Interrogating the Bible: It’s Supposed to Be the Other Way Around

JOHN H. STEKJohn Stek is associate professor of Old Testament, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was a member of the translation committee for the New International Version and an associate editor of The NIV Study Bible.

Some years ago, a father of ten children deserted his family to become an evangelist. His warrant for doing so? Luke 14:26: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”

The man had obviously isolated this verse from the whole of Luke’s testimony and so had convinced himself of the rightness of an action Jesus would have abhorred.

I have seen a condolence card that does less damage but betrays the same misuse of Scripture. It quotes Job 11:16–18 under the heading “To Comfort You”: “You will surely forget your trouble, recalling it only as waters gone by …” The promise has the ring of comfort until you read the rest of the passage. It is part of Zophar’s not-so-subtle accusation: “If you put away the sin that is in your hand and allow no evil to dwell in your tent, then …”

The Voice Of God

Many of us do not know how to listen to the voice of God in Scripture, because we were trained to view the Bible as a series of verses strung together like pearls on a string, each having its own meaning in itself. We were trained to resort to that treasure trove whenever we felt a need for something from it, plucking the gem that satisfies our quest at the moment.

Ideally, we respond receptively to God’s message. But usually we do not come to the Word ready to listen. Isolated verses have become “God’s will” for us in the circumstances, or they serve as magic words that we use on God to try to manipulate him, or as levers that we employ to get what we want from God. When this is done to rationalize hate-filled motives, the gospel itself is violated. But even when it is done with good intentions, we hamper ourselves from truly hearing God’s Word.

Ironically, a long-standing tradition in Bible publishing and certain popular Christian practices has contributed to this “string of pearls” notion of the Bible.

About the time of the Reformation, with its great renewal in Bible study, a numerical grid of chapters and verses was imposed on the biblical text for the sole purpose of facilitating quick and accurate reference. Unfortunately, this tool eventually created misunderstanding. Many who did not know the origin and purpose of the chapter and verse numbers got the impression that they belonged to the original manuscripts and indicated actual units of composition.

When Bible publishers began printing each verse as a paragraph, readers were further misled into believing that each verse is self-contained. These editorial and layout judgments—originally made at a publishing house and then perpetuated through publishing tradition—have contributed to incorrect notions about the text.

Interrogating The Bible

Some common practices of pastors and Christian teachers have probably had even more impact in creating the “string of pearls” view: the widespread practice of preaching on a single verse, creating devotional readings that jump off from a verse for the day, memorizing individual verses in Sunday school, devising Bible studies that move through the text verse by verse as if each were a separate unit for study, and studying the Bible topically.

Single-verse memorization has contributed to the problem by giving both Christians and cultists handy tools for propping up their preconceptions. “The truth shall make you free” (John 8:32) is one of the most widely quoted lines in the Bible. I have heard it quoted by sectarians, claiming that their particular notions are the “truth” that sets people free. I have even heard it on the lips of agnostics, asserting that science provides the “truth” that frees people from the shackles of religion.

And the well-known proverb, “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6), has troubled many godly parents. They forget that it comes from Proverbs and understand it as though it came from the Law or the Prophets. They mistakenly hear the “Train …” clause as a commandment and the “when he is old …” clause as a prophecy. They forget that as a proverb this verse offers godly counsel that adults usually reflect the training they received as children.

Topical study has also been enormously influential. “What does the Bible say about …” is the way people often come to Scripture. They use a concordance to find biblical references to the topic under investigation. Then the verses supposedly pertaining to the topic are plucked from their contexts and assembled, and conclusions are drawn.

The misuse of Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias and topical study aids such as chain-reference Bibles has contributed to the problem. Most theological books are also topically oriented. Theologians want to present what the Bible says about the Trinity, providence, or whatever their special interest is. Having used the topical method of interrogating the Bible, they furnish “proof texts” to warrant their theological assertions. Thus a topical grid as artificial as the numerical one is imposed on the Bible—often with the same misleading results.

