Watch Out for the Traps!
When I was a kid I remember going through a phase where I was fascinated with traps. I would dig holes, tie string, and craft anything that I thought might snag an unsuspecting animal. I’m not sure what I hoped to catch, maybe my little sister? I’m not sure what I would have done if I had caught something. According to my memory, I never caught anything. But that didn’t curb my enthusiasm for trying.
They way you view a trap depends which side your on. If you’re setting a trap in the hopes of catching some critter for your survival then you would view it favorably. But if you’re on the other side of the trap as an unsuspecting prey, then a trap is not a good thing for you.
In our study of the Bible, we may not be prey, but we may be unsuspecting. By that I mean that we may not be aware of the cleverly disguised dangers lurking right in front of our eyes. For this reason, we should be keenly aware that we face traps every time we study the Bible. Some of these traps come from our own hearts, some from the world around us, and some from a mixture of the two. Nevertheless, we may be unaware of the dangers that are present.
One of the great traps for even well meaning Christians is the subtle and often unseen activity of conforming Jesus to our own definitions, standards, ideas, and preferences. For example, we all have in our minds certain ideas about the subject of love. These ideas are influenced by a myriad of sources - worldly depictions, upbringing, experiences, etc. So, if we are not careful, when we think about Jesus being full of love we will think of his love according to our definition of love. We do the same thing with a slew of other attributes like goodness, kindness, patience, and fairness. When we imagine God to be any one of those things we typically picture him being those things according to how we define or perceive them.
But that is not how we should approach the Bible, or God. Instead, the Scriptures, and Jesus himself as revealed in them, define the meaning of his attributes. He is loving, but he defines what love is. He is good and kind and fair, but according to his own definition. In other words, we cannot make Jesus fit into our understanding or standards. Rather, our definitions must be dictated by Christ. Coming to Jesus means coming to him on his terms. He is the standard definition of all his own attributes.
I’ve often heard the phrase that people give when they are faced with an inconvenient truth about God, “well, that is not my God.” There are other variations of this same principle, “my God wouldn’t do that, “ or, “I don’t feel like God would be like that.” I always find that to be a dangerous statement. I think it often reveals that people have fashioned a god in their minds that is not the God of the Bible. They have made a god that they can understand, that fits their definitions, that makes sense to them, and that is never hard to comprehend, confusing, confrontational, or inconvenient.
We are faced with this temptation every time we open our Bibles. We take the Bible and make it fit into our line of thinking, or definitions of terms, instead of letting the Bible define its own terms or dictate to us what it means when it says God is loving, jealous, wrathful, or forgiving. We must make a conscious effort to come to the Bible without preconceived notions about God or heaven or hell or whatever. That is not to say that our prior study or understanding doesn’t inform our Bible reading or act as a safety guide to keep us from wandering into error. It does. But, if we are concerned about making the Bible fit into our preconceived ideas more than about what they are actually teaching, then we are not really studying the Bible but mutilating it.
If we do this kind of “studying”, we will more than likely end up crafting a version of god based on our understanding rather than letting our understanding be shaped and conformed by God. When we let the Bible operate on its own terms we are more likely to behold the beauty and glories of God that are far greater and more glorious than anything we could have imagined.
Each one of us must make sure that we are striving to know God as he has revealed himself. We must not fall into the ever-present trap of making God into our image. We must examine our hearts and make sure we haven’t tried to define God by our terms. Only then we will be primed and ready to behold God on his terms.
