{"id":3500,"date":"2017-04-05T09:18:11","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T14:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedisciplemaker.org\/?p=3500"},"modified":"2017-04-05T09:18:11","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T14:18:11","slug":"what-my-ministermissionarymother-taught-me-about-the-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.navpress.com\/sites\/thedisciplemaker\/2017\/04\/what-my-ministermissionarymother-taught-me-about-the-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"What My Ministry\/Missionary\/Mother Taught Me About The Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

\"\"Every day, in one way or another, Mother taught her three sons that \u201cGod\u2019s word,\u201d the Holy Story, is the way that guides us, the truth that saves us, and the love that fills us.
\nMy mother\u2019s Bible was an appendage of her body. A walking concordance, she seemed to know it like a surgeon knows a scalpel. She had a page in her Bible where she made entries of\u00a0the dates when she finished reading through the Bible.\u00a0She read through the\u00a0New Testament two or three times as often as she read through the Old Testament.\u00a0At least\u00a0twice a year she read through the Old Testament; at least\u00a0four times\u00a0a year through the New Testament. For her these were not \u201cbooks,\u201d but friends. These writers of the Bible were her conversation partners, her brothers and sisters in the cloud. When she finished one reading of James, she wrote this in her notebook: \u201cJames, I have enjoyed you. Some day we shall enjoy Jesus together.\u201d
\nThough she got enormously excited in the late 1970s over the news of Bob Dylan\u2019s conversion to Christianity, she never did understand his response when asked to nominate the most overrated and underrated books of the twentieth century: \u201cOverrated and underrated: The Bible.\u201d\u00a0How could you ever overrate the Bible? The Bible is what enabled her as a child to deal with the fear of a black panther chasing her and her sister while her parents and brothers were away, what helped her to deal with the death of two siblings (Hallie and Margaret) and the burning of her house to the ground in the same year. \u201cI couldn\u2019t live without my Bible,\u201d she would testify, while brandishing it like a firearm.
\nThe Best Bible Translation<\/strong>
\nIn Mother\u2019s mind, the Bible was not flat. What it says in Leviticus is not of equal importance to what it says in John. That does not mean some parts are more important than others; all passages of Scripture are of equal value\u2014but not of equal relevance. Some portions of Scripture applied to a culture that no longer existed.
\nSimilarly, there was a huge difference between \u201ctruth\u201d and \u201cfacts.\u201d We grew up hearing about the Scottish preacher (never named) who said, \u201cEverything in the Bible is true, except for the facts.\u201d That\u2019s a pun and wordplay, of course, but for Mother I took it to mean that while there are facts in the Bible, it was not written as a book of facts. Cultures and contexts often determine what should or should not be considered \u201cfact.\u201d The Bible was written not as a book of relative facts but absolute truths, divine truth communicated in stories, poetry, songs, prophecies, letters, histories, wisdom sayings, and apocalyptic literature.
\nThe best translation of the Bible? NIV? NRSV? KJV? No, the best translation is the life that puts the story into daily practice<\/strong>, turning the Bible into the living Bible. If that is true, then my Mother\u2019s Bible was the best translation I\u2019ve ever read. She read her Bible in the Holy Spirit language.<\/p>\n

Some people know more about the Scriptures than they do about the Christ.<\/em> – Mabel Boggs Sweet<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mother never tried to figure out the Bible. She tried to figure out life from the vista of the Bible. Rather than try to reshape people\u2019s vision of the Bible and go from there, she started with a biblical vision. When I talked to her about Scripture and Creation as the \u201ctwo Bibles\u201d that reveal the divine to us, she reminded me that the star (nature) and the signs (culture) did not guide the magi all the way to Christ. They needed the Scriptures to go the rest of the way. To see Jesus, we need the Scriptures.
\nA feeling is not a fact. You can \u201cfeel\u201d something without that \u201cfeeling\u201d being based on any factual reality. A ditty attributed to Martin Luther is how we learned from Mother to \u201cget it straight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feelings come and feelings go<\/em>
\nAnd feelings are deceiving<\/em>
\nOur warrant is the Word of God<\/em>
\nNone else is worth believing.<\/em>
\nI\u2019ll trust in God’s unchanging Word<\/em>
\nTill soul and body sever<\/em>
\nFor though all things shall pass away<\/em>
\nHIS WORD SHALL STAND FOREVER!<\/em>
\n(She never attributed this herself to Luther, only to \u201csomeone says.\u201d)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dive deeper into the life of this remarkable woman by reading Mother Tongue: How Our Heritage Shapes Our Story<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(NavPress 2017) by Leonard Sweet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every day, in one way or another, Mother taught her three sons that \u201cGod\u2019s word,\u201d the Holy Story, is the way that guides us, the truth that saves us, and the love that fills us. My mother\u2019s Bible was an … <\/p>\n

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