Breathe

This is going to be a bit heady, but I want to encourage my two or three readers to keep the faith and power through…

Leigh and I recently began attending a Sunday afternoon study group composed of different couples from Black Forest Academy. We meet in someone’s home, eat lunch together, and then sit down to watch a segment from a 12-part video series entitled The Truth Project. This is a series produced and distributed by Focus on the Family, with a gentleman named Dr. Del Tackett presiding over a college-like theater classroom. Tackett systematically explores the question of “truth” as it pertains to the belief in and communion with God through Jesus Christ. Throughout each session, he endeavors to construct a powerful, apologetic-themed case for faith in God in a world that, he continually asserts, is following a careless, sometimes-agnositic-sometimes-atheistic-sometimes-nihilistic lie. I have mostly enjoyed the series (that is, the four sessions I have sat through) for its clear-cut exploration of ethics, philosophy and theology (though, the last session on theology spent about thirty seconds on actual “theology” and then moved assuredly on to Christology without blinking). While it is quite obvious that Dr. Tackett is a strict inerrantist, among other things, this hasn’t caused any significant rift between my own leanings and his. He is actually a very eloquent speaker, and certainly passionate about the view he is purporting.

However, what I found interesting was the tangent he chased during session four of this study, which we viewed last Sunday. In discussing the importance of trusting the Scriptures since it provides us the truth of God, Tackett chooses to highlight ways in which people have striven to, as he puts it, “discredit” the Word. He briefly referenced the alleged folly of the JEDP theory before flying against that ridiculous heresy known as the Jesus Seminar. However, what was more peculiar than this was when he spoke about his “personal crisis,” which came about years ago when he decided to teach a Sunday School class on II Kings (a.k.a. the whole Divided Kingdom soap opera) and ended up colliding with the odd dating of the kings Joram and Jehoram. He told the Truth Project class (those gathered in the lecture hall-like room and those of us viewing the DVD) that such a discrepancy shook his faith in Scripture to its innermost core! (Those of you readers who are unaware of this odd “discrepancy” in II Kings need only know that several different verses cite different time frames for a handful of kings, which often raises questions on the validity of the Scriptures both particular and in general.)

As I listened to Tackett recount his nervous wringing of hands over this minute aspect of some Old Testament historical chronicle, it was hard not to become sympathetically amused. Tackett feared that should he not be able to reconcile these inconsistencies in the book, he would have to assume that the entire Word of God is unreliable. Really? This is merely my own opinion, but that does not seem like simple jumping to conclusions as much as it is leaping the Grand Canyon of conclusions. But, then again, such chasms occasionally do yawn before inerrantists.

During our own group discussion afterward, I did not share my opinion on this part of the lesson. The conversation was a good one, and this was but one small aspect of the presentation as a whole. I decided not to mar our give and take with my differences. However, I cannot help but wonder what my life would be like today if I still believed in the Bible the same way Tackett does. I have thrown off the idea of inerrancy (I hesitate indefinitely to label it a doctrine since the true definition of that word is “right teaching”). This is not because I find it too difficult, or because I cannot reconcile the Biblical contradictions I notice, but rather because I find inerrancy to be an irreverent, limited view of Scripture. Let me explain.

For an inerrantist to live up to his or her logical definition, the infallibility of God’s Word is central. The Bible must be without, at least in its original form, even the slightest inconsistencies, contradictions or errors. The only way to be sure this is the reality in which the Bible dwells is to believe that the Bible was completely set forward by God Omniscient, and that human beings were hardly more than mere quills, instruments necessary only to put pen to paper (or chisel to stone) and write down all that the Lord revealed … and absolutely nothing more. While some inerrantists will not always carp to this, the logic behind their belief must center around this concept. Because of the generally-accepted belief that humans are fallen, one who wishes the Bible to be free of human error must therefore take the Scriptures – and all the history of its creation and authorship – out of the hands of humans as much as possible. Just to be safe, some of the proponents of this even hold to what is known as verbal inspiration, or verbal plenary inspiration, which is the idea that God actually dictated, word for word, the Scriptures to his chosen scribes. Some people believe these writers were actually caught up in a trance-like state as they took dictation. Considering there was no “papyrus edition” of Spell and Grammar Check back then, this idea would ensure the safety of the Scriptures from even the smallest fumbling of human understanding.

Now, whether or not inerrantists are strict enough with themselves to adhere to this particular idea, the concept is still similar and not far down the logical slope. This is why I find the idea so … uninspired. Yes, the pun is intentional. The reason for it is that inerrantists often brandish, in typical proof-texting intimidation, this verse out of II Timothy: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking and encouraging…” (3:16). Despite the fact that the Bible had not been collected and canonized yet when that particular verse and all its buddies in the same letter were written (therefore begging the question of how “all Scripture” could literally mean the Bible as we know it rather than only the Torah as the writer knew it), there is something completely wonderful about this verse that so many people miss. Many translations even package it better for us and yet still we miss it. Another way scholars have sought to capture the intended meaning of the word qeopneustoV, which literally means “God-inspired”, is to bring us into awareness of the image of inspiration. Therefore, they use the term “God-breathed.”

