Jesus Doesn't Want You To Be A Better Dad...

A few months ago, Jonathan Phillips, a Mission Corp Missionary with the Church of Nazarene came to visit our church.  Jonathan is a friend of mine, a former coworker, and classmate at Nazarene Theological Seminary.  He's been serving in Romania for the past few years on a volunteer basis.  On one Sunday, he shared with our church a simple story of friendship and discipleship.  What Jonathan is doing in Romania isn't anything profound or groundbreaking, but simple, time consuming, and apparently, very effective.  

Jonathan began his talk by reading one of my favorite passages from the Old Testament, the first part of Deuteronomy 6.  The passage itself calls Israel, God's chosen and rescued people, to remember all of what God has done for them and all of the commands that God has given them.  They aren't just to remember these things; they are to talk about them day and night, to write them on their door posts, and to tell these stories to their children at bedtime.  All of this remembering and storytelling is so that Israel could become and remain the people God had called them to be.  Israel cannot become what God wants it to become apart from the constant telling and retelling of these stories.    

We didn't stay long in Deuteronomy.  Jonathan moved quickly into telling us about a small part of what he's been up to in Romania.  There is a group of men living in a town not far from where Jonathan makes his home, who were desperately seeking a rich life in Christ.  So, Jonathan began a Thursday night bible study with these men.  Where did they start?  At the beginning.  For an entire year, Jonathan and three to four Romanian men journeyed through the storied world of the Old Testament.  

As Jonathan told the story of his interaction with and teaching to these men, it became very apparent that the reality of God's faithfulness had crept into every aspect of these men's lives.  They began living out Deuteronomy chapter 6.  They became, not only better Christians, knowing, remembering, and proclaiming the stories of God's faithfulness, they also became better husbands, fathers, and men.

What’s so powerful and profound about the simple studying of the Bible from its beginning?  It’s the ability of good stories to deeply affect how we see the world and to shape our ideas of what that world should look like.  We find ourselves in these stories, closely related to their characters.  James K. A. Smith, in his book Desiring the Kingdom, says it like this:

Over time…we begin to absorb the story as a moral and ethical compass – not because it discloses to us abstract, ahistorical moral axioms, but because it narrates the telos [the end, the goal toward which things point] of our own action.  We begin to absorb the plot of the story, begin to see ourselves as characters within it; the habits and practices of its heroes function as exemplars, providing guidance as we are trained in virtue, becoming a people with a disposition to “the good” as it’s envisioned in the story.  Because we are story-telling animals, imbibing the story of Scripture is the primary way that our desire gets aimed at the kingdom [of God].  (196) 

Jonathan and the men he has been working with have caught the vision of the Kingdom of God through reading and studying the story of God’s working with his beloved creation.  A large part of disciples making is immersion in the full story of God’s interaction with creation. 
  

In my experience, American Christians don’t read the Bible this way.  We don’t read it as one story of God’s redemptive interaction with His loved creation, a story which should capture our hearts and desires for a world that is complete and whole, free from pain, death, and sin.  Rather, we read it as a collection of sayings or principals that speak timeless truths about, for example, how to be a good dad.  Doing so divorces the individual parts from the whole and leaves us without a coherent picture of the direction to which God is guiding our world.   

Instead of seeking to answer the question, “how do I become a faithful follower of Christ?” we ask, “how do I become a good Christian dad, or a good Christian man/woman, or a good Christian leader?”  We write books and small group curricula and make movies hoping that these things will help us be the kind of Christian-whatevers we think we need to be.  We get so caught up proof-texting the Bible that we forget to really read it as it should be read.  

In the end, I’m convinced that the Bible doesn't have a whole lot to say about “biblical masculinity” or “biblical leadership” or things like that.  I am convinced, however, that when we throw ourselves into reading and studying the Bible as a story with continuity, it has the ability to reshape our desires and vision for our world, making them more Christ-like.  And it is only when our desires and vision for our world become more Christ-like that we ever move closer to being a better Christian father, mother, or leader.