My friend Yancy Smith recently used a metaphor about scripture that has really stuck with me. I’m paraphrasing him here, but the basic idea is that the Bible is like an amazing menu at a wonderful restaurant. The point of the menu is the meal.
The accurate information in the menu only fulfills its purpose if it points you toward the food. I recognize myself how often I, in my Christian life, have been satisfied with reading the menu alone. I’ve studied the menu. Taught on the menu. I’ve argued with others about how my menu is the best menu, and, more often, about how my understanding of the menu is the best. But how often have I ordered a meal and been satisfied? How often has my theology pointed me toward experience? How often has my doctrine moved me toward encounter.
God’s kind of words don’t simply inform, they nourish. They satisfy. For ultimately, the Word is Christ himself. Scripture is designed to bring us to him.
John 5:39-40
39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.(ESV)
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Unfortunately, for the longest time, I thought the Bible was something like the menus they post outside of restaurants. Something to be looked over, but not really for experiencing. I knew others were eating but it was just far too expensive for me to experience. Then someone helped me go into the restaurant and experience it for myself. Come to find out, I can eat as much as I want as often as I want, the price has been paid for it all.
The Word is living and active when we allow interaction with the Word. For too long, mastery of the facts and stories of the Bible has been held out as valid for the purposes of educating others on what they know about God. When we interact with the Word, then there is a penetration into our soul which changes us from the inside out as we then know God more intimately.