receive what is read by faith, is intricately connected to the fact that the words given by the Spirit of God must also be explained by the same Spirit. While on earth Jesus told the disciples that he would send them a Helper. This helper would take the very words of Jesus and make them known, understood and applied to their lives!
The bible is the one book in the universe which has an Author who for all time, will be operative along with his work, in them who approach it reverently, and in full respect of the Author. To treat it as if it was merely in the domain of human literature is therefore a fundamental mistake. A mistake which almost guarantees that you will miss the point. You may know the words, but their meaning will pass you by. That happens to numerous scholars and theologians worldwide. They think they can discern the spores of the common fern but fail to see the elephants in broad daylight. Knowing the very words does not mean that you understand their meaning. You may know the words but they were intended to make you know, love and follow the Word. They were not written to give you an academic degree in biblical studies.
The one who has the copyright and owns the immaterial values of the Word is the Holy Spirit of God. No less.. Fiddle with that copyright and you will end up with a personal disaster rolling through time into eternity. The way the word is treated in christianity is disrespectful to the Spirit of the living God. As being one of the holy three that means that you not only quench the Spirit but you also deny the same Spirit and treating the Bible in this manner will be the begining to the end of the churches that do so. God can and will frequently take his light from the lampstands.
The cohesion of the Scriptures
How will anyone ever have the slightest possibility of knowing what to do with the excerpt delivered to them unless they have understood that the Scriptures have an inner frame work that is both back bone and firm foundation on which all the other parts are fastened, each in its own place?
It was not written in fragments, it was written to tell a complete story, to paint a picture of how things began and tell how they will end. The fact that this writing is done over long peeiod of time by different people in different settings in no way detracts from the masterplan, since that is designed not on earth but from above. To know the end you must begin at the beginning. To understand the beginning you must learn to see its logical end. Alfa and Omega, beginning and end, are linked by passages along the way that in various ways illuminate and explain each other by comparison and by allowing them to be studied in their rightful place in the whole. Wrest the fragment from the frame and it dies the way a piece of a body torn from the living will die soon after separation.
No wonder that the scriptures themselves insist that there is one foundation for the word of God and for the church of God. The same foundation for both: that of the prophets and the apostles. And what was the connecting rod between them? The prophets of old foretold what the apostles looked back on and explained. They all had one mission: to proclaim Jesus the Messiah as the Saviour of the world. That indeed is the purpose of the scriptures; to make Him known. Many things can be studied in scriptures and many different approaches are indeed used. But they all have one dangerous thing in common. They may never find the Word in the words. Which makes them useless in sight of the one issue to which this revelation is adressed: the sin of mankind and the saving act of God.
When the Church denies what scripture claims it has no way of understanding it's mission in the world. If the Bible is not given credit for what itself claims about itself and if its cohesion is ignored then the end result is a box of confetti to be strewn to the wind. And it is not confetti that feeds the bride to be.
Growing to full stature of maturity
It needs no nobel-prize quality of study to realize that a confetti bible will prevent the church from understanding "the whole counsel of God". (Or if you prefer: whole purpose..) That whole counsel contains bits of the confetti that are deselected by those who prefer this or that aspect of the confetti, never asking what it was that was cut up into smithereens in the first place. Preaching on 'a text' while disregarding its place in the whole is tantamount to cutting up the bible along the lines of how the horse gallop jolts the rider. To preach on a text without placing it back into its context in the whole council of God empties it of most of that which qualifies it for teaching.
Compare it to what would happen if you wanted to learn how to drive a car and said I can do it the way we read the bible. A verse here and a verse there. First thumb-verse gives: "Pull the hand brake" (not knowing that this is for parking purposes only) and next thumb-verse gives "Release the clutch slowly with the gear lever in 1st gear." Predictably the brakepads will smoke and smoulder within minutes. You simply cannot brake your way out of an uphill parking. But watch how the churches do: they have next to no idea of the whole so they systematically misunderstand and missaply the details.
The selections of what they preach are done along lines other than those of the scriptures. The scriptures in their entirety are designed to make men mature in Christ, to equip all believers for every good work, works beforehand prepared by God that we should walk in them. The average church has no intention whatsoever in that direction. They never find that bit of confetti which tells them what the bits and pieces are from or for.
The habit of man is to avoid being reminded of sin, righteousness and judgment. These we prefer to remain untroubled about. Which is exactly the opposite of what the Holy Spirit programmed the scriptures to do. So we have religion without holiness, spirituality without the Spirit of God and the spouting of words far distanced from the Word of God.
Feeding sweets only the eaters become lopsided and thwarted in growth, unfit for the task of the kingdom. Accustomed to sweetmeats only the coming of Christ will be a monumental shock to their system. Avoiding all chastisement and justifying and defending what the scriptures call sin is possible because the whole story is never told. Whatever men and women of the day don't like to hear is left on the shelf. Preaching the word of God degenerates over short time to maintaining the organisation. And rarely does anyone dare to risk his or her standing by saying: "Thus says the Lord".
Think not that such work will receive the approval of the Lord, no not for one moment. "Will the son of Man find faith when he comes?" There is considerable doubt in the mind of Christ about that. And the reason is brightly clear from the way we deal with his own comission to us: "Go into the world and proclaim the good news of the Kingdom, baptize all nations and teach them to keep all that I have commanded you."
The confetti-bible church baptizes but is unable to teach. And how it imagines that it's baptisms can be of any use unless it does all the other work as well is a well hidden mystery. Faith comes not by baptism, it precedes it. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Baptism without faith is null and void.
"I have not withheld anything of the whole counsel (purpose and will) of God, and am blameless of your blood." Paul the apostle would have a thing or two to say about the so called christian religion of the day. You want to know what it would be?
I just told you.
Teddy Donobauer, Doncaster Nov 30th 2017
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