Chapter 3: Our Snacking Bible
We have our favorite verses. But for every favorite verse, there is an anti-verse. A verse that is not seen on wall art or coffee mugs
From Justification to Prophecy to Piety: A Short History of Snacking. After the Bible was “versified”, it became easy to use to hurl doctrinal volleys, pick out prophecies, etc. Verses begin to be used to define doctrine, etc… "Thus the modernist Bible sparked a revolution in new Bible practices. And these practices are not what people did with the Bible in the centuries predating the Reformation. But these new Bible practices redefined for us what the word biblical means. Philip Yancey has said we’ve essentially reduced our engagement with the Scriptures to eating Bible McNuggets. And snacking, once you’ve begun to indulge it, is an unhealthy but hard habit to break.”
Falling in Love with (Parts of) the Bible. Two examples of Bible types that encourage snacking.
- The speciality study Bible. It can turn the Bible into a mirror focusing more on the reader and their pre-understanding of their needs rather than opening the gates to the Bible.
- The handbook model of the Bible. There are something like 50 versions of the Bible available in this genre. And example is “Bible answers for every need.” Electronic version of the Bible are particularly susceptible to this model. God created in a way that giving us a handbook would trivialize our created abilities. Direction readers to such a book sets them up for failure.
Why Snacking Is No Way to Live. Bible snacking is highly selective and filters the Bible into snacks we want to hear. We end up with a Cheshire-cat Bible—all smiles and no body. "Snacking, in spite of the high-pitched protests of its practitioners, betrays a low view of the Scriptures. It rejects the Bible as it is received from the inspired authors and instead decides for itself what the Bible is supposed to be: I need the Bible to be a quick-and-easy access point for inspirational or doctrinal verses. But God did not choose to give us this kind of Bible.” "The gospel is not John 3: 16. What the apostles Paul and John wrote— what God’s Spirit enkindled in them— was something entirely different than these boiled-down reductions. Evangelist D. L. Moody said he could write the gospel on a dime. Well, Paul and John couldn’t, and didn’t.” The snacking Bible should be done away with the practice labelled for what it is—“verse jacking."
Quotes from Paauw, Glenn R. (2016-04-21). Saving the Bible from Ourselves: Learning to Read and Live the Bible Well (Kindle Locations 888-889). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.