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Of course it offends the “conservatives” when I say they “worship” the Bible. They’d say “No; we worship God. We worship Christ.”
They Seem to Worship the Bible even above Christ – but they ultimately worship neither.
In practice they take their voluntarily selected sections, quotes, examples, even occasionally clear teachings, and use them to over-rule or outrank what Jesus actually teaches, what Jesus actually practices and thus exemplifies.
It’s this Bible Jesus, remember, who said if they had seen him they had seen the Father, who said that he always does what the Father wants. Who presented his words as the very word of God.
That is, they honor these scattered selected “teachings” quite highly.
Of course, if some group or person (e.g. of late, very blatantly, DJT) ignores and violates many of the teachings of the Bible, even the clearest of Jesus’ teachings and patterns of life (and those of, e.g., Micah, Isaiah, Paul, James, etc.) — if such a person or group flatters them and offers them a strong hope of worldly power — well then out goes any practice or possibility of worshiping either Jesus or the Bible. Carnal desires completely trump spiritual values.
That carnal lust for status / influence / power / domination — or at least the hope to achieve those sins — literally trumps (pun intended) all concern for either truth or morality based on either the Bible or Jesus.
See Also:
– Christians & Churches Should Not Enforce the Bible on Us.
– Abusive Use of the Bible – a la Speaker Mike Johnson – is Fraud. But Popular, & a Handy Weapon.
The Bible is such a strange idol for at least two main reasons.
1) Its ambiguous origins.
We don’t know who made the selection of documents nor their standards nor their moral credentials. “We” just put absolute faith in the reliability of the selected documents with no interest in WHY they were selected, how much it was a politicized achievement, or the reasonableness or the spiritual helpfulness of the selections, or the quality of the people doing the selecting.
2) Its confusing teachings.
There is of course a progression or development of depth and specificity and usefulness through the centuries of its writing. Thus even the moral teaching of some parts blatantly contradicts the moral teaching of other parts. But there is a strong presumption, for several very good reasons, that Jesus is the ultimate standard by which all the rest must be judged.
But that is all just freely ignored. Actually, it’s worse than that. The meaning and content (of the progression) are vigorously denied.
Rather, any ideas that seem clear to a person, wherever found in the Bible — or any that are preferred ideas whether clear or not — are accepted as absolute Divinely-ordered teachings. They don’t even have to fit together. No one even concerns themselves with such consistency. They just concern themselves with the priorities they prefer.
And more and more of them are insisting they have a Divine right to force their take and their preferred deductions on all the rest of us.
Creepy stuff.
That IS worship. And it seems to be worship of the Bible. But it’s not.
Since they ignore whatever they don’t like — regardless of how strongly it is urged by the actual Bible itself — and they twist or misuse most of whatever they DO like — or quote it admiringly while completely ignoring it in practice — it is not worship.
They worship themselves and their doctrinal “rightness” — their self-defined superior theological ideas. Most strongly and blatantly they worship whoever promises them some sort of status or self-image enhancement that lets them feel they outrank most other people, that they are offered concrete domination over other people, that is, physical, worldly power. They LOVE the world in that way.
SUM: The approach is pretty fraudulent throughout.
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Here’s one example: Do you know what JESUS says about how to “get saved”? Check out this story in Matthew 25. It’s pretty clear, and in fact the application is repeated four times! It’s almost like Matthew wants to be sure we get the point. But is it what we hear every Sunday, or even every few weeks? I doubt it.
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Questions for us:
1. Have you ever been involved with a group or teacher who were quite certain every teaching of theirs — as long as they quoted some Bible passage — was accurate and authoritative? What was that like?
2. Why is it so easy for “Bible-believing Christians” to surrender all Biblical morality — in order to functionally worship their orange anti-Christ, who rejects all that, and who says he has never needed to confess or ask forgiveness for anything?
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