How to Enter the Door of Bible Reading?
“Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24.45). Because this sentence involves the big proposition of how we read the Bible and understand the Bible, we need to ponder deeply and find a methodological model for reading the Bible. To read the Bible, you must believe in God’s revelation. This is a transcendental proposition that reason cannot explain and must rely on a faith that transcends experience. If you lack faith in the propositions of reading the Bible, you will never be able to enter into the words of the Bible.
Faith is not a rational self-construction of our human beings, it is God-given faith, it is Jesus who opens our minds and leads us into the words of the Bible. We believe that no matter how advanced a person is with talent and knowledge if he has not received the revelation of God and God has not opened the door of his soul, he will never be able to understand the Bible.
Implicit in the seemingly ordinary but extremely important epistemological order:
A new concept: initial learning. When the learner first begins to learn, he does not learn by doubting, but by believing. For example, children’s learning of language is always easy, not because of their speculation and questioning about language, but because of their transcendental trust in the language itself. Then the study of the Bible is to learn from God’s transcendental revelation, which transcends human reason and knowledge system in any sense, and therefore belongs to the “initial state of learning”.
Adults seem to have long forgotten such an epistemological order. The reading and study of the Bible must return to a state of infancy, and begin our initial learning process through absolute faith. All those adults who are stubbornly stuck in the established order of ideas and knowledge structures are unlikely to actually read the Bible.
After receiving faith from God, one must develop a constant doubt about one’s own human order, doubt that one’s sense of ignorance is omnipresent and that one’s sense of powerlessness is omnipresent. Learn to empty yourself and keep emptying. On the proposition of emptying oneself, everyone is free to choose, God gives everyone free will, and man is not God’s puppet. Everyone has the right to choose to doubt themselves, or to choose not to doubt themselves (doubt themselves, not the Word of the Bible), on the object proposition of God’s Word. Therefore, if we want to understand the Bible more deeply, we must expand deeply on the proposition of doubting ourselves, otherwise, we will enter the state of “always unbelief” or “little faith” criticized by Jesus.
The Pharisees were the ones who heard the revelation of God’s word. In fact, they also believed that the Torah is the revelation of God’s word. However, they made a huge mistake in doubting their own propositions.
If we always emphasize how important our confidence is, but are unwilling to deeply doubt ourselves, then such confidence will inevitably become some empty slogans, some superficial chicken soup for the soul, leading our life to a bad state of hypocrisy. Faith in God’s revelation is the drive to doubt yourself; constant doubt in yourself is the method of faith. Faith and doubt as a method resonate in our lives at the same time to form the renewal process of our lives.
Without faith in God’s revelation, one usually leads to nothingness and despair. The normal state of human nature theory is not willing to go here, at the wrong time and in the wrong place, to understand the wrong facts as confidence. Forget the ultimate revelation of Jesus, forget the highest purpose of life. Being stuck in the middle of life, we dug our own graves and walked into them triumphantly, waiting for time and dust to bury us.
The Bible is inerrant. It is wrong to judge one’s own ability to freely choose and rationally judge in each direction. We were wrong at first, wrong now, and wrong in the future. Only in this way can the tension between faith in the Bible and self-doubt continue to expand to have epistemological tension.
The propositions of confidence and doubt, possessing epistemological space and tension, are worthy of deep contemplation. This stop is still the satisfaction of being stuck in the middle, the satisfaction that brings destruction.
Imagination and satisfaction of any kind are fatal. When the proposition of faith is settled and you begin to doubt yourself, the process of reading the Bible becomes listening, learning, thinking, and understanding. Emphasizing a life of faith without the participation of knowledge and speculation is an excuse for laziness and ignorance. Everyone’s knowledge is different, and everyone’s gifts (talents) are different. In terms of instrumental rationality, they constitute the characteristics of every one.
If the proposition of confidence and doubt is basically solved, you should return to your professional path and work. Because of our local meaning. Everyone is one-sided and different. This is not only where human beings are limited, but also in professionalism. Doubt leads us to the professional approach. The concept of professionalism thus becomes a form of humility and wisdom. I am a limited person, giving up the grand narrative. Since it is not complete, choose your own major.
When you are lucky enough to enter the door of the Bible, you should keep asking about your professionalism. As a servant of God and a disciple of Jesus, what is my major? How to glorify God?