God-breathed. God breathed.

One day a few years ago, I asked myself the question, what other places may we find an image of God breathing? Now, if we were to examine the root of that Greek word, we might notice it appears similar to the word pneuma, or “pneuma.” This word means “breath” or “spirit” and can even be translated, sometimes, as “wind.” It was not long after pondering this image before I remembered two of the most significant moments involving God’s breath. The first was with Adam in the garden of Eden. Adam is, at the outset, exactly what his Hebrew word of a name means – dust, dirt. He is inanimate – merely the sum of his finite parts … or particles. The miracle of the story is that God breathes into this inanimate dust-man and suddenly there is life. There is the intake and expelling of breath. Adam is alive whereas a split-second before he was not. Because God breathes into him, he is now more than the sum of his parts. He has the hint of a holiness not his own, entirely a gift, but it makes him alive and well and although I would imagine still a bit dusty, nevertheless remarkably more than what he once was. Therein lies the miracle at the heart of creation.

The second place I recalled God breathing is found at the end of the Gospel of the Apostle John, where we find the disciples, abandoners all, hiding in the upper room fearing they might be next to carry a cross. And the story goes that Jesus simply appears in their midst, terrifying them. Yet he speaks softly and tenderly, “Shalom,” which is a way of declaring, “Peace be among you.” He lets them examine his wounds to determine that he is not Casper but actually their Lord and Master in the flesh. Then the Scripture records him “sending” them just as the Father has sent him. “When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (20:22).

He breathes on them. I used to think this was the weirdest thing Jesus ever did, even more than spitting in the dirt to heal a guy’s blindness. (And as glorious as resurrection may be, I have to wonder what his breath might be like after lying entombed all weekend.) But the point is not necessarily in the action, even if it can be argued as a traditional sign of blessing. The point is in the meaning behind the action. Breathing. Just as God breathed into Adam, making him more than his worthless, dusty self, so Jesus breathes into his disciples and commissions them. He charges a bunch of fraidy-cat young men – fishermen, students, tax collectors, not a one of them rabbinically trained (at least not in the traditional sense) – with the task of turning the world upside down. Could they ever have done it on their own? Certainly not. But that is the point. They weren’t alone. They were breathed into by Jesus. They received the Holy Spirit. The Holy Breath. The Holy pneuha. They were made more than merely the sum of their finite parts.

Now that is what I call being “inspired.” Because this isn’t simply inspiration as we know it. It is transformative. It is sustaining. It is divine indwelling, but not of the verbal plenary-trance variety. It is real. It is the dynamic collision of the earthbound and the holy. Could there ever be anything more extraordinary? Is it any wonder that the Gospel of Matthew includes these words in its commissioning account, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (20:28).

And so it goes with the inspiration written about in II Timothy. This is why I find inerrancy to be such a limited view of Scripture. I often wonder if Jesus might remark to an inerrantist, “O ye of little faith.” Because, if everything was so divinely cut and sacredly dried in the Bible, no room for the earthbound, how much faith is required of the Christian to believe in the holiness of the Word? Compare this to believing something a bit more fitting, a bit more real, a bit more daring. Consider the ramifications of a canon of Scripture that is, yes, written by humans, that, yes, may indeed contain a few inconsistencies and, at least at the first, second and third glance, a few contradictions. And consider the wild notion that this does not detract from the reliance and relevance of the Word, but rarely serves as a reminder that the Bible is not merely the sum of its parts. It is not simply the odd conglomeration of mysterious beginnings, brutal histories, hilarious tall tales, anguished songs, desperate prayers, thunderous judgments, incredible biographies, creepy prophecies and painstakingly detailed letters (not to mention enough “begats” that would bring an insomniac to dreams). It is all that and more. It is God-breathed. It is the greatest – and strangest – of human literary endeavors made holy, made sacred, by a God who loves people even enough to entrust them with the crafting of his great story.

As such, it is the ultimate Truth Project. I don’t think Dr. Del Tackett should worry so much if the Joram-Jehoram issue doesn’t always make sense, or if the majority of scholars assert that Moses didn’t write the entire Pentateuch. You don’t have to be an inerrantist to believe that God is in control, and that the prerequisite for being made holy is that you are already holy. There is so much more to discover when we fully trust that, not despite of but in light of all our shortcomings, misunderstandings, doubtless faiths and faithful doubts, God desires our intimate participation in his plan. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“When you look at a window, you see dust, fly specks, the crack where Junior’s Frisbee hit it. When you look through a window, you see the world beyond. Something like this is the difference between those who see the Bible as a Holy Bore, and those who see it as the Word of God, which speaks out of the depths of an almost unimaginable past into the depths of ourselves.” – Frederick Buechner