For most, the Christian experience is not one that includes the learning of all the documents collected into the Bible in its various versions. Rather, it involves adopting a convenient overview of it all, even without exhaustive study of the whole, or any sizeable portion of it.
an overview that does not accurately summarize the Bible.
Don’t get me wrong; the summary is a very useful tool for having a convenient generalization about more complicated matters. But there’s a reason the data set is so large, and not every attempt to minimize it into a more manageable package is going to be accurate.
In one sense, then, the Christian life is an exercise in answering the question, “Do I really want to learn this material, or would I rather try to find a way around that?” And we may find ourselves fluctuating over time in our willingness to tackle the material.
Few go all-in. Rather than to study for themselves, most work out a proxy arrangement by which they decide to take the word of someone else for how it all should be understood. Such arrangement is certainly convenient, but an obvious downside of it is that if the overview that’s being adopted were inaccurate or lacking in some way, the one having adopted it would not be in a good position to know. He cannot attest to its truth by way of evidence and logic, and tends to weigh the truth of it by how familiar it is, or by how much it means to him.
These two biases might be voiced as follows, if someone were to venture to spell it out honestly:
- “This is a time-honored truth, so it couldn’t be wrong.”
- “I have always cherished this idea, so it couldn’t be wrong.”
There are other common biases, to be sure, and many of them are centered around the common teaching that believers have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit helping them to understand the Bible. If one isn’t careful in how he thinks about this, he can easily end up with other cognitive biases such as these:
- “If I were wrong about this, the Holy Spirit would have told me so.”
- “God appointed my preacher and guides him with the Holy Spirit, so he can’t be wrong about this.”
These sorts of ideas serve to protect the adopted overview, whatever it is. They are the sort that defaults the believer to the overview he has chosen, and that discourage any investigation into its particulars. In this way, the particulars often remain fuzzy, and believers who may find themselves wondering about this or that will feel uneasy maintaining that wondering for long. In my observation, most will not address the particulars for long without steering themselves back to the overview and “trusting in God” that either their overview is right, even if they’re not smart enough to understand it all (they might tell themselves). Or alternately, they might tell themselves that even if they’re wrong about parts of it, it doesn’t matter.
And so, Christianity is, for many, a fuzzy religion. And with this in mind, it’s not hard to understand why certain catch phrases become very popular. Repeating a catch phrase is easier than thinking a thing through. Repeating “what I’ve always heard” is easier than dealing fresh with the question that’s on the table. And so, common sayings tend to be used to dismiss investigations, rather than to solve them. For example, someone faced with a difficult Bible question may recognize that they’re not well equipped to answer it, and rather than rolling up their sleeves to investigate, they may throw up their hands in surrender, and say with a smile, “Well, thank God I’m saved by grace!”. And then they’ll set the question aside, as if it had not really been all that important in the first place. And that habit right there—that’s a pernicious thing, even if it seems proper and humble and enlightened and mature to some.
Surely, not all questions are unimportant—even the ones that get dismissed in such ways. And there are many such common tactics for dismissing the particulars. “This isn’t a salvation issue” is one. Another is “Well, at least this isn’t a core doctrine”, or “an essential doctrine”. These ideas are very popular, and if you were to ask them for a list of their core doctrines, what are you going to get? You’re going to get whatever overview their camp has adopted. (You’ll often find this on the church’s What We Believe page on their website.) And so it keeps defaulting back to that overview, and the particulars are dispensable, even if some part of that overview could be proven to be seriously erroneous or lacking in some regard.
This is how it works for so many in this overview culture. Fears of uncertainty are assuaged by belonging and membership and church busy-ness, if not by the common distractions of the day at home or at work. They are put off, and not addressed. “Well, that’s a great question, Billy, but right now, we’ve really got to focus on making the Sunday service excellent to the glory of God.” And whatever matter of uncertainty was afoot is not solved, but put off until after Sunday, where it is quietly hoped that it will not resurface. And often it doesn’t. Billy is easily distracted!
