Suspicion v. Adoration

"Most of us have been trained in what is sometimes termed a "hermeneutics of suspicion."  People lie a lot.  And people who write lie more than most.  We are taught to bring a healthy suspicion to everything we read, especially when it claims authority over us.  And rightly so.  We examine and cross-examine the text.  What's going on here?  What's the hidden agenda?  What's behind all of this?  The three modern masters of the hermeneutic of suspicion are Nietzsche, Marx and Freud.  They taught us well to take nothing at face value."  - Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, p. 68

For most of what we read this is a useful learning.  However, when we come to the Bible with this same approach to reading, we end up with "a small sawdust heap of facts."  We cannot lose this "hermeneutic of suspicion" because we must learn how to discern truth and throw out the junk.  The difference with the Bible is that there is no junk.  We can trust it, no matter what our learned conscious tells us.  Instead of approaching the Holy Writ with suspicion, we must approach it with a "hermeneutic of adoration," so we can see how big, how marvelous and how magnificent life really is.  We spend our time enjoying the world "both vast and intricate" that is revealed by the Text.

Again, this is part of our flawed system.  Think back to when you were a kid and your parents used to tell you stories.  There was a difference between fairy tales and family stories, right.  I mean, a fairy tale was a made-up story designed to spark our imaginations and often stretched our parents to the ends of theirs.  However, when Mom or Dad began to tell us stories of when they were kids, or when their parents were younger, we listened differently.  We listened with a trust that came easily when we were young.  Slowly, over time, this trust of story was replaced by suspicion.  Part of listening to the story of God is regaining that adoration, that trust, as we listen.  We can trust because it's been tested.  We can trust the words because we can trust the object of the words.

If we are going to eat this book, then we must approach it with less cynicism and more trust.  We must allow ourselves to enter into the story, so that the story can enter into us.  We must listen more with our feet and less with our ears, as we participate in the reading of the story.  We have a part to play, but we will never play our part until we trust the story.