There is an analogy (I think that’s the right word) that use from time to time to illustrate how different people view the same thing… and see something unique.  I can’t lay claim to the analogy, but it will be employed none the less.

 

It uses baseball to make a point.

 

Three pitches.

 

Three different umpires making the call.

 

Three different approaches to calling the strike.

 

Umpire number 1 claims that a strike is a strike simply because: well… a strike is a strike.

 

Umpire number 2 claims that a strike is a  strike simply because: it’s… the way he sees it.

 

Umpire number 3 claims that a strike is actually not a strike: until… he calls it a strike.

 

People approach the Bible much the same way that our above mentioned umpires approach baseball.

 

Some people claim that the Bible says it… I believe it… that settles it.

 

Some people claim that the Bible is what it is… because its what its always been to them.

 

Some people claim that the Bible is what it is… because what they see and feel finds its way into the text.

 

Because I told you in the last post that I am not going to make judgements about where you are at in your journey… I’m not going to close off or say that you’re wrong for camping out in one of those claims above… or maybe you move from one claim to another as time and life and maturity and circumstances cause you to wake up anew every day.

 

I have had access to the Bible most of my life.  From attending a Catholic school through most of my elementary school years… to Baptist Sunday School and VBS with the neighbors… to a time of independent wandering with the Scriptures where I mixed it with Buddhism and New Age philosophy… to the study of ministry and spiritual formation in major Christian universities… as a pastor and as a laymen…

 

I’ve read all kinds of books… studied under all kinds of people…

 

Had donuts with the fundamentalists… smoked cigars with the progressives…

 

Led Bible studies through an interpreter in a third world orphanage… prayed with porn stars at conventions in Los Angeles…

 

Quietly read Bible passages to people in rural America as they took their last breath… shared a few words of the Book with pimps at two in the morning in South Central…

 

Experienced great success in local ministry… and not ever wanted to go to a church again…

 

Sometimes feeling as if I were exactly where I needed to be… other times alone in a spiritual darkness.

 

All the while… at home in some way between the covers of these sacred texts.

 

My journey began before I was even born… but, that’s more philosophical than I want to go right now…

 

Instead… I’m going to start with a Psalm… that touched a nerve in me in my early twenties… that validated something I had felt for a long time… and still feel to this day…

 

We were created to know… and be known…