2/1/10 I was struck by a comment made toward the end of the God Journey podcast in which the guest was Steve McVey. In the discussion it was remarked that the traditional approach of extracting principles from the Bible is a way to attempt to control God or to gain knowledge of how to handle events, that renders an actual viable relationship with God not necessary. Once you have the principles, you don’t need to have an ongoing relationship with God as you ask questions about ‘what next’ in some situation.

Greg Boyd in his book ‘Repenting of Religion’ uses the same analogy as Steve McVey used – that of the Edenic tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil as symbolizing this grasping for wisdom, though he talks about it mainly in terms of our tendency to judge others or try to fix them. But the ideas are quite similar – in both cases it is a data-based approach vs. one of an actual relationship with God.

It explains also why in the previous church I attended, in which this principle-based preaching approach was practiced to the max, we were struck again and again how seldom God was mentioned.  The Bible was the focus, since it was the source of what we need. In fact I once noted something the pastor said as a pretty good indicator of his mentality – ‘the Bible is what we have until Jesus comes back.’ The risen Christ was out of the equation. Nothing about the ongoing relationship you can have with Jesus.

I found this dismissal of the principle based approach to the Bible rather shocking, since when in seminary we learned this exact method of exegesis, and I’d never realized the implications.  You look at the text at hand, determining the meaning in the immediate context. You then extract principles that have timeless application. But here it is said, that method is bogus. In addition to being in contradiction to a relationship with God, it also explains why the method actually never works for any but the most trivial and obvious ‘principles’ – love your wife, pay your taxes, cultivate the crops so your farm will be successful, etc. Actual life is not that simple. 

It comes down to what we really think the Bible is for. Is it a book of encoded knowledge, or is a collection of confessions of faith of people who have encountered God?