I don’t mean the tv show. I’ve never seen a single episode.

There are rules here at work that prohibit discussion about religion and politics. This, of course, means that we generally talk about these things when supervisors are on vacation. No one emails as all of them are meticulously tracked and stored for posterity. No one visits various political websites as network logs are all of them are just as meticulously stored for perusal of future archaeologists. In a place that makes the Great Firewall of China look like an anonymous proxy, all we can do is talk. We believe that the wireless router installed in the ceiling is really hiding a camera, but we’re pretty sure that the camera doesn’t have audio.

And if it does, well, that’s just more work for future archaeologists.

There’s a local theater production that is proving to be popular called Late Night Catechism. Attending the show brings you face to face with a nun that treats the audience like one of her classes. She explains a lot about Catholicism, much to the delight of many of those in attendance. I haven’t seen it, but I’d like to. Unfortunately, the show ends this Friday.

Co-workers here have discussed it as a reflection of their own lives. As two of them discussed it yesterday, one, a former seminary student, shared a poignant experience. He said that growing up he was told not to read the Bible because it would confuse him, but that at seminary, all he did was read the Bible.

How odd, I thought. It’s funny that many in the Protestant tradition would say that their experience was exactly the opposite. Many Protestants grow up reading the Bible. The reasons why varied quite a bit, some of us did it because it was The Christian Thing to Do(TM). Some of us did it because all our other church friends said that they did, a few others of us did it because we had to be first in all classroom situations, including Sunday School. Whatever the reasons, though, Protestant seminaries are usually criticized for the de-emphasis of the Bible. It’s like saying, Don’t worry about reading the Bible, we’re just going to deconstruct it anyway.

I didn’t attend any kind of seminary, but my own experience is a little of both. I grew up reading a Children’s Bible to understand the stories, but I didn’t retain very much. What was important was faith in action, not necessarily understanding. We didn’t deal so much with how the Bible applied to our lives with much depth, but we always talked about what we could do for the community.

Going to college, I joined the church and began just reading the Bible for understanding its personal application in my life. After a few years, though, I stopped reading it once I memorized all the verses in the studies. The great strength in the study series was boiling down essential truths in a manner that was easy to pass on to others. It’s greatest weakness, though, was avoiding any instruction in how to read other passages besides them. (Even Deep Convictions wasn’t much better in days 34-40 which were supposed to cover this topic.) As a result, we heard the same set of 25 passages preached constantly. Acts 2:36-38, Matt 28-18-20, John 8, Hebrews 4:12-16, and most certainly James 5:16.

One other thing I learned early on was that all official doctrine came from LA. The first Teacher’s Conference told us that we could drink without sin, women could baptize women, and services could have instrumental music. It was the first time I remember an official kingdom-wide communication about doctrine. Subsequent messages came by way of KNN, but the effect was the same for me: why study when the spiritual folks in LA would explain it all to me eventually, anyway?

One exception to this was an exposition of Ecclesiastes that Sam did at a conference in Atlanta. I really enjoyed that exposition, and still consider it a very good one.

In the post-HKL Renaissance, I’ve looked for all manner of ways to better understand the Bible for my own life. I tried CENI for a while. (More CENI here.) I can do that kind of mathematical precision to a lot of history, but six months into trying to do it to the Bible, I was exhausted and empty. I tried crowdsourcing it for a while, but it seems that Calvinist bloggers (of all flavors of Calvinism) outnumber non-Calvinists 30 to 1. I also found that, like me, most religious bloggers are angry. I was/am angry at those that should know better within the former ICoC (the teachers, World Sector Leaders, Geographic Sector Leaders, and their associated members of their individuals entourages.) Most bloggers appeared to me to be angry at other professed Christians and their endless array of errant doctrines.

I also spent a lot of time trying to explain that I’m not really an Arminian or a Pelagian only to be called both repeatedly and summarily dismissed. I even had one apologetics site insist that I was bound for Hell because of my association with the Restoration Movement.

So then I moved on to the Historical Method espoused within the book, “How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth”. This is still the most fulfilling method to me despite the one glaring drawback. I spend a lot of time trying to put myself in a place two millenia removed in an effort to hear the words like the original audience heard them. I even persued Greek to better put myself in that place. Some years later, I am still left wanting.

I have been trying to develop a hermeneutic that is still honoring to God. In other words, I don’t want the Bible to say what I want it to say. I don’t want to read my personal biases into it in and effort to avoid personal change. Thus far, I have been able to figure out a few things that are true:

• The Bible is a book of faith that happens to contain a little history and literature. It is not a book of literature that happens to contain historical material.
• Logic is not the Magic Key to unlock Biblical mysteries.
• Greek is not a more intense or more accurate form of English.
• The Bible is meant to be understood by God, although it is also meant to be a challenge.
• Useful study is slower than I would like it to be.

Now, there’s more to this, but I need to sign off for now. More later.