‘Eat the Book’: A Biblical Re-Awakening
From the Eastern Orthodox to Roman Catholics, to all the various stripes in between the Christian Church has been an eclectic mix of individuals and groups wrestling through what it means for what means to follow this God who came amongst us—our Emmanuel—Jesus. The Church has divided time and again, even fighting wars amongst itself and others to defend these beliefs. Yet one thing remained constant, or as Eugene Peterson writes:
‘Throughout the centuries people have found that they preferred other ways of going about this business of finding direction and guidance for living the Christian life. But the church community has consistently said ‘no’ to them and kept a firm grip on this text, this authoritative Bible.’[1]
There is some thing different about the Bible and the authority that it holds. All who claim Christ as Lord recognize this reality and join in the long conversation of people attempting understand it how that plays out in a believer’s life. For better or worse, the Western church has in many ways been the loudest in championing the belief of the authority of Scripture. Yet what exactly this authority is and thus what has been proclaimed by this side of the faith must be revisited. The time has come to reframe or return our understanding of the scriptural authority to it’s proper place.
READ THE BOOK
‘The Christian community has expended an enormous amount of energy and intelligence and prayer in learning how to ‘eat this book’”[2]
With the rise of the modernity, and in turn the scientific method, has given humanity the ability for a trusted, objective, and measurable ways in approaching truth. Rightfully so, it has made it's way into religious thought, allowing for the rise of schools of thought to spring forth from long held practices like apologetics towards systematic theologies. We have earnestly leaned into the Scriptures and attempted to prescribe how it should be understood. The Bible became a source for knowledge, another book to be set against textbooks and governing laws as if it could be read in the same manner – simple and direct.
As these understandings took root with the rise of the Reformation, with such things as Sola Scriptoria and more copies of the Scriptures being available in common languages, individuals from across the spectrum were able to read and attempt to interrupt it’s mean on their own. Enter all the division within the Western church. Though not inherently wrong, the personal relationship with God and personal understanding of truth set the Western church on an unintended trajectory that has come to a head as we begin to move out of the modern period into what is next. Truth becomes more and more subjective to our own personal understanding and as Peterson’s explains a new trinity has taken root in many streams of Western Christian thought: that of ‘Holy Wants, Holy Needs, and Holy Feelings’[3]. Individualism has inflected the Western churches faith walk to such an extent that the Bible only serves it’s purpose if it meets our desires – to experience God, to have our convictions reaffirmed, and to get whatever we believe is ours. Peterson’s observation is echoed else where in research done by many, including Christian Smith, with the term he coined ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism’.[4] Simply put our ‘personal God’ reflects the god we think we need and want. We read the Book, like it’s just another book – ready for it’s wisdom to transform our lives but ‘the blunt reality is that for all our sophistication, learning, and self-study we don’t know enough to run our lives.’[5]
EAT THE BOOK
Enter Eugene Peterson’s challenge to the Western Church - to ‘eat the book’. Leaning into Ezekiel and Jeremiah’s being called to eat the text by God – that God desired these prophets to be so moved by the word of God that it changed some thing deep within them. Peterson continues by saying that in eating the book, a person must ‘take it all in, assimilating it into the tissues of our lives.’[6] In doing so we echo not only the prophets but also that which is written in Revelation[7] that we take in both the sweet and the bitter we find in this Holy Word - the passages that are hard to swallow and the tension of events we can not reconcile with our own personal convictions but also the beauty of the unfolding and inviting narrative of God’s love for all of His creation.
This requires moves from all within the Western church - the evangelicals and mainliners, progressives and conservatives, fundamentalists and emergents – to repent and lament where they have replaced the Holy Trinity with their own trinities. Even if this means acknowledging that we’ve clung to moralism and activism over prayer and fasting, the pulpit over the sacraments, and neglected the Spirit by embracing the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Bible. When the Western Church, not simply just individual followers of Christ, can embrace the full authority of the Words found within Bible, it is the conviction of many not just Peterson that lives and systems can and will change; for we know ‘the Bible , all of it, is livable; it is the text for living our lives.’[8] These are words that are not simple facts or ‘how-to’s’ to simply be memorized, repeated, and tested on but rather these words are Sacred because they are words to be ‘spoken and listened to, written and read – are intended to do some thing in us, give health and wholeness, vitality and holiness, wisdom and hope.’[9]
Peterson’s challenge to ‘eat this book’ is simple, yet so complex. Simple in that he asks us to do what many already have – read all of the Text; complex in that this framework requires us to do more than simply read it but to consume it and to let it’s revelation infect us in ways we are unwilling to allow. For if and when we do, we might come to the same place as Peterson in recognizing that in the Scriptures we find:‘I, because I am a person, am personally involved in the revelation. Every word I hear, everything I see in my imagination as this story unfolds, involves me relationally, pulls me into participation, matters to my core identity, affects who I am and what I do.’[10]
[1] Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 15.
[2] Peterson, 21.
[3] Peterson, 31-32.
[4] Read: Christian Smith, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford Press, 2005).
[5] Peterson, 34.
[6] Peterson, 20.
[7] Revelation 10:9-10 KJV
[8] Peterson, 18.
[9] Peterson, 21.
[10] Peterson, 27.