HOW SAFE IS YOUR PARCEL SHELF?
I was driving to the shops this week and a most intriguing and bizarre story came on the news on the radio. Apparently in the last few months there has been an explosion of parcel shelf thefts.
Yes, that is what I wrote.
Parcel shelves.
Selling for hundreds of pounds, back to the owners who lost them, but at half the replacement cost new from the car manufacturer!
This of course manifests as broken back windows and the cost and inconvenience involved. So bad has the problem become that there is a shortage in some places of replacement windows!
Very strange.
But the thing that really struck me was one comment. “Often they take the shelf and leave the valuables they were hiding behind”….
And it got me thinking. How easy is it to raid the Bible, take away the covering and miss the treasure?
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
There are many ways in which we can raid the bible. Break the window and grab the parcel shelf, missing the valuables they were hiding from view. Here are a few.
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Cherry picking
How easy is it to find a verse that will say what we want it to say? To portray the Jesus or the God that we want him to be. Maybe picking the bits that we find acceptable but avoiding the hard sayings, the challenging commands?
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New Testament bias
The bible Jesus read was the Old Testament. In fact Paul’s reference to scripture is that which he knew , which is the Hebrew scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. So if we only dip into the Gospels and letters then we miss the whole of scripture which the characters we read about in the New are referencing – just look at Hebrews! So if we only look at the New Testament we can miss the treasures of the whole story of God and his people.
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Avoiding the letter writers
For some, “if its not in the Gospels, its not for me”. The Gospel writers tell a story about Jesus’ time on earth from different perspectives but the letter writers are a commentary on that person and those events and how t live it out. And the pitfalls to avoid! Only taking instruction from the Gospels endangers missing the treasure in the whole canon. They all met Jesus and were filled with the Holy Spirit to inspire their perspectives.
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Anything but John!
For some, the synoptics (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are ok. They are different but comfortably familiar. But John – who may have written a Gospel, three letters and Revelation – is just too weird. To visual. Too numeric. Too , well John. But there are treasures in John which leaves us with a fuller picture of the promises of God of a kingdom to come and a mission to be fulfilled. While we may not understand all the imagery the overall message is clear – God wins! And we are called to perfection through Christ.
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Reading everything through one set of lenses
The technical phrase is our “hermeneutic”. It’s a theological phrase for the lenses we read scripture through. Examples might be a Jewish lens, or ones of justice or social action, or love or sin and judgement. There are myriad lenses. But we need to recognise that whatever our lens, its also a bias that might skew the true meaning. Because we subconsciously either reinterpret based on that bias or we reject anything that doesn’t fit (eg how can a loving God allow the Israelites to enter and destroy everyone in Jericho?) We can miss the treasure by focusing on the parcel shelf.
There are I am sure other ways in which this analogy can be true!
We need to be open and recognise that becoming a disciple of Christ is signing up to the potential for life long learning. We can be challenged by what we find. Find new treasures even when we come back to well read and well-known passages. Let the Spirit guide, listen to trusted commentators, but also discover for yourself that which God wants to reveal to you what you not have seen before.
Remember the are God-breathed, trustworthy and useful to equip you – for whatever God is calling you into as his servants.
Enjoy.
Many blessings
Doug
DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING TO?.....