This morning I caught the Metrolink train from Laguna Niguel
to Union Station and then to Pasadena via the Goldline. Why make the trek?
Because a trip like this helps to air out my head and because I can spend most
of the day in the Fuller bookstore and library. What a wonderful gift to live
so close to this world-renowned seminary. It’s one resource I make
full use of as long as I live this close (so also Chris Pritchett was kind
enough to give me his Metrolink pass which still has a few trips available…what a gift in
the days of high gas prices).
This week I ordered 20 copies of the book I mentioned on
Sunday, A Walk Through the Bible by Lesslie Newbigin. In case you don’t know,
Newbigin served for most of his life as a missionary in India and then he
returned to the UK in retirement only to discover a society that was deeply
resistant to the Gospel and far more multi-cultural than he had imagined. Ever
the missionary, Newbigin began to engage the Western world with the truth of
the Gospel in the same way he sought to unleash that truth in India. Maybe the
idea doesn’t sound so strange in 2008 but it was pretty radical for the 1980s.
For much of our history we in the West have assumed that we already have the Gospel
of Jesus and our job is to send missionaries somewhere “overseas” to
“Christianize” heathen populations. For all the talk about our status as a
“Christian nation,” it now appears that we are the ones who need to be engaged by the power
of the Gospel. It’s a challenging idea and Newbigin was the first person I
heard who clearly articulated the challenge.
From that day my world has never
been the same. Same old, same old church thinking just isn’t enough for me. I
want to be a part of a fellowship of Christians willing to engage the deeper
issues. A veneer of Christianity isn’t enough for me. I want to learn to live
out my faith and to share that faith lovingly with my neighbor. Isn’t that
what’s it’s all about?
It is essential then for me to know THE STORY so that I can
share it with others even as I learn to live into it. A Walk Through the Bible
moves us in that direction. This is what Newbigin has to say in the opening
pages:
Before we begin let me say three things about this story.
The first thing is that every good story has a hero or heroine. The Bible has a
hero and that hero is God, because the Bible interprets the whole of reality
and the whole of history in terms of actions, the doings, the speakings, the
promises of God. And therefore the Bible is the way in which we come to know
God, because we don’t know a person except by knowing his or her story.
The second point is that the Bible tells the story of the
whole human race in terms of a particular story of one race – that of Israel –
and of one person within that race – Jesus of Nazareth. It doesn’t directly
tell us the story of China or Mexico. The story of all the nations is the
background of the biblical story, as we shall see – but it is not at the
center.
The story is told from the point of view of the people whom
God chose to be the bearers of his purpose, because God does not wish to make
himself known to us in the isolation of our own individual souls. He doesn’t
communicate with us on a one-to-one basis as if by telephone. God makes himself
known to us in the context of our shared life as human beings because that is
what our human life is. We therefore come to know God through one another – and
specifically through the people whom he chose to be the bearers of his purpose.
Thirdly, to be those chosen people, to be the place where
God is made known in history, is to be chosen for suffering, for agony, for
conflict – and that is the story that the Bible tells. (5-6)
I’m going to leave it at that for now. I'll make a few
comments on these three points in the coming days. I need to dig in around here so that I can make the most of this trip.
