Messy Bible, Clean Lives (by John Frye)

Readers of the Bible discover very soon that the Bible is a messy book. Chocked full of stories—some familiar and others quite odd, and poetry about all kinds of subjects: speech, sex, enemies, searing pain and God, and enigmatic apocalyptic images with fire-breathing dragons and tattoos on the thigh of Son of God, the Bible distances itself from our tidy morning devotionals and crisp, clean “principles” to support a comfortable American life.

We don’t like mess, so many have pursued the self-appointed task of cleaning up the Bible. We do like to categorize stuff. We come to the Bible as if we’re separating the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle according to color. We end up with piles of verses here and there—these are about Jesus, these the church, these salvation, these angels and demons—leaving us no clue about the “big picture” the pieces are supposed to offer. Just last night I heard N. T. Wright speak at Mars Hill Bible Church about the Bible’s big picture—the mission of God. Yet, we like our little piles of verses here and there because we can ignore the picture they show us of God, of sin, of our self-absorbed selves. Sadly, we also miss the variegated colors of operative grace, cosmic redemption and Jesus’ wildly radical life in the picture.

The Jesus most of us know is a narrow theological and safe Idea whose most important, if not only role is “to get us to heaven when we die.” All his spitting and making mud, all his fierce rebellion from Jewish custom, his last name “Christ,” all his down-home stories for the very common people–these things for many are very marginal, even meaningless to his supreme ability to get folks to glory at death or, for some, the rapture.

In the meantime, we die of the commercialization of everything we say, do and have, even the Christian faith. We hunger for the Midas touch; we flee the Messiah’s touch. We die while standing against abortion and same-sex marriage. We die of suffocating entertainment. Most of our TV commercials are sexless pornography. We die of every diversion possible from encountering the fear-provoking God of our very messy Bible and the call of the wild-eyed Son of God. We get busy, tidying up God and the Bible so we can maintain our tidy, mediocre lives, all the while throwing away tons of food while thousands die of starvation and lack of clean water.

Seeing Jesus, exalted with fire-shooting eyes, no longer causes us to fall down as dead like John on Patmos did. Not us, no. We merely yawn from boredom. X-box is so much more entertaining.

There is hope. A host of new Jesus-followers are discovering that the messy Bible synchronizes with and gives meaning to our messy lives. Even some of the “giants” of the faith lived messy lives: Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Moses, David. Yes, Peter and Paul were flawed. God likes mess and where God finds sterile cleanness, God most likely will make it a mess. Jesus would rather be in the brawl of arguing parents at the pee-wee T-ball game than in the cushioned pews of the immaculate church populated by “good” people. Ken Medema sang, “…the kingdom comes in the streets.” Jesus mostly walked the messy streets of villages and towns showing us that the kingdom of God resides in and transforms mess. Can I get a witness?