Almost Bible

For a number of years, my study partner and I were privileged to go up to Cherry Log Christian Church in Ellijay, Georgia, where once in the spring and once in the fall, the great preacher, Dr. Fred Craddock, would hold seminars on preaching. It was always a wonderful experience and we always left there more committed to the ideal of preaching than ever.

One time the topic was something like “the challenge of preaching in our world.” Craddock talked about a lot of issues that day – all of which I could identify with but the thing that he said that has stuck in my mind ever since then is that one of the challenges of preaching today is “that there is an awful lot of ‘almost Bible’ out there.”

A few weeks ago I was reading One Life by Scot McKnight. It is an overview of the life of Christ and its implications for discipleship, born in the classroom where McKnight taught Life of Christ at North Park University in Chicago. There’s a phrase in the book that reminds me of what I learned from Craddock. McKnight describes it as reworking a phrase from Flannery O’Connor. Here’s how McKnight puts it: “That’s right, but it just ain’t right enough.” (page 62)

Put those two ideas together and somehow I’m thinking that “almost Bible just ain’t right enough.” Yet, most of us reading this are living and studying; teaching and preaching – bearing witness of our faith where what I describe as the “civic Jesus” is much better known that the Jesus of Scripture.

And that is, to say the least, quite a challenge. How do we manage to stand against the “commonly held view of Jesus” in our culture and dare suggest that there is a Jesus in Scripture who stands over and beyond this “civic Jesus?”

Scott Peck, the psychiatrist who came to faith later in life, once suggested that the Jesus of Scripture may be among the best kept secrets in all of Christianity. I’ve not taken a scientific survey about that question, but he may have been on to something.

Paul’s way of talking about this was simply to say, “we preach Christ, and Him crucified.” (I Corinthians 1:18-25) Clearly in that text he is refusing to market the Jesus story to the demands of his marketplace – for Jews, it was signs; for Greeks, wisdom. But Paul won’t go down those roads – and sticks to this rather unpopular and often unbelievable story of “Christ, and Him crucified.”

There is an awful lot of “almost Bible” that isn’t quite “right enough.” God has called us to be His witness – and a good witness tells the truth!