Connecting the Dots

I wrote this today after spending the last few weeks thinking about a ton of stuff. Writing this down actually gave me the idea of creating this blog in the first place. I decided since I am leaving for Haiti in a few days I might as well make a blog so that people can keep up with my work there. And I went ahead and posted some things I have written in the past. And today (the first time in a while) I wrote my thoughts down. So here it goes...


I’ll be totally honest, I really haven’t read my Bible much at all since I have been in College. And even in high school, it really wasn’t much. But I will tell you that I feel like I started to finally understand the significance of the Bible in the past week or so. You might say well duh!!! ya idiot, of course the Bible is important. So, I guess to respond to that, I would say that I’ve always known how important the Bible is, I just started to experience it rather than just know it. Anyways...I started reading, and then thinking, and then reading some more, and then came more thinking. I think a lot; and I think fast. I feel like I sometimes find myself in a zero gravity atmosphere and my head is filled with tons of little extreme bouncy balls and I’ll read something that hits me in the head like a 2 by 4 and those bouncy balls go crazy. I really don’t know if that’s normal, or if I really am crazy, or if I’m really smart or something like that. Regardless, I am who I am, and I’m not complaining. Let’s move on shall we?
I have thought a ton about the different categories of concepts or ideas in the Bible. Although I am not a Bible scholar or anything close to it I do think that I have learned the skill of reading something in an unbiased way and to critically evaluate (weigh) the material that I receive against my past experiences and knowledge and my own logic. I feel that it is sometimes extremely hard to grasp certain concepts and ideas that are in the Bible. Let me explain what I am talking about.
There are the obvious ones like how big God is, how the Trinity works, and how the creation of the universe actually went down. I like to call these “bigger than me concepts”. We like to try to come up with analogies and such for items like these in an attempt to allow our minds to wrap around or understand the idea. But I feel that in reality we, in doing this, are simply shrinking the idea, which then shrinks God. And I really don’t see how that’s fair at all. So I try my hardest not to think about these and accept the fact that I will never ever ever understand the vastness of my creator.
There are also the concepts that are revealed throughout the whole Bible that we tend to pass up. These are the underlying concepts of the Bible, the foundation I would say. I feel like these certain foundational concepts are not what we think them to be. I’m not talking about the ten commandments or loving one another. I’m talking about the history, the context, and the background. I feel as if we sometimes mistake the ten commandments and such to be broad overarching themes of the Bible. But in reality they are very specific; do not steal; do not murder; Obey your parents; etc. I would prefer to look at them more as broad overarching themes of Christianity, not the Bible.
I came to this conclusion when I started seeing elements of the Bible connect to one another and form a big picture, similar to the connect the dots pictures that we used to draw as children. If you think back to when you were a child and you tried to draw the straightest lines possible from one dot to the next in order to form a more clear picture. The more lines you drew the more the picture revealed itself. Similarly the more I began to read the Bible the more the big picture revealed itself. Obviously I have not yet and probably will never see every detail of the big picture that comes out of the Bible. But it was amazing to me that as little as I read in the last few weeks, (Philippians, 1 Timothy, Titus, 1 Corinthians, Ecclesiastes, parts of Genesis, parts of Matthew, and parts of Luke) how many dots I was able to connect. The big picture revealed much more of itself to me than I had anticipated. This big picture is something that, in my opinion, we tend to overlook as individuals and more importantly as the congregation of Christ’s followers. I like to call this group of ideas as the “slippery concepts”. Meaning we tend to let these concepts slip through the cracks of the Bible. In other words, we as a church tend to focus on only one or two or maybe three of the “dots” at once and never really step back to see all the “dots” connected.
So we have the “bigger than me concepts” and “slippery concepts”. Let’s put it another way so that we might understand a little better. We have “boulders” that are really hard to pick up and definitely can’t be thrown around easily. We have “legos” that are small and lightweight, but are hard to keep track of. And we have the group of concepts I like to call the “manageable concepts” or the “baseballs”. Here is where it get’s tricky. We sometimes try to chill on top the boulders, but that gets boring and frustrating. We sometimes try to play with the legos, but we end up loosing them all before we can make any type of castle or fortress out of them. So we as the church today tend to stick with playing catch out in the yard. It’s fun, it’s easy, and it’s entertaining. We play with the same ball until someone makes a bad throw and it get’s lost in the bushes which leads to us just picking up another ball and continuing on with our play.
