There are a few moments from my early school days that stand out to me like a highlighted page, vivid as neon yellow.
My mind's notebook is scribbled with facts and images about significant moments I had in the classroom; like the day I learned how to make homemade root beer with solid carbon dioxide in the form of dry ice, and that if you put a copper penny on a piece of dry ice it makes Abraham Lincoln dance.
Lyrics from Calculus: The Musical still sometimes get stuck in my head when I hear the word 'Derive'. (Go ahead and say what you're thinking - I'm a nerd).
The anatomical parts of a rolly polly are sketched in the pages of the day I collected hundreds of them off our kitchen floor. (Fact: Rolly pollys can and will escape a container covered in plastic wrap with air holes; mothers disapprove).
Nothing excited me quite so much as seeing that big, blocky TV being rolled in with the promise of an afternoon filled with Bill Nye the Science Guy. I particularly enjoyed the episodes about geology, leaving me eager to get home and go searching for rocks in our backyard to classify into categories of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary.
And then there are highlighted pages from 6th Grade English about 5-paragraph essay format (I was consistently docked for lack of focus), anagrams for remembering where the letters are on a keyboard (A-Spider-Destroys-Flies), and 'Text-To Connections.' Mrs. D explained Text-To Connections like 'Connect the Dots':
A Text-to-Text connection is connecting a dot from what you are reading to another Text, such as stories and books, movies, songs, poems, or anything else that someone has written down.
Text-to-Self connections draw a line from the Text at hand to your own life, ideas, and personal experiences.
Text-to-World connections help the picture come into view, joining lines to events from the larger world: the past, present, and future.
I'd like to offer a fourth Text-To connection:
Text-to-Divinity connections complete the image, allowing you to see the picture and start coloring it in.
I've been thinking about thinking recently; that is - I've been pondering the way I think. And it's got me thinking:
How did I come to believe what I believe?
A friend who is very good at thinking about thinking recently introduced me to the 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral' - a theological framework developed by John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church. He used this methodology as a basis for theological reflection - or, as a way of finding Text-To-Divinity connections. He understood God through four sources of theological and doctrinal development: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience.
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is based on a principle called prima scriptura (scripture first) - a newer term for me.
It brought me back to my Theology 101 class my freshman year of college. We studied out of Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem, which at the time seemed to have all the answers about God. Our professor pushed us further, a lesson I gratefully cherish today. As we read our way through the New Testament, we were asked to keep a Questions Journal and write down one question per chapter we read (that's 260 questions for those counting). Though this was assigned for a grade, he never asked us to turn it in at the end of the semester. A bummer for me - I was hoping he would give me the answers.
(Side Note: What really ate my lunch were my unanswered questions about Free Will and Predestination. I remember standing in the doorway after class, frozen, wondering if I should turn left or turn right, and skeptical that I really had a choice in the matter since God already knew which direction I would end up choosing. Do you think about these things, too?)
As a devout Evangelical, I proudly brandished my sola scriptura (scripture alone) hoodie around campus, claiming I believed the Bible was true because it said it was true. The irony, however, was that I much preferred my Philosophy classes where we studied C.S. Lewis and learned about circular reasoning. I find that to be an important detail.
Wayne Grudem writes about sola scriptura:
In order to guard against making our authority something other than the Bible, major confessions of faith have insisted that the words of God in Scripture are our authority, not some position arrived at after the Bible was finished. This is the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura, or "the Bible alone," as our ultimate authority for doctrine and life.
I dared not challenge myself against the author of my textbook at the time; but it seems contradictory to me that Grudem derived his conclusions about Scripture after the Bible was finished. Something doesn't line up for me that the very doctrine of sola scriptura is a man-made teaching - that is, this phrase isn't even found in the Bible itself. And with that Reasoning, Grudem's own textbook should not be considered authoritative. So, I dare to challenge now.
What does the Bible have to say about Scripture?
Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another - showing us Truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God's way. ~ 2 Timothy 3:16
When I think about God's way - that is, the Way of Jesus - I see Him interpreting Scripture quite differently than the religious leaders of His day. Over and over again, Jesus points us to the Truth that it is the heart-posture behind the command that matters, not the empty, outward action of blindly following orders, never resulting in any real transformation on the inside. He, Himself, challenged Scripture. I like to believe He was setting an example for us to do the same.
The reality is - we can't read the Bible in a vacuum. For starters, any time you read a translation of the Bible from its original Greek or Hebrew, you have already added one layer of interpretation over it, influencing the way you understand it; and there are over 900 translations of the Bible into English alone!
Recognizing this allows us to understand that it's possible - and even likely - for us to get some things wrong, just like those that Jesus taught during His earthly ministry. When we read Scripture, it's impossible for us to separate ourselves from our own knowledge and Experiences that have shaped us. We cannot (and should not) shut off the sense of Reason and intellect that God gave us; and whether we like it or not, the church Tradition in which we were taught will always play a role. What sort of image do you see when you connect these four?
Somewhere along the way I learned that there are some questions you don't ask. There were even several I couldn't bring myself to write down that semester in my Questions Journal for fear of someone finding out that I dared ask. But I'd like to start asking myself...Why? If we take it for Truth that Jesus was "with God in the Beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made", the Question changes from "Can God be found here?" to "Am I unwilling to Find God here?"
Will you join me in bringing your Questions to God? I believe He can handle them. And who knows, if we hand them in, we may just get a few answers; if not, that's okay, too. I learned a lot from my Unanswered Questions Journal.
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