Glenn R. Paauw - Saving the Bible from Ourselves: Learning to Read and Live the Bible Well

T his book is a journey to the center of the Bible. Some peoplethose prone toward counting thingswill tell you that the center of the Bible is Psalm 117, since there are 594 chapters before it and the same number following it. But counting is about precision, and verses, which measure smaller units, are more precise. Alas! There is no center verse of the Bible, since the overall count is an even number: 31,174 (in most English Bibles). But this may be a case in which counting is not the thing to do. I propose instead a voyage to the heart of the Bible, an exploration of the paths we might take to get there and a quest to unearth essential, but largely forgotten Bible practices.

The purpose of this book is to contribute to the construction of a new paradigm for engaging the Bible in the Christian community. It is an intervention for a Bible in crisis. Seven new Bibles will be introduced to the reader as steps on the path to recovering one deeply engaged Bible. The chapters are set up in groups. Each grouping reviews a key deficiency in how we currently see or interact with the Bible followed by a recommendation for a new presentation or practice.

My core argument is that for most of us, most of the time, small readings prevail over big readings. Small and big refer to more than the length of the passages we take in. I define small readings as those diminished samplings of Scripture in which individuals take in fragmentary bits outside of the Bibles literary, historical and dramatic contexts. Also implicated here is a correspondingly meager soteriologythat narrow, individualistic and escapist view of salvation so common among Christians. My hope is that these deficiencies will come to be corrected by big readings. These are the more magnified experiences that result when communities engage natural segments of text, or whole books, taking full account of the Bibles various contexts. This will foster the apprehension of the storys goal in a majestic regeneration that is as wide as Gods good creation.

Closely related to these small and big readings are various other aspects of our current Bible culture, including related issues such as our typical visual presentation of the Bible, the inseparable connection of the Bible to our complicated life on earth, the way we make sense of (or dont bother with) the library of Scripture as a whole, and the role of aesthetics in what we do with the Bible.

Overall, I examine some of the ways the Bible has fallen in contemporary Christianity, followed by my own proposals for the Bibles restoration. I believe the journey to the Bibles redemptionjust like our ownlies in incarnational recovery. Just as we require a holistic salvation that includes our bodies, so the Bible needs a restoration that includes its physical form. And the point of this redemptionalso similar to our ownis a retrieval of original purpose and intended mission. The Word of God was sent into the world to be an agent of Gods transformative power. When we harm the Bible, we hinder that errand.