So it’s no wonder that people flock to the various denominational camps—and stay there. I have, over the years, spilled a lot of ink writing about such things—and this, after going through the turmoil myself of wrestling with the particulars in various overview-defaulting camps. But I find that very few indeed are interested into looking into the particulars—no matter how strong a case you can make that they’ve got one wrong, or how strong a case you can make in general that we should be highly diligent in looking into things carefully.
There’s an idea that some call “The Berean Challenge”—that we should be like the Bereans were in this passage:
Acts 17:11 (NIV) Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
One camp I used to belong to would challenge newcomers to be like these Bereans, actually studying everything out diligently in order to find out what’s the truth of every matter. And I can tell you that this sort of challenge evokes a lot of pushback along the lines of the sort I’ve been writing about in this post. Knowing that he himself is not the studying sort, someone may parry this challenge with, “The indwelling Holy Spirit helps me know what is true, and He’s not telling me to go look this up.” And another, “God has sent me Brother Bob, whose sermons every week are very reliable, so I don’t need to go looking everything up.”
Do you see how this sort of response simply defaults back to whatever overview the person already has of the Bible? They’re simply not very concerned with the details, but with the way their camp sizes up the whole thing. To the Berean challenge, someone else will say something like this: “We live by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7). In this, they dodging the challenge to study, and are implying that their faith is sufficient to see them through in the matter. But we should note that their faith, such as it is, is not the sort to push them forward in processing the scriptures God gave them—in working out the details of what the scriptures mean. No, their habit is simply to default to the overview by which they size it all up into a mentally-convenient package.
And in this last example, this is particularly ironic as the passage of scripture continues in the very next verse:
Acts 17:12a (NIV) 12 As a result, many of them believed,…
As you probably know, our English words “believing” and “faith” are used when translating the same Greek root word (πίστις – pistis). And what was the reason that many of these people came to have that faith? It was from studying out what Paul had taught them. That is, they saw it confirmed in the scriptures, so they put their reliance in it.
And what should we suppose would have happened to those who heard Paul’s teachings, and did not go to the scriptures to check out whether they were true? Would they, too, have believed as a result of not looking into it? Of course not. They’d have stayed unpersuaded in their beliefs. And what would those beliefs have been? It would have been whatever was their default overview.
I’m tired of writing about this, just as I’m tired of seeing again and again that it needs to be written about. So many are simply incorrigible, and they have found a way to get around having to learn the Bible. It is much easier to carry a Bible to church than it is to learn what’s in it. And yet in the carrying of the thing, they can tell themselves that they’ve really accomplished something important. They might even enjoy thoughts of being seen carrying the Bible, thinking it a testimonial of sorts that they should be seen with it, and garnering some manner of “identity” in it all. They might enjoy the sense of tradition in it all, and even find beauty in the mental snapshot of their fellow congregants walking into church with their Bibles in hand. But how empty is this if they don’t know and understand what’s in those Bibles?
Jesus himself could visit and tell them they’ve got it wrong about what’s in there. And if they would not crack it open to check, they would not see for themselves whether he’s right or not. And wouldn’t it be ironic if somewhere were to reject Jesus’ word on the matter, and default instead to what he already believers in his overview culture at church?
This sort of thing, I observe, happens often.
Sadly, I think that many simply don’t like the fact that God gave us a book—and that books are meant to be read and studied. This idea seems somehow unnatural to them—unspiritual, even. They have got an idea of religion from somewhere, such that religion should be heavy on the feelings side, and light on the thinking side. So they hit a real roadblock when you ask them why they think God gave them such a big Bible.
While some have learned to enjoy using their minds to study and reflect and question, such things are mentally taxing, and are not enjoyable to everyone. And even to those who are more willing to read, it doesn’t do a lot of good if they aren’t willing to engage mentally in those readings. I do know some people who read much, but who still don’t seem to come to firm convictions on matters they have got wrong—even when reading passages that contradict their pre-existing beliefs. I don’t see them correcting themselves nearly as often as the scriptures correct them. That is, I don’t see them making adjustments to their particular believes, or to their overview of the Bible, even when they know, or should know, that some of the particulars in the book don’t match with their overview.
