Believing Without the Book

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.  Isaiah 40:8  NASB

Word of our God – Yesterday we discovered the awful truth that there was no such thing as “the Bible” until the Christian Church, and particularly the Protestant Christian Church, created a sacred book.  In the first century, and certainly before the first century, believers had written texts but they didn’t have a collection of texts and they did nothave a canonized script of those texts.  Sacred religious material was fluid, flexible, varying.  It was a very long time before we invented plenary inspiration and inerrancy.

But none of this historical truth seems to have undermined love for God.  In fact, it provided a richer, more contextual environment for expressing that love.  The commandments were not viewed as ritual obligations.  They were, as my friend Moshe Kempinski says, “opportunities to show our love for God.”  Every mitzvot required hand and heart.   Gordon Tucker explains:

“One can habituate one’s physical self to do certain things that are obligatory and even to avoid and shun those things that are prohibited.  But it is the heart, the intellect, the psyche that sets human beings apart from the rest of creation, and it is therefore only the completion of the ‘duties of the limbs’ with ‘the duties of the heart’ that truly fulfills human obligation to God.  Love, trust, belief, and other emotional affects are not only part of religion, according to Bahya—they are the essence of religion. . . the idea that mitzvot are obligatory and important but are ultimately a means to generate love for God, the true aim of religion.”[1]

Do I need an inerrant book in order to love God?  Do I need a list of imperatives to show my commitment to Him?  Must I have all the right creeds, the correct doctrines, the infallible dogmas in order to say, “I love you, Father”?  or to ask, “What do you wish from me?”

Perhaps our faith isn’t really faithfulness.  Perhaps it’s clutching after certainty in order that we don’t have to trust, in order for us to be sure.  Perhaps we’re really children of Guttenberg rather than Abraham.

Try this little exercise.  Ask yourself what your relationship with God would be like if you didn’t have the “book.”  What if you were Abraham, or Noah, or Joshua, or Saul, or David?  What would move you to worship?  What would touch your heart?  What emotions would connect you to your Father in heaven?  What if you had to write your own sacred text?  What words would flow from you?  What words would have to be squeezed through the cracks?

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.

The word of our God—is that what’s printed on paper?  Or is it something that sweeps you into His presence?

Topical Index: word of God, mitzvot, commandments, heart, Bible, Isaiah 40:8

[1] Gordon Tucker, pp. 189-190 in Abraham Heschel, Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations (Continuum, New York, 2007).