Godthings

“The Bible is like a compost pile.

I like this image and I wish I had thought of it. But this idea comes from Walter Brueggemann’s Texts Under Negotiation. I came across this many years ago, and it’s helped me see the Bible in a more realistic and spiritually constructive way.

The Bible is the compost pile that provides material for new life. I do not use this figure as an irreverent metaphor to suggest that the Bible is ‘garbage.’ Rather, I use it to suggest that the Bible itself is not the actual place of new growth. Our present life, when we undertake new growth, is often inadequate, arid, or even barren. It needs to be enriched, and for that enrichment, we go back to the deposits of old growth that have been discarded, but that continue to ferment and may contain resources for a way to new life. (Texts Under Negotiation, pp. 61-62)

Like Brueggemann, I don’t take the compost pile as a disrespectful metaphor, but a metaphor that explains what the Bible is suited to do—and how people typically, instinctively, approach it anyway.

By contrast, an unhelpful metaphor is a cookbook.

Read the Bible carefully, being sure to follow the directions, and out will pop a good, orthodox Christian with his or her act together. If something went wrong—if you have wrong doctrine or do bad things—you’re not following the directions carefully enough. Go back and try it again.

I’ve found the Bible doesn’t work very well as a cookbook. Sooner or later you wind up sifting through the Bible to pick the ingredients that strike you and ignore other ingredients that don’t taste very well what you are trying to cook up. Plus the Bible is long, complicated, and most of it looks like you’re reading a novel, not a cookbook.

The compost pile works better for me. It syncs with my study of Scripture, with my experience over the years as someone trying to figure out this following Jesus business, and with what I have learned from the wisdom of others, living or dead.

The compost pile analogy reminds me that focusing our gaze on the Bible is like looking expectantly at the compost pile rather than the fragrant rose or luscious watermelon that is waiting to grow up out of the ground. But nothing grows when our days are spent guarding the compost pile, defending it, covering it up with a tarp of manicured sod to make it look more civil.

Maybe this is a paradox: The Bible is not the end, but a means to an end. Yet, without the nutrients the Bible contains, the soil remains arid.

‘Applying the Bible’ doesn’t quite get at it. That comes across to me as a bit quiet and clean. Gardening is full of grunting, sweat, dirt—and sometimes holding your nose. Read the Bible with a pitch fork, garden rake, and shovel in your hands—not with rubber gloves and tongs delicately turning over crackling pages of an ancient book.”

— Peter Enns, The Bible is a Smelly, Gross, Pile of Rotting Garbage., Patheos (via michaelfunderburk)

“In a Christian marriage, God should always come first, and that has real consequences for how you feel about your spouse’s decisions.”

— Eve Tushnet, “To come first for someone”, Patheos

“Over the last five days, I’ve spent a good deal of my time alone. I’m reminded that solitude is both a gift and a test. It brings out the best and worst in me. It is where the devil comes to tempt us. I think for me one of the greatest temptations when in solitude is to feel entitled to idleness or fleshly desires because of the ‘work’ I do for God. I am tempted, and more often than I’d like to admit succumb to the temptation, to indulge myself. I simply forget the Spirit of Jesus in those moments. I’m completely self-directed. There is a temptation then in solitude, at least in my experience, for moments of ‘God-forgetfulness’. These are dangerous moments.

Because I am a follower of Jesus, and because I am a pastor and teacher of God’s Word, and because I by faith affirm that my actions in secret can either bless or curse those with whom I’m in community I must engage the fight with the devil in times of solitude in the power of the Spirit for the sake of the community and the ministry of the Gospel.”

— Joel Willitts, Bonhoeffer on Solitude from Life Together, Euangelion, Patheos: Hosting the Conversation on Faith