So, even though they may be reading, and studying for Sunday School or Wednesday night Bible class, they are not really learning anything new. Rather, they find some way to twist it back into a general confirmation of their pre-established overview. They are the sort who are:
2 Timothy 3:7 always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.
They are the sort James had in mind when he wrote this:
James 1:22 (NIV) 22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
When my son James was young and we were looking about the house for a lost item, I noticed that he would often walk right by the item and not see it. After observing him do this several times, I figured out that to him, “looking” meant that one would walk from room to room, gazing around, but did not include the actual mental processing of what one sees. And so we developed this phrase to describe such mindless looking:
Looking to look, and not looking to find.
And I think this is what happens for many as they read the Bible. They read the words, but don’t process the meaning of it all. Even if they tell themselves they are “studying”—even as little James told himself he was “looking”—this doesn’t mean they’re going to find what’s in there. They wan walk right by it and miss it.
The Bible is a vast book filled with many treasures—many of them contradicting the beliefs of these “Overview Christians”. And even so, far too few will ever venture to mine its depths. They will never discover their errors. They will never realize that they’ve made some sort of idol out of their overview, and have missed some important details about God and Jesus and their teachings and expectations. They will never notice the importance of the fact that the other camps have differing overviews. Ironically, in their overview, they will tend to see most of the other camps as well-meaning believers, and will accept them as brothers and sisters in the faith, even if they do believe they have got a few things wrong—but do they ever stop to consider whether they themselves have got parts of their own overview wrong? Not very often.
Even the “Berean” camps can fall short in their practice of checking everything out in the scriptures. I left non-“Berean” camps to join the “Berean” camps, and I left those, too because I discovered in time that they were only willing to go so far in that “Berean” lifestyle. Just like some will carry their Bibles proudly without really digging into them, others can carry that “Berean” identity, while neglecting to look into certain beliefs that they consider to be unassailable cornerstones of their religion—even while continuing to look into other matters. And when you press them, they tend to exhibit the same sort of overview-defaulting habit that the non”Bereans” exhibit. It seems they are willing to work at it, but only so much.
Well, what if God gave us a set of scriptures that requires lots of diligence to understand properly? Doesn’t that rule out convenience as a way of life for us? Doesn’t it rule out complacency and laziness and presumption as proper for us?
I think it does. And this brings us to a major philosophical divide among those who like Jesus. On the one extreme are those who study nothing, and on the other are those who study everything. But there is not enough time in a lifetime to study it all sufficiently to arrive at a well-vetted view of everything in the Bible. We can go a long way, but we can’t learn it all. Does this mean that the right answer, then, is to learn none of it? No, I don’t think that’s the right answer.
I think this constitutes quite a test for us—a test of what kind of people we are. What we choose to study, and how deeply and honestly and rationally and responsibly we study it—that says a lot about what kind of people we are and what kind of people we really want to be.
Again, it’s easy to tell ourselves whatever we want. We can say that we love God and Jesus and the church and our fellow man and the Bible and anything else, but that doesn’t mean, of course, that that’s what we’re really like. It’s very easy to deceive ourselves and to do far less than what we’re capable of doing when it comes to study and the quality of our reasoning about the scriptures.
And it seems I could say a million other things about this—many of which I’ve written about over the years, and few of which ever seem to get a rise out of people—but I’ll just close this post with another passage of scripture for your consideration—and I’ll let you ponder what the psalmist meant by the word “studied” and the word “all”:
Psalm 111:2 (ESV) Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.
I will not finish it all before I die. God will know, however, how to judge whether I have done well with it—whether I have been pleasing in his sight. No one will get into that Holy City without God’s grace and forgiveness, to be sure, yet even so, it would be a pitiful thing to discover that God was disappointed in the way we had summarized the details in the Bible, or in our negligence in correcting that overview along the way.
