“One of the great movie lines of my lifetime expresses well the way we often read the Bible.
The problem is not literalism. Reading the Bible for the literal – or as Wesley would say “plain” – meaning of the text is never a bad idea. Much of the Bible was written with intention that it be read literally.
The problem is looking for that key word or phrase that assures us we are getting “that little extra push over the cliff” out of our Bible reading.
Most blokes when they are struggling through their life of faith, they get to that point where they want a little more certainty. They want to know for certain that what they think is true about God or their salvation or the unrighteousness of the guy in the next pew or the woman down the street. But they can’t get there. That’s when you pull out your favorite verses and key terms. They are like the magic number 11 on the Spinal Tap amp. They tell us we are louder than the next guy. Look! It’s right there. My amp goes to 11. My Bible says I’m going to heaven and you are not. My Bible taught me five sure fire principles for a happy marriage. My pastor says those people across the street don’t understand God at all. He’s got 11 Bible versus that prove it.
All this is on my mind because lately I’ve been wrestling with “the classic Protestant” understanding of justification. For the last couple of months, I’ve been reading John Wesley’s sermons. As I’ve written before, I find them a rich resource with many insights into faith and Christian life. Reading them, of course, has given me a real tour of the Protestant understanding of justification – at least as Wesley articulated it.
Set against this has been a Bible study I’ve been a part of the last few weeks. The Short-Term Disciple Bible Study of Romans is fascinating and frustrating. It is frustrating because the overt aim of the study guide is to offer an alternative to the classic Protestant reading of Romans, but it does so without really engaging in a deep exploration of the issue. It skims quickly over deep questions and asserts much more than it argues. In the process, it gives pretty short shrift some doctrines that many Christians – and the United Methodist doctrinal standards – hold dear.
But it has gotten me to spend some time going back through the Bible trying to see how the different books speak of sin and faith and new birth and the place of works. I’ve even spent some time with the Apostolic Fathers seeing how – if at all – they raise the issues that Luther and Wesley do when they read Romans.
I come away with the sense that the classic evangelical reading is “a” possible reading, but not the only one. In the service of a certain understanding of justification by faith some things get “interpreted” to keep all the ducks in a row. (John Wesley does this in his sermon on “Justification by Faith” when he has to take into account Paul’s assertion that doers of the law will be declared righteous even if they do not know the law.)
I’m far from through with this inquiry. The good news is that I’m only 42, so I have a few more decades to work on it.
But it does make me wonder how often we are guilty of “going to 11″ when we find a summary of the gospel that works for us. We latch on to those verses that prop up our reading. We hold on to them until that day comes when we need that little extra push in the face of doubt or conflicting readings or some other moment when being able to turn our spiritual dial up one more notch would be a great help.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
