Forgiving the Word: Learning to Love God's Word Again

Forgiving the Word:
Healing the Hurt and Learning to Love God’s Word Again

The Bible is the world’s best selling book. In fact, contrary to common Episcopal thinking, the Bible is the ultimate authority in our faith, not the Book of Common Prayer (which also happens to be a heavily Bible based book). Billions of people around the world use the Bible to help them understand what is going on in their lives, how they can overcome problems, and how they can better love their neighbor. The early scriptural authors also thought a great deal about what they knew then as scripture. In Timothy’s letter, we read:

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17, ESV

The New Testament often quotes passages from the Old Testament, and our Book of Common Prayer draws many of its texts and responses from scripture. But for some of us, it’s not so easy to respect the Bible or hold it in high esteem, or even to pick it up and read it. Some of us have been hurt by the very book which is supposed to help us on our journey as followers of Jesus.

Just as the Bible can and has been used to inspire, to teach, and to train people in righteousness, it has also been used to hurt people. Not just gays and lesbians, but countless others have been hurt by the Bible. Some use the Bible as if it were God’s proverbial stick with which the righteous strike others. You’ve perhaps been at the receiving end of such abuse. Let’s call it just what it is – abuse. In our personal histories, we have perhaps seen the Bible used in horrendous ways. In these days, we see televangelists and other public figures use the Bible to justify their political outlooks, or to justify their hatred of people who are not like them. For gay and lesbian people, the Bible has been used to tell us that we aren’t part of God’s kingdom, and that we aren’t worthy of the blood that was spilled by Christ to save us. We’ve been told that we are an abomination, a perversion, and not even worthy of the flesh and bones of which we’ve been made. I acknowledge that, I’ve felt that, and I know you have too.

This kind of abuse causes a lot of hurt. I know it does because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen countless Christian young men lose their faith on the basis of two or three Bible verses. I have personal experience of how deep and how painful that abuse can be. But this is where we reach a crossing point. What do we do with that pain, with that abuse, with that hurt that lies deep within our hearts? Many choose to simply ignore the problem by either excising those difficult passages from their reading of Scripture, some simply choose to throw their Bibles in the trash (proverbially if not physically). But do we have to do that? Well, let me offer some reasons why you and I need to process this.

The Anger that Poisons

A lot of us have a deep-seated anger that I believe is misdirected. We often direct our anger at the abuse we have received towards the book and not the person using the Book. We often wonder how the Bible could contain something that says God doesn’t love us. We think that the Bible must be wrong because it says such and such. But is it? Or is it the person who is telling you wrong? This kind of anger exists in all of us. I know this and I acknowledge the anger that I have. The problem is a lot of us have not let God have this anger.

Just as in any situation, when we leave anger to its devices it poisons us. It poisons our thinking and our perspective. For many of us, the stories of the Bible used to evoke awe and wonder. When we heard about Noah’s ark and how Noah got all those animals into the boat. Wasn’t that a wonderful story? Nowadays in our anger towards the Bible, we often take extraordinary steps to deconstruct and demythologize it until that feeling of awe goes away. We try to dismantle the beauty of it to unearth its hidden wrongs. This isn’t to say that critical study of the Bible is not a good thing. This is to say that sometimes we go so far out of our anger and our own spite, not out of a desire to understand what God is saying to us. So, we need to let go of our anger. We need to let go of any pain and suffering.

Doing the Business of Forgiveness …

Forgiveness is one of the central virtues of Christian faith. God so loved the world that he forgave our sins by sending his Son Jesus to die on the Cross. We as his disciples are expected to forgive others just as we are forgiven. But forgiveness is hard because of the business required. Forgiveness means nothing to us or the offender if the offender doesn’t know that he or she did something wrong. I urge you to find out if you can associate a name of someone who hurt you with scripture and do business with this person. Tell them that you feel you have been wronged and that you were hurt by what they did. They may not respect that, they may try to argue, but you’ve done your business. Forgive, give it to God and don’t take it back. If you can’t do this, maybe you can write down some of the ways you’ve been abused by scripture and burn the paper as a symbol of letting it go. The point is you need to do something to let it go and start again.

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to get reacquainted with the Book that has been used to hurt you the most and begin again to journey in the depths of its wisdom. The business of forgiveness helps us to revitalize ourselves and refresh our understanding. We can again pick up the Bible and get benefits from it and allow God to speak anew in our lives. We can engage its wonderful stories with awe again and appreciate the wisdom that God has to share with us. Doesn’t that sound good? Doesn’t encountering God’s word preserved for us sound like an awesome adventure? Well it’s about time.

Getting Back to What the Word Is …

First, let’s get back to what the Bible is, what it really is. No I’m not going to talk about history or anything like that. I am going to talk about the significance of the Bible. What it means that it exists, and what we believe about it. Let’s go back to our Anglican roots. The Articles of Religion say:

“Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.”
Articles of Religion VI (Book of Common Prayer Page 869)

Also, let’s read what the 1979 Book of Common Prayer Catechism says:

“Q. Why do we call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God?
A. We call them the Word of God because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.
Q. How do we understand the meaning of the Bible?
A. We understand the meaning of the Bible by the help of the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church in the true interpretation of the Scriptures.”
Book of Common Prayer, Page 853 – 854

There are some important nuggets of information here. First of all, the Holy Bible is the Word of God. This is not to say that it is the literal, hand written word of God, but it is an acknowledgment of the fact that God inspired the authors of the scriptures. Second, we understand that the Bible is the ultimate rule of faith for a Christian. The Articles of Faith say: “Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation”, Article VI. Third, we also understand that the Bible is one of God’s ways of speaking to us today. So the Bible is very significant to us as Anglicans.

Our tradition emphasizes that the Bible needs to be interpreted. We have to remember that the Bible is not a mere collection of 31,101 handy and nifty proverbs and legal proofs for why you should do this or that in your life organized into 66 handy little books. We have to remember that the Bible is our Church’s accepted record of God’s interactions with his chosen people from the perspective of His people. We often find that some of the interactions we read about in the Bible closely mimic those that we have in our own lives. We find that the Bible has some nugget of wisdom for us in the form of a story, a proverb, or a song when we interpret it and understand it. But the first step is to pick up the Bible and to look at its pages again, not as a disinterested scholar, or a rabid critic, but as a Christian. So let’s talk about how we can do that.

Getting Your Feet Wet

The first question is do you have a Bible that is accessible to you? Is there one you can pull off your shelf and dust off? Not sure if this is not going to work and don’t want to spend money on a Bible? There are plenty of resources to get a free Bible. It’s time for you to read the Bible again.

It’s important to get your feet wet and to just encounter the stories again. It’s like catching up with an old friend you haven’t seen for a while. You just have to listen to the stories again, and learn about that friend slowly but surely. So, it’s my suggestion that after you read this article, you go get your closest Bible and read the Gospel of Mark (that’s the second book of the New Testament). It’s a quick read and if you’re a voracious reader, there’s nothing that prevents you from reading this in a couple of hours. Don’t analyze, don’t criticize, just read it. Get to know Jesus again, or if you don’t know him – for the very first time. After this, you might try another Gospel or the Acts of the Apostles. Later on, we’ll have an article of how you can study the Bible easily and some ways you can think about the wisdom that the Bible shares.

In Closing …

I hope that this article has been an exercise in understanding, forgiveness, and healing for all of us. I hope that you can begin the healing process and truly begin to love the word of God again. It’s such a precious resource for us in our lives and Disciples. We are meant to use it, to peer into its pages for insight and to hear the Lord speak to us. Many blessings on your journey with Jesus. May God bless you!