If you look at newspaper headlines on the front page you will notice that font size makes a big difference on how important the paper feels a story is. After all the larger the headline,the less room for other stories on the page. The things deemed less important thus get a smaller font.
We do the same thing with our biblical witness. We give greater importance (in one way or another) to the more “important” things while the hard topics, or the things that we are not so sure about or that don’t line up with our understanding of God take on a barely visible font size.
How do you deal with the tough stuff in the Bible? How do we deal with the things in the Bible that make us uncomfortable? What about the things that cause us to stumble? So we just tip toe around them or do we slowly make our way over them?
Lets face it there are parts of our scripture that we are more comfortable with. This says a lot about the way that we prefer to view God. Yet it short changes and stunts our growth as people of faith when we are only willing to look at God through a portion of scripture. Also, if we are teachers of the word we are giving those who have been entrusted to our care a slanted or partial picture of faith. It would seem that the parts of scripture that are though are the ones that we are always called to defend. The parts about God ordering the decimation of whole people is something that we would like to give a very small font size, whereas people asking questions about Christianity make it of headline proportions. Other questions become like the role of women in the church, issues of sexuality…and the list goes on.
Just keeping these parts of scripture to the fine print does a great disservice to ourselves, those in our ministry and those who are asking the questions. So how do we being to wrestle with the head text?
- Make a teaching plan: When we just pick up the Bible and teach whatever we would like we tend to go to the “softballs”or the headline fonts catch our eyes. Teaching plans ensure that we cover the topics we need to cover (both large and small) and it gives us enough time to faithfully prepare.
- Continue to do personal study. When we come upon some of the fine print we shouldn’t just let it pass. Because the fine print is like the tip of an iceberg. We have to, first, do the hard work of digging out the issues to get a fuller understanding of the bigger questions and issues at work.
- Don’t just give answers. Have the students dig in and get their hands dirty too. Teach them the process of learning and biblical study. Don’t just give them the fish, teach them to fish.
- Don’t ignore the fine print!! It is tempting to give a stock answer or a nice one liner, but it does no one justice in the long run.
these are just a few of my thoughts. What are some ways you deal with the fine print?
