Flexible Bible
“Mary Cosby used to begin her New Testament class by bending her soft-cover Bible and saying she preferred a Bible that was flexible. Then she would say, ‘The Bible is not a manual for morality, but a mirror for identity.”’—Carol Martin, Bread of Life Church, “A Mirror for Identity” at InwardOutward.org, Church of the Saviour, July 15, 2018.
My first introduction to this more profound flexible Bible study was with a small group at St. Mark’s in Little Rock in the 1990s, with a leader named Dick Moore in a room above the children’s classrooms that we called “the upper room.” As we studied the books of the Bible, Dick reminded us that the Bible was a roadmap, not the destination.
I think of old friends like Carole and Gary Kimmel, who were in our class and now live on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. I remember Betty and Brady Anderson, who became Bible translators in Africa in Tanzania, and how Brady later became the American Ambassador to that country. They taught me so much. Together, we uncovered new insights from the Bible that had never before occurred to us.
As we saw God present in the lives of people in the Bible who were like us—with gifts and faults—we also became more aware of God, the Holy Spirit, at work in our own and others’ lives. We saw that the relationship of the Holy Spirit did not end with first- and second-century Christians; instead, the Spirit still leads us today. If we believe only a strict, literal translation of the Bible, we deny the continued presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives today, bringing us more good news.
I am thinking of the Bible I received from my Bishop twenty-one years ago at my ordination. It, as well, is flexible.
Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/daily