John
My project of reading the Bible cover-to-cover
continues, and it's getting pretty near the end. I'm going through all the
little books between the Pauline epistles and Revelation, and it has that same
trunk-in-the attic feel as going through the Minor Prophets or the Apocrypha.
Jude, Timothy, James, Titus, Philemon--dude, is this Jeopardy answer territory
or what?
And overall, less has jumped out at
me than I thought might when I started. The Gospels are about as combed over as
any texts on Earth, and I may have read too much about them to really read them
with an open and receptive mind. The only new strong impression I got was that
the Gospel of John is vastly different from the others in that it alone is
filled with Jesus asserting his special status in re God the Father--over and
over and over again, While in Matthew Mark and Luke Jesus is almost zen master
coy about who he is --"Whom say ye that I am?", and then asking them not to
reveal it to others--in John it's every other word out of his mouth. This,
however, may be just what I had been primed to look for by my other readings, so
I question my own spontaneity.
Likewise
Paul's letters didn't sparkle: they seem more managerial than anything else. I
have to wonder whether my own strong feelings about Paul might have effectively
blocked a good reading.And overall, in truth, this was beginning to feel less
like scaling a mountain than running a
marathon.
That made coming upon the
first letter of John such a happy surprise. Suddenly, what was automatic and
formulaic became clear and bright. This is the kind of stuff I would have
expected a follower of Christ to write, filled with the wonder of someone who
actually knew him. There was a 'yes!' here that I had not felt anywhere
else.
This then is the message which we have
heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness
at all.
This sounds much less like an exhortation (of which
I have had my fill) than like knowledge. Throughout the letter, the simple
statements stand out.
Listen to this:
9 He
that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until
now.
10 He
that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of
stumbling in him.
11 But
he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth
not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his
eyes.
It makes me want to clamp a hand around James
Dobson's neck and say "Read that."
And after all the centuries of obfuscation and
flimflam about faith and works and accepting Jesus as your personal
savor:
3 And
hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
4 He
that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the
truth is not in him.
and
6 He
that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he
walked.
No?
First John contains one of my favorite Bible verses,
which I had my fundamentalist Christian superheroine Adept--Jelene Anderson in
Strikeforce Morituri--read as she was
dying:
Beloved, now
are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know
that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he
is.
But I never realized how
elegant the whole short letter is. It's all the more so after all the slogging
I've done--clear water after an awful lot of old wine.
Posted: Monday - December 18, 2006 at 10:31 PM