Bible reading and prayer

I thought these two topics deserved a little more treatment here.  I was so screwed up by evangelical "quiet time" ideas that it literally took me years to undo the awful bondage of legalism that I lived under.  And, in a lot of ways, I still struggle with that stuff.

When I first started to get the sense that: "read your Bible pray every day and you'll grow, grow, grow" was that wrong way to go, I didn't know where to turn.  So, like a good evangelical, I turned to the final arbiter of truth to find my way: the Bible itself.  This may seem like horribly circular reasoning: studying the Bible to try to figure out if that Bible itself was telling me to read it.  It sounds pretty ridiculous now.  But what else are you supposed to do if you feel like you are in sin of some sort if you don't read your Bible every day?  Maybe the Bible could rescue me from itself.

Well, the first thing I learned was that prayer is about the most important thing you can do as a Christian.  Not in a sense of some sort of obligation or anything, but just from the simple fact that it's the primary way that we relate to God. There are more verses on prayer in the NT than any other spiritual practice that you can think of - and it's not even close.  That deconstructed the first part of the "quiet time" legalism - that Bible reading and prayer were the equal twin heads of the monster of how a believer relates to God.  Actually, prayer is primary above everything else.  Fortunately, I also learned that prayer doesn't have to simply involve me kneeling at the foot of my bed at night.  God is continuously speaking and relating with me in various ways; the question is more if I am paying attention to those, and then what my response to those is in prayer.  So, prayer can be spoken or unspoken, a thought, attitude or action.  It can be in private or with others, in solitude and contemplation, or in the midst of great noise and chaos.   It could be sung or listened to, written or spontaneous, or any number of other things.  Thank God he escaped the box I had him in!

So, when I turned to the Bible to learn about Bible reading, I discovered that there were a few different phrases in the NT that more or less related to my question: phrases like "scripture," "the word of God," and others I can't remember off the top of my head.  And, of course, there was nothing in there on some sort of requirement for reading that I had to meet, either in regular frequency or duration.  The best that I came to was the exhortation that seemed to ring true through both testaments to: "hear the word of the Lord."  A little bit of history was the next key to understanding what that meant for me.

The NT was written in a semi-oral culture (I forget the exact phrase, but it's something along those lines).  Basically, this meant that there were a few who knew how to read and write, and that people communicated that way, but that the vast majority of people lived without literacy.  Thus, for them, this hearing "the word of the Lord" took place with other believers in worship together, from hearing scripture read and preached.  Without getting bogged down in the details, this has been the case for the vast majority of Christians throughout history and around the world.  It has only been in the past few hundred years in some cultures that many Christians lived in literate cultures where regular, personal Bible reading could be expected of them.

So, in this journey out of legalism, I learned a few important things: 

1) What God really wants for people is to hear his word, whether it comes through personal scripture reading, corporate scripture reading, preaching, or whatever.  To denigrate what happens in corporate worship and claim that God requires something extra of believers is to ignore the realities of history, scripture, and what is happening in other cultures around the world.

2) Having scripture available in your own native language and being literate enough to read it is an incredible gift that should not be taken lightly.  It is a gift - and it comes with no requirements.  Gifts are meant to be gratefully enjoyed, and they lose their blessing when they end up becoming a law to be followed.

So, now I try to savor that gift.  Occasionally I feel the old legalism rising up within me, but when I do, I remember the gift and God's grace that comes with it.

Why I am no longer a conservative evangelical: part 4: sin

Along with scripture and its interpretation, this is really one of the key doctrines in Christianity.  After all, sin is really the explanation for why the world is so screwed up.  It's why Jesus had to die, it's why the creation groans for redemption, it's why things like the holocaust happen, and it's why relationships are so broken, among a littany of other ills about the world that could be listed.  So, it's no small undertaking to figure out what sin is and is not and what it all means.

I didn't grow up in a family that talked much about "sin" per se.  My parents taught me important values and ways to relate with other people, but I don't know that they really couched it in the language of "sin."  At least not until my mom underwent a conversion experience of her own.  Then the word started to crop up a lot more, and if you cared about sin at all, you better figure out what was and what wasn't sin.

I think most Christians probably live their lives in between two extremes when it comes to this issue.  One the one side, you have those who find the idea of sin to be pretty antiquated.  It might come up in liturgy, and it's sure out there in some big, awful ways like I mentioned previously, but it doesn't really relate much to the every day lives of people unless you are a racist or murderer.

On the other side you have the legalists and perfectionists, who are probably related to one another but not necessarily the same person.  The legalists try their best to figure out - down to the minutest details - which types of behavior are considered "sin" and which are not.  They then consider any kind of behavior that is even comes close to whatever is considered "sin" to be wrong as well and they do their best not to engage in that either.  Perfectionists are part of that same system, but they believe as well that a person can actually be considered perfect by God while still living on Earth.  In other words, they can achieve a state of sinless perfection (however temporary) through their own efforts and the help of the Holy Spirit.

