Eat This Book :: Contemplatio

The final movement in lectio divina is contemplation, which "means living the read/meditated, prayed text in the everyday, ordinary world." p. 109

Contemplation is one of those hard to understand words.  In our culture, it is typically reserved for those who have chosen some sort of monastic lifestyle in seclusion somewhere up in the mountains.  Sometimes that life sounds really appealing to me, but in the end I just don't think it is what Jesus intended for me.  While, historically, contemplation has rightly referred to such, it doesn't refer to only such lives.

Peterson has a deep longing to see that people not just read the text, not just read and meditate on the text, and not just read, meditate and pray through a text.  His drive is to see people carry their reading, meditation and prayer into their muscles and bones, into their oxygen-breathing lungs and blood-pumping heart.

For me, this is where the rubber hits the road, so to say.  If the Story, stops short of contemplation, then what good is it to me, and what good am I to the world or to God's causes in the world.  When we continue in this long enough, prayer by prayer, "we find ourselves living in a reality that is far larger, far lovelier, far better."  This is where I want to be in my relationship with the Holy Script.  I know that God is writing, what some of us call an upper story, while we continue to live and struggle in this lower story (the one we know all too well).  Contemplation allows me to participate/experience the greater Story that God is writing around me...and in me.

Kathleen Norris calls "The quotidian (daily) mysteries: laundry, liturgy and 'women's work.'"  She writes,

I have come to believe that the true mystics of the quotidian are not those who contemplate holiness in isolation, reaching godlike illumination in serene silence, but those who manage to find God in a life filled with noise, the demands of other people and relentless daily duties that can consume the self.  They may be young parents juggling child-rearing and making a living...If they are wise, they treasure the rare moments of solitude and silence that come their way, and use them not to escape, to distract themselves with television and the like.  Instead , they listen for a sign of God's presence and they open their hearts toward prayer.

Contemplation means living what we read - not wasting any of it and not hoarding any of it away.  A contemplative live is not some special life, but the Christian life - not more, not less, but lived.  

Unlike the first three movements of lectio divina, contemplation is not something we can just do.  It's more something that happens in us and to us.  As we humbly approach the Scriptures with prayer and intentionality, we beckon the Spirit of God to live out the words in our daily lives.  It is our response to what we have experienced in the first three movements.  I want to live the words on the pages.  I want to live in those words.

I believe this is the most crucial of the four movements.  This is where the Word of God transforms us into people of the Words.  We actually discover our part in the Story, rather than simply finding parts of the Story for us.  Intuitively, I find myself resonating with Peterson's explanation of this movement.  Something inside my heart aches for this, yet I fail often.  I guess you could call me, well all of us, failed contemplatives.  Nonetheless, there is a bent in me toward this living out the Story.  I want my failings to lead me to greater transformation into the man God has called me to be.

The last section of the Eat This Book, is dedicated to translation and the formation of Peterson's Message translation.  I'm not sure if I'll post anything on that section - it may just be a bonus if you went and got the book.  If this is the last post from the book, I hope you've enjoyed the "cliff's notes" version of my small journey.  I'd be interested in hearing if you liked the posts and if it would be worth our time doing this again sometime.

Eat This Book :: Lectio Divina

Today, I continued my reading of Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book.  I have moved into part two of the book and today I began Chapter 7 "Ears Thou Hast Dug for Me."  I have to admit that he's gotten a little "heady" and I'm going to wade gently through the posting waters here because so much of what I am reading today is wrapped in the context of what I've read in the previous six chapters.  But nonetheless, I said I'd let you enter my world of reading this book, so here we go.

"So, lectio divina...A way of reading that refuses to be reduced to just reading but intends the living of the text, listening and responding to the voices of that "so great a cloud of witnesses" telling their stories, singing their songs, preaching their sermons, praying their prayers, asking their questions, having their children, burying their dead, following Jesus."  - Peterson, p. 90.