We rightly view the Bible as an authoritative book, offering us knowledge of God and his will. But we then tend to use it as we use other authoritative texts, such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, rather than as a unified narrative of the story of salvation.

Are we interested in information on drunkenness? We turn topically to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations to find what various wits have uttered. We turn topically to Roget’s Thesaurus to find synonyms crude and clever. We turn topically to the Merck Manual to discover alcoholism’s physical symptoms and some suggested treatments.

And we turn to a Bible concordance to find God’s opinion on drink and drunks. But the result of topical investigation is that the authentic message of the Bible’s authors is sometimes suppressed.

We Set The Agenda

Every time we turn to Scripture to ask “What does the Bible say about …” (and almost every time a preacher searches the Bible for “a text about …”) we set the agenda for Scripture’s speaking. We raise the questions. We control the dialog, allowing the Word of God to speak only to our momentary interests. We do not shut our mouths before God and open our hearts to listen to what God’s Spirit has to say to us.

We can also silence Scripture by the counterfeit kind of listening practiced in too many “Bible study” groups. I read a verse (or a few verses) and ask myself (or someone else): “What does that verse say to you—right now as you hear it?” Most answers provide little more than data for a psychological study of the answerer. The verse triggers in the hearer an association or a whole cluster of associations that reveal more of the respondent than of the Spirit. Our spirits speak, and the Spirit of God is shut off.

I sometimes ask my students in a seminary course on the Former Prophets, “For what might you turn to the Book of Joshua?” The responses usually include “to find out what the Bible has to say about war”; “to learn the boundaries of the various Israelite tribes”; “to read about the life of Joshua”; “to find illustrations of the sovereign working of God”; “to glean some biblical examples of obedience and disobedience and their consequences.”

Indeed, one can find in Joshua materials in some way relevant to these questions. But to assume that the author wrote Joshua to serve such purposes is for the reader to control the Bible’s speaking. To use Joshua in this manner is indeed to use it, not to listen to it.

I then ask my students to do something shocking in its simplicity. I tell them to read Joshua from beginning to end in one sitting, to listen closely as the author weaves his narrative, to note how his story begins and how it ends, to pay close attention to the episodes he includes and how each of them contributes to the outcome, to observe the narrator’s art and the subtle clues he gives to his message, to consider at each stage of reading what the author perceives to be at stake.

I advise them that if they would be hearers of the Word they must let the author of Joshua have his whole say before they presume to know whereof he speaks. And they must all the while be silent and open, letting the author lead them where he will. They must not try to anticipate what he will say.

(Preachers who rummage through the Bible to find texts on which to hang topical or biographical sermons are often guilty of substituting their word for the biblical Word. That such erroneously conceived sermons may motivate people to do good is not an argument against the patient listening to Scripture. Instead, it only confirms an old Dutch proverb that “God can strike a straight blow even with a crooked stick.”)

The translators and editors of most contemporary translations of the Bible seek to achieve a style and layout that invites extended reading of the Bible. As one of the translators of the New International Version, I hoped that many readers would do what they had never done before, namely, read even the longer books of the Bible in one sitting—especially the narrative books (including Job), the Epistles, and Revelation. Only thus would they be reading these books as the authors intended.

To be sure, after a thorough reading of a book, one may focus on smaller passages for close study, meditation, and memorization. Afterward, one may come with questions. Afterward, one may assemble “what Scripture has to say about …” But one should do all this only after having heard the authors out. Let the authors of Scripture set the agenda.

Should no study aids be used—Bible dictionaries, encyclopedias, concordances, commentaries, study Bibles? Surely they should. But they are to be aids for informed reading. They may not, they cannot, become substitutes. There can be no topical summaries that can serve in place of the Bible—not even if the topics assembled are all “theological.” Whatever study tools one employs, they must be used solely to illumine “what the Spirit has to say to the churches” (Rev. 2–3) through the biblical texts.

Too often we have interrogated the Bible. Too often we have used the Bible. If we would hear the voice of God, we must assume the attitude, and learn the art, of listening to the text the way the authors wrote it.

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