Back to the School of Life
I remember seeing a poster outside my college dining hall “Don’t read the Bible alone.” It was a funny sign, given that reading the Bible alone is what I and many other Christians do every day.
Below this edict by one of the college’s most respected professors was an article about why. And after I read the article, I couldn’t have agreed more with the man.
He was talking about how people read the scripture in their own personal vacuum, and then apply in to their own lives and the lives of other people. But the problem was that scripture was meant to be understood in community—that the language of the bible is not “you”
singular but “you” plural, implying that the hearers are a group in community.
In my years of living in Christian communities (count ‘em–1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7….it goes up to 25) of varying degrees of commitment, and most recently living in community as an independent adult has taught me a lot about my tendency to seek my own truth rather than God’s. I like my ideas and I want other people to hear them.
But if I only hear my own thoughts or ideas, I miss out on what everyone else has to say.
So, that is my challenge to myself today. My thought is that people in learn about in community. What about the people who don’t have community?
This is really great. Thanks Amy. An important challenge to someone studying theology. I really need to bounce my understandings and learnings off of other people in order to keep it from being shoved into one of my pre-existing understandings without really being challenged by it, or without hearing the challenge that others find in it. Anyway, some of my thoughts on this.