Slipstream - Leaders - in - formation

Inkblots and Puzzles 

In the 1990s, Kris heard about a new kind of book called Magic Eye, and she bought one for our kids for Christmas. Perhaps you remember the popularity of Magic Eye books. Whether you do or don't, I hope you can find one somewhere and open it up and look at its pictures, which really aren't pictures. They are autostereograms. The pictures in these books, if we let our eyes do what they can do, somehow transform from normal two-dimensional images into three-dimensional images. In front of you is what appears to be a flat picture, perhaps with some dots. But, if you look at that picture just right - if you have eyes to see! - what you think is an ordinary picture of dots and an assortment of shapes begins to take on life. We see humans and flowers and planets in the sky in three dimensions. (I have to admit that this is pretty easy for me, and I have been standing where men stand in designated rooms in public buildings and had the wall in front of me, nothing more than ordinary wallpaper, take on 3D!)

What we are looking for in reading the Bible is the ability to turn the two-dimensional words on paper into a three-dimensional encounter with God, so that the text takes on life and meaning and depth and perspective and gives us direction for what to do today. Gaining Magic Eyes ushers us into the renewal way of reading the Bible.

Perhaps another analogy will work. Who of us, once having read C. S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, can forget the scene where Eustace Scrubb and Lucy and Edmund Pevensie stare at a picture on a wall of a Narnian ship when suddenly the picture draws them into a whole new world? Suddenly that picture on the wall comes alive and they begin to feel the breeze, smell the air, and hear sounds. The kids are magically drawn into the painting and find themselves in the water, where they are helped into a boat with the enticing name The Dawn Treader. These kids, now in a new reality, travel to distant lands looking for the seven lost lords of Narnia. At the end of their adventures they find a lamb that turns into Aslan. Great story.

It is that sort of adventure with the Bible that we are looking for, the adventure of staring at the Bible's words on paper only to find ourselves drawn into the story itself. We feel it, taste it, hear it, and come to know it with such perspective and depth that it renews us. That kind of renewal gives us courage to begin living it all over again in our world, but in a new way for a new day. This is the way of renewal.

No Shortcuts!
We find our Magic Eyes and we are drawn up onto The Dawn Treader only when we learn to read the Bible as a story. The Bible's story, in the simplest of categories, has a plot with a: Beginning (Genesis 1 - 11), and a (long, long) Middle (Genesis 12 - Malachi 4; Matthew - Revelation), and an End (Matthew 25; Romans 8; Revelation 21 - 22). I am tempted to dive right now into this story, to show that reading every passage in the Bible in light of the story draws us into the story. But we first have to point out some shortcuts too many of us have been taking. In our next chapter will we begin to look at the story of the Bible and its plot.

I wish I could explain it all but I can't. Somewhere we've gone astray and we've stopped reading the Bible as story. Our intent, and it is the right one, is to get something out of the Bible for our daily lives. I too want the Bible to be a "light for my path" (Psalm 119:105) and I'm sure you do as well. But, because reading the Bible as story takes more time, thinking, and discerning, we've developed routines and techniques that get us to our goal sooner. We've learned the CliffsNotes version of the Bible, or we settle for a brief synopsis; we've developed shortcuts to grace. In my years of teaching the Bible, I've found five shortcuts to grace from listening to students and church folk who reveal how they read the Bible in the questions they ask.

One of my son's good friends, Kevin Patterson, is short and a little heftier than he'd like to be. Kevin, like a cairn terrier, is always up for a new challenge. Several years ago, Kevin acquired a new desire to work on his body, but the old-fashioned way of running and lifting and sit-ups wasn't working for him, so he decided that Ab Tronic was the answer. Caught in the lure of a TV ad, Kevin became convinced that if he bought this contraption, a device that fit around his belly and sent short electronic impulses to contract his muscles, he'd lose weight. The rationale given was impeccable: "It's that easy and thirty minutes daily is usually all it takes to help improve figure problems." (So says the Internet ad.) Here's the pillow promise: "Muscles can be shaped while you are reading, relaxing, walking, or doing housework." Ergo, buy the thing!

So, for about a month, whenever Kevin came by (to play on our son's Xbox), he wore his Ab Tronic device. After all, it said it "tones and tightens your upper abs, lower abs, and love handles with no sweat at all." The picture of a well-toned man in his mind didn't hurt. "Say good-bye to strenuous, time-consuming workouts. With the Ab Tronic, your muscles are moving but you are not." Just what Kevin wanted - he could play XBox and lose weight. We've since learned that these devices don't accomplish what they say they will. Kevin will fess up that it didn't work.

Here's my point: many of us, instead of taking the longer but more rewarding path of reading the Bible as story, want a shortcut, an Ab Tronic approach to Bible reading. We want to get the benefits - a toned body - without the effort of working out. We want the electronic impulse of contact with God and grace for the day without the effort of exercising our minds by reading the Bible and discerning how it all fits together and how we can live it out in our day in our way. Just as shortcuts in exercise prevent full health benefits, so also shortcuts in Bible reading affect our spiritual health.

Scot McKnight (PhD, Nottingham) is Karl A. Olsson professor of religious studies at North Park College, Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of several books, including Galatians and 1 Peter in the NIV Application Commentary series, and the award-winning The Jesus Creed.

Taken from Blue Parakeet, The by SCOT MCKNIGHT.
Copyright © 2008 by Scot McKnight. Used by permission of Zondervan.