Insight in light of "Blue Prakeet"

This is a very big word. We have to define what it means “back to the bible”. Scot McKnight wrote a book, “Blue Parakeet” and he explained very well what it means “back to the bible.” I want to review what he said in his book and I would like to share my thoughts.

We all have tendency to pick and choose the Bible verses according to our suit. For example, we tend to believe, Leviticus 20:13a “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable.”, but we do not want to believe Leviticus 20:13b, “They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” There are a lot of similar cases in the Bible we want to pick and choose.

The whole Bible points to Jesus. When we pick and choose according to our campus ministry, there is a danger that we fail to know the mind and heart of Jesus fully. For example our ministry is very weak/ ignorant to Jesus’ ministry who was very much concerned about the poor and social justice. Mother Theresa knew mind and heart of Jesus when she took Matthew 25:35-36 to her heart and obeyed the word of God.

Bible is one thing, and tradition is another. Traditionalism is the inflexible, don’t-ask-questions, do-it-the-way-it-has-always-been-done approach to Bible reading. We have strong tendency to read the Bible through tradition. This approach is nearly incapable of renewal and adaption.

We have many UBF tradition and culture that has been built up for the last 50 years. Most of them are good (90 percent, I would say), but some of them are not so good.(10 percent, though it is not based on scientific survey). We have narrow definition of mission in UBF, fishing, one to one, feeding sheep. But mission is defined more broadly by the late Missiologist, David Bosch, who said in his book, “Transforming mission” that “Mission is not merely evangelism (more than evangelism). Mission is the church sent into the world, to love, to serve, to preach, to teach, to heal, to liberate”. This means our mission in broad sense is to love our neighbor as ourselves wherever we are, at home, in the church and in our working place.

Another problem is the dichotomy between “Sacred” and “Secular”. We tend to value highly one to one bible study and feeding sheep more than anything; family or work. We spend more than one third of our lifetime in work. So work and family are very important and this is our mission field too. And Jesus is the Lord of every aspect of our life including family and work. There is no dichotomy between “Sacred” and “Secular” in God.

Another area I want to mention is that in God there is no competitive comparison. I grew up in Korean culture where the extreme competition begins at very early age like elementary school. Those who excel are praised and honored. Those who fell behind are despised and ignored. People envied very much those who studied at Harvard University or other top schools in America. In UBF, we encouraged our children to excel in academics and sometimes pushed them to excel. In UBF there are so many M.Ds and Ph. Ds comparing with other churches. We used to have competitive comparison between fellowship and between campuses. Competitive comparison is OK in Olympic game, but it is not healthy way in the Christian community.

Jesus is our Head and the Church is the body of Christ. We are small parts of Jesus’ body. We have different gifts. Our hands and feet cannot/ need not compete each other. We need to work together in collaboration/ cooperation for His glory. We should have clear goal/ end for all our activities, one to one, discipleship ministry etc; that is to glorify God and grow in the image of Jesus and bear fruit of the Holy Spirit.

We need to go back to the Bible (actually McKnight said the exact the same word) so we can move forward through the Church and speak God’s word in our days in our ways. We need to go back without getting stuck (the return problem), and we need to move forward without forssilizing our ideas. (traditionalism)

When we read the Bible we should have awesome respect to the word of God and listen very carefully and be ready to obey. Listening to the Bible is like having the most powerful person in the world sit down with us for coffee as a friend and chat with us. We need to him very carefully with 100% full attention.

Without this awesome respect to the word of God, although we like to think we are becoming more like Jesus through Bible reading and study, the reverse is probably more the case: we try to make Jesus like ourselves! God did not give the Bible so we could master him or it; God gave the Bible so we could live it, so we could be mastered by it. The moment we think we’ve mastered it, we have failed to be readers of the Bible.

God speaks to us for a reason—I call this “missional” listening. In brief, God tells his story so we can enter into a relationship with him, listen to him, and live out his Word in our day and in our way.

We can summarize the whole Bible in two phrases; Great Commandments, Great Commission. Back to the Bible should help us to obey these two things. We should have clear goal to love God and love our neighbor through “back to the Bible”.

God designs all biblical study to be a “useful” process that leads us to the Bible in such a way that it creates a person who loves God and loves others. Anything less fails to achieve why God speaks to us in the Bible.

A Proper reading of the Bible is attended by the Spirit, who will transform us, guide us, and give us discernment to know how to live in our world. The gospel is like the water slide,(like the curved water slide in the water park) the Bible is one wall, our teachers and our tradition the other wall, and the water is the Holy Spirit.

The risen Jesus gave us his Great Commission. It is a great privilege to participate in this task as co-missioner, wherever we may be, whether in foreign countries or in America. It is great privilege to live among many godly brothers and sisters. At the same time, God gave us “fearful responsibility” to serve Him and love His people in this generation.