In your mind right now you are probably conceptualizing what I am talking about in your own community or congregation. So you go to church on Sunday morning and your preacher does his job and preaches. He might be “throwing around” some ideas such as being filled with the holy spirit and speaking in tongues (that is if you attend a Pentecostal Church) or why we shouldn’t use instruments in our worship (Church of Christ) or how God doesn’t work in the world today the same way he did in the early church (Baptist) etc etc... The preacher is probably using small “sound bites” from different places in the Bible or maybe even a section of a chapter. You see, these are the concepts and ideas that distinguish one denomination from another. Because this is what separates us from the others, it is natural to focus on these things. In other words, these “controversial” subjects of what the Bible says are the “manageable concepts” or the “baseballs”. You might be questioning the idea that controversial subjects are the so called “easy” or “fun” subjects. So let me explain why I think this.
My entire life I have been deathly allergic to milk. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been teased and made fun of for eating things such as cheese-less pizza, lucky charms without milk, and having a rice-crispy cake for each of my birthdays instead of a regular cake. So when I order a cheeseburger with no cheese at chili’s, and they put cheese on it anyways, I take pleasure in informing the server that if I were to eat the cheeseburger my throat would swell up and I would suffocate and die. I don’t do this to be rude or unappreciative of their hard work. I do this because I am somewhat proud of the fact that I am allergic to milk. This is what makes me who I am. This differentiates me from the average 20 year old male. This makes me different, and I am proud of the fact that I am different. You see though, this is a problem in my life. I sometimes feel as if I am average, as if I was normal, as if I was the epitome of a 20 year old man. If I were to try to think of one fact about myself that set me apart from the average person, I would probably think of my milk allergy. In reality there are a plethora of characteristics that set me apart from the norm. You see, different denominations feel as if their identifying factor is whether or not they speak in tongues or whether or not they worship God without instruments. This congregational characteristic is what we tend to be proud of when we think of our own personal faith. Even when other people pick on someone or make a little fun by telling them that they have differing beliefs, one seems to stick their chest out and stand firm next to our beliefs. In reality the things that set us apart from other churches are things such as the overall quality of people, overall success in reaching people for Christ, people being truly genuine in their worship, people of the congregation actually living consistent non-hypocritical Christ-like lives etc. etc... Because of this natural tendency, the focus of today's church tends to stay on or around our “manageable concepts”. We get used to playing catch and we forget about the boulders and legos. One must admit that playing catch is much more appealing than trying to play with legos or boulders.
What then are we to do? I do not believe I have any form of authority over the area of what specifically to do, but God has given us this awesome gift of the Bible so that we may understand Him as fully as possible and thus live according to his will. Although I cannot say that I know the whole picture, or even the majority, I can say that in order to successfully understand the whole picture we have to be able to expand our focus from one category of concepts to all three categories. In doing this we as individuals will be able to “tune in” to God’s will and become one with God’s heart. This simply means that we will understand God a little more every day and thus be able to live a better, more Christ-like, life. We have to be able acknowledge the “bigger than me concepts”, figure out how to keep a hold of the “slippery concepts”, and be less distracted by the “manageable concepts”. We have to be able to acknowledge that the “boulders” are there and try not to make them smaller than they really are. We have to keep track of the small annoying “legos” so that we can successfully build our fortress of understanding. And in order to do that we must set aside our “baseballs” every once in a while so that we can have time to sit on the “boulder” and acknowledge the magnificence of our creator, and also have time to dig through all the “legos” and start putting them together so that we may understand the big picture more and more every day.
In conclusion, if you had a white piece of paper with dots randomly assorted upon it, what do you do? Well first you have to recognize the size of the piece of paper (the magnificence of God), then you would begin at the first dot, and draw a line from dot to dot till the outline is complete (understanding the framework of the Bible), and then you would take different crayons and color in between the lines (learning what the whole picture looks like so that you can try to mirror that image in your own life). We have to recognize that, because of natural human error, not every picture is going to look exactly the same as the next. But, unless you really cannot follow instructions, everybody’s initial outline of the picture should be very similar, and thus, each one of us can acknowledge our minuscule differences without drawing attention away from the whole picture. In understanding what the basic picture looks like, we then can begin to pursue God’s heart, and in doing so, understand what our creators true love, grace, and satisfaction feels like.