Lectio divina is a spiritual discipline, developed and passed down from our ancestors, which helps us to recover the livelihood of context and relationships that are weaved throughout the Scriptures.  The discipline is comprised of four basic elements: lectio (read the text), meditatio (meditate on the text), oratio (pray the text) and contemplatio (live the text).

Over the past couple of years, I have written all of my studies using this simple format, including our current INTAKE 2 Go and our Kids' take-home materials.  It's simple - Read, Think, Pray and Live.  Today, my reading centered around the lectio, or reading component.

I have already posted that how we read our Bible is probably more important than that we read it.  Reading it incorrectly can cause much more damage than good.  Peterson focuses on the issue of "metaphor" when listening to the Scriptures.  A metaphor states something as true, which is literally not true.  He cites biblical examples like, "God is a rock," "the Lord is my shepherd," and "I am a rose of Sharon" to illustrate his point.

For those of us who are intent on taking the bible seriously, metaphor plays an interesting role.  We must not assume that seriously equals literally.  We must learn to listen to the Bible's metaphors and its literal writings together.  The danger in my religious heritage is to minimize metaphor or to attempt to literalize it and in doing so we strip the text of its richness and meaning.

Metaphors are meant to enhance what is otherwise inconceivable.  When discussing the transcendent God, there is no better use of language than metaphor.  Rather than diminishing the subject, in this case God, it opens our understanding of who He is and what He is like.  Metaphor reveals the connectedness of our stories.  God is connected to us, we are connected to each other.  Metaphor is often the bridge that connects our varying worlds together.

Okay, enough of the lesson for today.  My take-away from the reading today was that I need to embrace the biblical metaphors rather than attempt to dissect them away or literalize them.  Because "the primary organ for receiving God's revelation is not the eye that sees, but the ear that hears," I want to transform my reading of the Bible into a hearing of God's word.

Eat This Book: Let Anyone with Ears to Hear Listen!

"Listening is what we do when someone speaks to us; reading is what we do when someone writes to us." - Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, p. 87

For the past 24 hours, I have pondered this quote and what it means to my reading of the Bible.  In one sense, it is a book and it has ink on the pages, so it is something that has been written.  However, it wasn't written to me.  I mean, it doesn't say, "Dear Brad, I write this letter to you..."  I am reading letters written to other people at other times in other circumstances.  It's like eavesdropping on someone else's correspondence.  I've heard preachers my whole life tell me that the Bible was written to me and for me, but after three years in seminary and several classes on the structure of the Bible, I discovered that my name is nowhere to be found!  Moses didn't know me, Solomon didn't know me, David didn't know me and none of the prophets knew me.  Neither did Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, Paul, James and whoever wrote Hebrews.

I am just now finding a certain "okay" about this, too.  It's okay that my name isn't written in the pages of the Bible because the Story written in the pages of my Bible is not contained to those pages.  The revelation of God in my life did not stop when John set his pen down after writing the final word in Revelation.  God continues to reveal Himself to me, He continues to show us who He is and what He is doing in our world today.  More often than not, He speaks to us through the stories that He made sure were included in what we call The Bible.  The Holy Scriptures serve as the divine plum-line for our stories.  Everything is to be held up to the Text, to determine whether or not it is true and part of the bigger revelation of God.

If I view the Bible as mine, then I have missed something important and it could be potentially dangerous.  I bought a leather covered bible, but I don't own the Word of God.  God is the one who is sovereign in this Story, not me.  I cannot pick and choose to do with the words whatever I want.  I must approach the Bible as it is, a living revelation of God - extending into my world today.  As I read with this sort of understanding, I find not that the books contained were written to me, but that God is actually "speaking" to me.  I am not just reading the Bible, but I am also "listening" to the biblical story.  Hearing the Story, allows us to participate.  Hearing the Story is what moves the Bible from a book on our night stand to a living conversation with the One who put it all together and is involved in our daily lives.  Hearing the Story is listening to God.