The worst sermon I ever heard involves legalism like what I have just described.  When I was away at seminary, our family attended a fairly conservative, evangelical Baptist church that was focused on college students and young adults.  One of the pastors was a fairly young guy who had just recently graduated from seminary, and he loved to get up in front of the congregation every Sunday and tell them how his job was pretty much having coffee with people, and how people should come seek him out so he could have coffee with them.  It was enough to make a person nauseous hearing that week after week.  Anyway, this particular Sunday, he was doing his best to relate to the congregation and show us how he was a fallible human being just like us.  And his illustration of choice was that he struggled with drinking too much Mountain Dew.  Apparently, he was exercising regularly, and he had his masturbation, cussing, speeding, and drinking under control, and he was showing up at church every Sunday and tithing his 10%, so pretty much all that was left to fix in his life was drinking too much Mountain Dew.

It's a story that makes me want to do some cussing myself, but only because I can remember being in a very similar position in my early 20s.  I remember thinking, "let's see... I don't do this, or this, or this, or this... What left to I have to change?"  And I remember (to my shame) that I couldn't come up with anything.  If you are pretty sure that sin is all about making personal, moral choices (as defined by your ethnicity, nationality, age, socioeconomic position, and Christian subculture), then its a pretty easy trap to fall into.  But, I had to learn that sin was about more than me and my personal moral choices.

Behind all this lies some important groundwork on what sin is or is not.  Legalists like to focus on behavior, and even a cursory reading of scripture will confirm that there are some actions that are considered to be sin.  But, an even more careful reading of scripture will yield the more important point: that sin involves much more than what a person does or does not do, but that it involves the orientation of his or her heart.  It has to do with broken relationship between God and the whole creation, and the work of Jesus to set that right again.  There are also important social and structural aspects to sin, like some of the "ism's": racism, sexism, etc.  And, I'm pretty sure, sin so permeates everything that it's practically impossible to get away from.  I don't think any one of us could live a moment without sin, because it's a part of us in so many ways.  We could spend the rest of our lives excavating deep down inside our soul and the further we would dig, the more ugly, sinfulness we would encounter.

So, in some ways, sin is a much smaller deal than conservative evangelicals make it out to be, and in some ways it is much more serious than they seem to give it credit for.  It's a smaller deal in that I'm not really sure how much time God wastes on the errant curse word that escapes from my mouth, or the fleeting lustful thought I just had a few seconds ago.  And that really seems to be where most evangelicals spend their time when it comes to sin: worrying about what people say, or their sexual thoughts or fantasies, or whether or not they are drinking, or if they are watching some kind of inappropriate movie or television show, or whatever.  And, I'm pretty sure that God would prefer me to love my wife better, be less angry with my children, care more for the people around me, and maybe even use my time, talents, and energy in ways that benefit those who have been excluded and trampled on in this world.  In that sense, I think it's a much bigger deal than most evangelicals give it credit for.  If you spend your whole life worrying about the minituae of what is sin and what isn't, then I think you miss the chance to engage with it in a deeper way and come to know yourself differently.

Why I am no longer a conservative evangelical: part 2: spiritual practices

This was the first area that began to break down for me in my transition from quasi-fundamentalism to evangelicalism to post-evangelicalism.  I think there are many more areas that are important and that hang together to form a somewhat coherent, self-referential web of identity for evangelicals, including: beliefs about sin, worship practices and theology, cultural engagement (or lack thereof), evangelism, eschatology (a Christian view of the future), hermeneutics (interpretation) and the Bible, and a lot more.  But, where the rubber really meets the road is in personal spiritual practices.

For me, this first was called into question after I had been fired from the first church where I had worked with a college and career group and with children's ministries (the quasi-fundamentalist Baptist church).  I had essentially grown up in this church spiritually since my freshmen year in high school, and had had a conversion experience while attending this church in my sophomore year in high school.  I had immense respect for the senior pastor of this church and had bought into what they were teaching there hook, line, and sinker.

I had ended up believing a lot of screwy things while attending this church.  Not to fault them too much, in that every church probably ends up teaching people a lot of screwy stuff.  There's just no way to avoid it.  Anyway, I essentially believed that every other church in the community was in error in some way (this is why the church gets described as quasi-fundamentalist).  It wasn't a cult or anything, but they held a pretty high view of themselves and their beliefs and practices and managed to find fault in just about every other church around.  So, you could imagine my trepidation in leaving this church and attempting to find somewhere else to worship.  After all, that church had exemplary expository preaching, the exact right mix of hymns and praise songs, and they were biblical when other were not (here's looking at you seeker-sensitive and charismatic churches).

