The Letter Kills
The letter kills but the Spirit gives life. - 2 Corinthians 3:6
The early church leader Paul is writing about how parts of the Bible have been used against people to make them feel disconnected from God, guilty, and inhuman. Sound familiar? This sort of thing did not end when Jesus showed up. It goes on today. Many of us have experienced religious leaders wielding the Bible against us with a stack of ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ and ‘have tos’ that have left us feeling like we’d never meet up to God’s expectations. In the end, many of us gave up, or even worse, just jumped on the judgment bandwagon for a while and tried to be better than everyone else.
There’s another layer to how scripture is being misused today, however. It’s what we do to ourselves. It happens whether we read the Bible often or not at all. Sure, the seeds may have been sown a long time ago. But those preachers no longer sit in our armchairs. We don’t play them on our podcasts. We think we’ve become ‘enlightened’ but we still keep the Bible at arm’s length because it doesn’t feel… safe. We’re deeply suspicious that our worst fears will be confirmed if we took a few moments to listen, really listen, for God in scripture. And when we do approach the Bible somehow we always leave feeling bad about ourselves. That just doesn’t seem like what it was intended for, does it?
What if there were a different way to come to it?
It’s an ancient text so, sure, we’ll have to weed through the patriarchy of the culture it was written in and what passed for science in that day an age. But these were people just like you and me, with hopes and fears, lusts and insecurities, babies and bad hair days and big questions and wild experiences when (wait for it) they heard God. And maybe we could too if we would let the Spirit give life to us through the text instead of our brains treating it like the letter of some judgmental Law to avoid or to dread or even to keep.
Take a moment and reflect on this verse and see what stands out to you this day. Again, lean into the Spirit, not the letter, to life, not to death, in this short passage:
If my people would only listen to me…
with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.
- Psalm 81:13, 16
Additional Resources
1. Some City Church people have found helpful this wonderful daily podcast by a group of monks and nuns called Pray As You Go. It is a 10-13 minute Lectio Divina (like we did in church on Sunday - reading a passage of scripture twice with some questions and song and some silence)
2. Many City Church people have found the book Inspired by Rachel Held Evans to be a very helpful a) intro to the Bible or b) re-entry to the Bible. Rachel has been like a patrol saint to City Church.
3. Being in a group this Fall with others. Sometimes the communal aspect of talking about the Bible helps us through our issues with it. We’re looking at having a bible study on Philippians this Fall. If you’re interested you could express that interest here.