Bibliolatry

To follow up on one of the comments I made Sunday...
I stated this:

          "[In regard to the fallenness of humans and the Powers...] so what went wrong? The problem is that of sin. Humans have fallen and the Powers have fallen. The Powers, given as the substratum undergirding life and preserving it from chaos, we’ve made into gods. We’ve made them absolutes. The Powers, in turn, behave as though they are ultimate. “This is the demonic reversal which has taken place on the invisible side of creation…no longer do the Powers bind man and God together; they separate them” (Berkhof 30). The Powers have become “the rulers of this age” (1 Cor. 2:8), and we have believed the lie of Satan, and “worship the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25). We worship them, and they quickly become tyrants over our life.

            Now, we can easily dismiss all of this as ancient hocus-pocus, or perhaps more genuinely as a very real threat that we are simply not faced with today. After all, who among us worships Artemis or Zeus? Who among us worships air, fire, earth, or water? But, then again, maybe we might be prone to check out the stars tomorrow morning, and even cancel asking that girl or boy out for a date if my horoscope is not positive (“Alas, the stars are not aligned!”). Or, maybe it is a cultural practice that now gives us ultimate meaning. One example of this is youth sports. How is it that in one generation we’ve gone from Sunday morning worship being sacrosanct to Sunday morning youth sports being sacrosanct. (I’m preaching to the choir…you’re here.) “But, Little Johnny has to play in his sports league, which unfortunately has games on Sunday morning, because heaven forbid he would be bored, and more significantly he needs to develop skills and get that full-ride football scholarship to Alabama!” Or maybe what started as a simple philosophical ideal or ideological principle now determines what kind of day I’m going to have. I see this all the time in nationalism and politics—if things are going in accordance to what I’ve determined to be right, I rejoice; if things are not going in accordance to what I’ve determined to be right, I despair. Usually, what follows the latter is resentment and oftentimes violence. Love of country turns quickly into a zealous, fearful, and rigid nationalism (which demands that we are armed to the teeth). Or consider capitalism—it went from an economy by which hard work is rewarded and general welfare encouraged to a cut-throat god with no regard for anything beyond the bottom line. Do we worship Mammon?

          Of course, we see this even in the Christian church: perhaps what started as a simple religious practice now becomes determinative in whether or not I can worship at all—“if we don’t have this in worship, why, it isn’t church!” An ever-increasing strictness of orthodoxy governs thought and action. I wonder if we don’t sometimes do this even in our commitment to the authority of Scripture (this is perhaps more of a talking point in your Life Groups tonight). From God’s holy, inspired word, authoritative in all that it intends to teach to a blunt instrument by which to bludgeon others. Do we make the Bible the object of our worship? Think about that for a moment. Or perhaps it is that we make a god out of morality, insisting on a closed and rigid ethic that shames people to death. There are many Christians who cannot look at a pack of cards or think about dancing without turning into a puddle of goo. The Jews were doing this very thing with God’s law—insisting that the Christians in Colossae adhere to the Jewish law, or at least parts of it, if they were really to be God-followers."

          We followed this up with a discussion at Life Group. Do we worship the Bible? I thought of this again yesterday more generally in how I anticipate some might respond to this question (and my own need to condition my statements with 101 qualifications). How would I even know if I do worship the Bible? What is the rationale that might bear witness to the act of bibliolatry? Bear with me, but here's the way the logic can go:

"Nabokov's Lolita is a trashy bit of pulp and in no way edifying; therefore it is to be avoided. Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, while edifying in some ways, is not holy writ, but can be read with a clear conscience. C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity is theologically astute and should be required reading for every Christian. Holy Scripture is, of course, the piece de resistance, the foundational text for life and faith. [And what follows is where we get into trouble.] Of course, my interpretation of Scripture is the right interpretation, and any deviation from that interpretation is heresy."
          It is impossible to avoid subjectivity, and what invariably emerges is a rigid orthodoxy based on my interpretation of Scripture. Is that to say that all interpretation of Scripture is inherently bibliolatry? No, but the threat is certainly always there. It is an abyss. So, interestingly, we have in the church on one hand those who put as much creedence into some nine year old kid's demand that "heaven is for real!" as they do the Bible. On the other hand, we have those who declare that anything other than their own interpretation of Scripture is false. We can uphold and love God's word without being bibliolaters, but it takes a great deal of self-restraint, humility, and wisdom.