So, imagine my surprise to learn that God was not bound within the walls of that church!  God actually spoke through other preachers and was worshipped in other fellowships as well.  Thus, the first step in the deconstruction of my quasi-fundamentalism began.  This led me to question other things I had been taught in that church as well, and that I have found to be common in contemporary evangelical Christianity.  Primary among those things that were questioned were the means of relating with God that were taught in that church.

If one wants to relate with God, the two primary ways above all through which that takes place is via private scripture reading and through a regular, scheduled daily prayer time.  This has been commonly known as the "quiet time."  The "quiet time" is often suggested as the solution to any number of ills.  Are you feeling far away from God? - maybe you have missed a few too many quiet times.  Need some direction or encouragement? - better have a quiet time.  Falling into sinful patterns of behavior?  - you better get your quiet time act together.  And, if you miss your quiet times, it is often suggested that you are in sin because you are neglecting your relationship with God.*  Not every evangelical takes quite such a legalistic line with quiet times, but the pattern remains with just about every evangelical that I have met that the two primary ways of relating with God come through private scripture reading and prayer, no matter how that is accomplished.

The other unfortunate part of this equation is that anything involving other people is devalued because it doesn't really involve your personal relationship with God.  Thus, participating in corporate worship with others is more of just a given - it doesn't really count for much in your relationship with God.  You could get in trouble with God for not showing up to worship with others, but actually showing up and worshipping didn't really give you any points in your relationship with God.  You just pretty much fulfilled your duty and didn't slide backwards.  This could be said with respect to any number of other practices that involve other people.  They were beneficial, but not personal, so they didn't score you any points.

So, what's the problem with the "quiet time," or with private scripture reading and prayer?  Well, I had to figure this out the hard way.  After leaving the Baptist church, I quickly lost the desire to abide by the old rules I had learned about quiet times.  This was a huge struggle with me for many years.  Could I have a relationship with God that didn't depend on my own efforts to connect with him** each day via these quiet times?  Does God speak apart from prayer and scripture?  Does prayer simply consist of me going to a quiet room and speaking to God either silently or out loud, or could it involve something more?  What if I liked to read the Bible in its original languages, or for an hour once a week instead of 15 minutes per day?  Could God accept these forms of behavior?

Maybe it seems obvious to anyone reading this post, but I had ingested a lot of pretty screwed up thinking that literally took years to undo.  I still struggle with feeling guilty about wondering what God expects out of me, and how I must be letting him down because I don't pray enough or read my Bible enough.  Legalism is a pretty ugly way of life, particularly when it gets mixed up with relationship.  Fortunately, I ended up learning that God is bigger and more loving than whatever I do or don't do, and that he can speak through whatever he feels like.

Besides these things, I also learned about many other ways to relate to God outside of just personal scripture reading and prayer.  Some of them are time-tested means that have been used by countless saints throughout Christian history, like: solitude, fasting, meditation, simplicity, service, worship, and many more.  Reading scripture does not have to look like simply ingesting a chapter from Ephesians from the NIV every morning or evening.  Instead, one could practice Lectio Divina or "dwelling in the word."  I also learned through the help of a spiritual director to look for signs of God's relating with me throughout the day - not just at a certain time.  And, I learned that prayer can be much more than what I first thought it was.  It can involve listening, thinking, singing, and it has an important component that involves other people as well (as does Scripture reading).  It didn't necessarily need to be me in a quiet room by myself.

But, most importantly, I learned that God was not looking for me to always be doing stuff to please him.  That was the worst trap of all in all of the quiet time teaching.  You could read your Bible - or not.  Pray every day - or not.  God wasn't going to let go of you, reject you, or write you off because you did or didn't do those things.  You can't manipulate God by what you do to have him like you more.  Likewise you don't fall away from his love for you if you don't do something.  It just doesn't work that way.  One of the best ways to understand this is to look at the stories in the Old Testament and how God's people related with him there.  That might sound a little strange given the amount of laws in the OT, but just look at Abraham's relationship with God, or Job's relationship with God.  There was no manipulation, or guilt, or prescribed daily rituals.  As a matter of fact, it looks like Job's prescribed daily rituals got blown up and he got to know God in a new way after his life fell apart.  God and those guys just related with each other.  And that involved questioning, doubting, loving, praising, neglecting, hating, and any number of other emotions and practices.  I think the only thing God really doesn't want is apathy - but he can deal with that too :)

Well, I'm sure I left some stuff out, but you probably get the picture.  This was the beginning for me.  And once this began to change, so much more began to change as well.

* I wish I could deal with conservative evangelical views of sin here, but it needs to be saved for another post.

** Sorry for all the "he's" and "him's."  Old habits are hard to break, and I'd rather use personal pronouns for God than impersonal ones.