Listening often involves more details than reading.  Last year, I read a book called A New Kind of Christian (in my book list).  I thought the book was good and I was engaged.  But then, I decided to get the audio format to carry with me.  I listened to the book the second time.  I was much more engaged in the story as I listened then when I read.  When I read, I was analyzing and critiquing, but when I listened, I felt like I was in the coffee shop with the two men.  I could hear the inflection in their voices, and I could imagine the settings where they walked and talked - and I was there, too!

Listening to the Story of the Bible involves more than just reading.  It means we need to dig a little deeper and know a little more than just what is written on the pages.  Each part of the Story is written in a particular context.  The more context we know, the more the Story comes alive.  All of us have probably experienced this in a sermon or a bible study where the teacher opened up the Story by telling us details of the author and recipient, the locale and the circumstance, that made the Story jump off the page.  The great thing about today is that no one has to have a seminary degree to learn the context of the Story.  There are plenty of tools in our bookstores or online that will help us open up the context of the Story so we can listen rather than just read.  I will work on a post with some of the tools later.

For now, are you tracking with me?  Are you feeling the difference I'm talking about?  Can you hear  what I am writing, or are you just reading?  I'm tired of reading the Bible and I'm ready to listen to the Story!

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.

A Story Bigger Than What I am Currently Reading

Have you ever noticed that when you are reading a good book, there are things that make sense later in the story that shed light on something that happened earlier in the story.  When you read chapter one, there are things going on that are better understood when you are reading chapter seven, than they were when you were reading chapter one.  It also happens in movies.  You watch a movie the second time and say to yourself, "How did I miss that?" but your eyes are only opened when you know the whole story.

The Bible is written like this.  It is a vast narrative written to draw us into the ultimate Story.  Unfortunately I don't always read it that way.  And to be honest, it's hard to read it that way.  As I said before, I was taught to read in order to gather information, facts and morality.  Only recently have I begun to understand that, rather than a collection of individual books of historical accounts, poems, songs, and letters, the Holy Scripture is actually ONE large story. Northrop Frye (great name), an advocate of reading largely, said, "Every sentence is the key to the whole Bible."  He understood that the "immediate context of the sentence [any sentence in Scripture] is as likely to be three hundred pages off as to the be next or preceding sentence."

Understanding this to be true, brings to light one of the greatest dangers of modern Christianity.  If we continue to reduce our reading of the Scriptures as simply a gatherings of facts, a production of a morality or even a kettle of inspiration, we will miss the Story, thus robbing Scripture of the transformational power in our lives.  We cannot simply read because we have to, but must begin to read because we are drawn into.  I have known people who have read the Bible through, more than once.  I am not one of those people...yet.  I have also heard these people say that each subsequent read is better than the previous.  Why?  Because the Story pulls them into the intricacies once you know the ending.  Great stories do this to you.

How have you been taught to read the Bible?  If you are like most people, you didn't come upon your reading style by attending a formal class.  The classes often tell us that we should read the Bible, but not how.  I'm interested to know if I am alone in my assessment so far.  I'm also hoping to hear that some of you have discovered the Bible as a Story and would love to hear your thoughts.  

It's a Story...Not a Textbook

"Spiritual theology, using Scripture as text, does not present us with a moral code and tell us 'Live up to this'; nor does it set out a system of doctrine and say, 'Think like this and you will live well.'  The biblical way is to tell a story and in the telling invite: 'Live into this - this is what it looks like to be human in this God-made and God-ruled world; this is what is involved in becoming and maturing as a human being.'"

- Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, p. 43-44

One of my favorite things about the Scripture is that it is not written in a way to flatter us.  It's a story - the good, the bad and the ugly.  One of the things I am trying to recapture is reading it the way it was written and not how I've necessarily been taught.  I have been taught, whether intentional or not, to study the bible and then apply it to my life.  I have read it as a moral code or a systematic theology.  While the bible has within its pages, a code of morality and a system of doctrine, it was not written to be read that way.  It was written mostly in narrative form and it invites me into the stories that are within the pages.  If I am going to honor the holy pages, then I must not read to see what the bible can give me, but read in such a way to discover where I fit into this meta-narrative.  When I read this way, I submit to the story.  I do not use the story to figure out ways to meet my wants, needs and feelings.  I read to engage in the story that is there.  I am in the story of Abraham and Sarah, I'm in the story of Daniel, I'm in the story of Peter and of Paul.

"When we submit our lives to what we read in Scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories, but our stories in God's."

- Peterson, p. 44

How different will by reading be when I grasp these truths?  How much richer will the stories be when I read them as a story, not as a school text?  I want to learn to savor the story.  Chew on it.  Taste it.  I want to eat this book.

Eat This Book

I am currently reading in a new book called Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading. Eugene Peterson, the translator for The Message version of the Bible, writes this book in order to "pull the Christian Scriptures back from the margins of the contemporary imagination where they have been so rudely elbowed by their glamourous competitors, and reestablish them at the center as the text for living the Christian life deeply and well." I am intrigued by this book because I have become one of those who has pushed the Scriptures to the margins of my imagination. I didn't mean to. I didn't set out to replace the Scriptures with anything else. I grew up in a denomination that has, throughout history, fought vigorously over the authority of the Scriptures. I believe that the Bible is authoritative. How did I get here, then?


I got here by slowly replacing the Bible with other good books. Early in my faith, it seemed to be Max Lucado. Then I moved along to other writers like John Ortberg, Philip Yancey, John Piper, Donald Miller and Rob Bell. These are great writers who I believed were continually challenging me to look deeper into life and how the Bible fit into that life. The problem is not the writers or their books, the problem is that I was looking to see how the Scriptures fit into my life and not looking at the Scriptures to see how my life fit into them. It's a subtle difference, but it has landed me at a place where it's easier to pick up another book than to pick up The Book. It's ironic to me that God is using one of those books to change the way I think about reading His Book.

As I continue through this book, I'm going to let my challenges be your challenges for the next several days.  As I read, I will post.  One of the marks of a great book is that it makes me stop, exhale and think about what I'm reading.  For this book, you will get to experience the exhale and thoughts.  If you want to get the book and read along with me, that would be great, but you don't have to.  I'm just letting you into my thought-world for a few days.

Chapter 1 - The Holy Community at Table With Holy Scripture

Revelation 10.9 (TNIV)     So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, “Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but ‘in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.’ ”  10 I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. 

In the final book of the Bible, the angel of the Lord uses an interesting metaphor in relation to the Scriptures.  Or is it a metaphor?  The word he uses is the word katesthio which is not light snack or nibble, but an eating up or devouring.  It was often used with animals of prey, as they would devour their food.

As John, heard the angel say these words there is a good chance he recalled similar commands given to two other great prophets centuries earlier (Ezekiel 2:8-3:3; Jeremiah 15:16).  The emphasis by the angel is that the "scroll" (John's bible) was to be devoured.  It was to be consumed in a manner as if the one eating was on the brink of starvation.  Ezekiel, Jeremiah and John all came to the understanding that they were to take the written words of God and ingest them in a way that would work the text out into their lives.

I grew up with a different understanding of reading.  I read in order to gain the right information to pass the test.  The goal for reading was never taught to be a transformational experience, but rather an informational one.  I have learned, in recent years, the art of letting a book get into me and change me.  Now my desire is to begin reading the Bible this way.  As a pastor, it's easy to always read the Bible with an eye to teaching others.  It's much more difficult to eat it on my own...to let it sink in...to live it out.

Now the journey begins.  Let the Holy Scriptures return to their Holy Place of prominence in the life of this Christ-follower.  May my life be shaped by what the text says and not what someone says about the text.  Let me listen to the community of faith in a healthy way, helpful to my understanding but not my sole understanding.  I want to Eat His Book.