Part 1: The Authority of Scripture

You won’t remember this. You may never have heard about it. But on March 20, 1981, as I took a seat on my yellow school bus for my ride home from Highland Park Elementary, I learned that about an hour and a half earlier, President Reagan had been shot while leaving a speaking engagement. That part I clearly remember and of that event you may be aware. But it’s what unfolded behind the scenes that I’ve since found fascinating.

It was not until years later that I learned the chaos of that day led to a most memorable event in the life of American politics. Soon after the assassination attempt, members of the President’s cabinet assembled in the Situation Room to discuss how to proceed. The President was on his way to the hospital and his condition was unknown. The Vice President was in a plane over Texas with such a poor radio connection, there was only time to tell him “Get back here!” (to Washington).

As the Cabinet met, a press conference was being held to brief the media. Deputy Press Secretary Larry Speakes was fielding questions when he was asked, “Who is currently running the government?” Speakes paused and then responded, “I cannot answer that question at this time.” Upon hearing the answer, and being concerned that the country’s enemies would see it as a moment of vulnerability, Secretary of State Alexander Haig ran from the Cabinet meeting to take to the microphone before the press, the nation, and the world. He then said, “Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. As of now, I am in control here.”

It was meant, of course, to be comforting. There was only one problem: he was not “in control.” The Constitution says that he wasn’t even second in line, but fourth. His assertion of being in charge didn’t really matter.

Like I said, you probably don’t remember this. I didn’t. Yet I can very much identify with Alexander Haig. And my bet is, if you are honest, you can identify as well. Because you see, on a daily basis, by my actions, both public and private, I scream to anyone who will listen, “I’m in control!” in the hopes of bringing stability to the seeming chaos around me. The only problem is, like Haig, no matter how much I want to believe it, no matter how convincingly I say it, I’m not in control. And well, honestly, neither are you. God is.

I know this because, as the song we sang growing up says, “the Bible tells me so.” It’s interesting that when you read the Bible, it doesn’t start with arguments about God and whether He exists. Scripture begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Notice it doesn’t say, “In the beginning God was created,” nor does it seek to convince you of the fact that God “is” with well thought-out arguments and proofs. Scripture starts with God, and He is who He is. In the first four words, the question of authority is answered. It’s not us, no matter how much we take the mike to say otherwise. It’s Him. God “is” and we are created by Him. He doesn’t depend on us. We depend on Him. As such, we know God only on the ground that He makes himself known. He lays down the terms of why and how we are to know Him.

Theologians, those who study the Bible for a living, call this revelation. Revelation comes from Latin word revelare, which means “to pull back the veil.” The early church fathers used to say, “Only God can reveal God.” He must initiate this revelation by His own power and will. God pulls back the veil; we don’t jerk it away. We’re not like Dorothy, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow sneaking up on the Wizard and pulling back the curtain. God being who He is (all powerful, without sin, without needs, etc.) and we being who we are (limited, sinful, needy, etc.) leaves us dependent on God condescending to us and revealing Himself to us. The extent to which God makes Himself known to us is the extent to which we can know Him. And He chose to do this in two ways: in nature and through the Bible.

Paul tells us in his letter to the church at Rome “what may be known about God is plain to them [all mankind], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Romans 1:19–20). He then goes on to argue that though the existence of God is plain to us, we “neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but [our] thinking became futile and [our] foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21). In other words, in our sin and rebellion against God, we deny what all of creation points to, and assert that we’re in control. The prophet Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9). We’ve believed our own press; we’ve deceived ourselves into believing we’re in control.

That’s where Scripture comes in. Scripture serves as the corrective lens to our faulty view of all that is around us. So that there would be no misunderstanding, God set out in the Bible to set the record straight concerning the chain of command. We as the creatures are under the rule and authority of our Creator. And the Bible is how God chooses to speak to us. II Timothy 3:16a says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” And Peter writes, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (II Peter 1:20–21).

On November 23, 1983 an Avianca Airlines flight from Paris to Bogotá was about to make a short stop in Madrid, Spain. Upon approach the pilots caught the ILS (Instrument Landing System), which provides precise instructions for aircraft as they approach runways. However, they caught it on the wrong track and descended below the minimum descent altitude. This caused the pilot to begin a right turn that was short of the point where the turn was supposed to be made. At that time an alarm began screeching in the cockpit and, in English, the system called “Terrain! Terrain!” followed by two “whoops”, then “Pull up! Pull up! Terrain! Terrain!” Before Avianca Flight 011 crashed, killing 181 people on board, it is reported that the pilot, who didn’t speak English, reached over and cut off the alarm saying, “Shut up, gringo!”

What Paul argues in Romans 1 is that creation speaks to the existence of God, but left with just creation, we would misinterpret it and be headed for a crash. Scripture, as the voice of God, screams at us to “pull up,” to correct our trajectory, yet many of us, seeking to be in control, pay no attention to the alarm to the detriment of our own life and those around us. We seek to silence the voice of God.

In his book, Searching for God Knows What, Donald Miller talks about a night just after high school where he, sitting alone, decided to tell God that He didn’t exist. Miller describes it this way:

The thing about the night at the car wash, the night I renounced my faith, was that I didn’t think of God as being very big at all. The god I was renouncing was more of an idea, than a person…I walked back home after renouncing my faith…and I confess to you, I was scared. But I wasn’t scared because God was there; I was scared because I felt like he wasn’t...(1)

Yet no matter what he told himself, or God for that matter, Miller couldn’t ever shake the reality that God did exist. He continues:

God was still there. I tried to shake Him, but I couldn’t find a place where he wasn’t…I began to realize that the God of the Bible, the old one before we learned to read it like a self-help book, had a great deal to say to me. What I mean by this is the God of the Bible, and for that matter the Bible itself, started making sense out of my deepest emotions, quirks, and sense of brokenness. (2)

Two things stand out to me. First, Miller, not unlike all of us at one time or another, sought to make God irrelevant. Yet God is anything but irrelevant, and He will not allow his creatures to silence Him. Jesus made this clear after He entered into Jerusalem and the Pharisees complained about the people coming out to praise Him. “I tell you if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40). We may seek to silence the voice of God, but as Francis Schaeffer reminds us, God is there and He is not silent.

The second thing about Miller’s insight that stands out is the fact that he admits that he had misread the Bible. He had begun reading it as a “self-help book,” and many of us can identify with Miller. We don’t know how to read the Bible. That is going to be the focus of these articles over the next few months. Often, even if we sit down to read the Bible, we find ourselves frustrated because we can’t make sense of what we read.

Over the next few months, I will seek to alleviate some of the difficulty by talking about how we read and study the Bible. Like the Bible itself, I’m not going to try to convince you of God’s existence. I’m not even going to try to convince you of the fact that the Bible is God’s Word. I’m simply going to point you to some texts and ask you what the Bible asserts about itself. Then I’m going to ask you to answer some basic questions about yourself and your life experience. I’m also going to trust that God will work and begin to use His Word, by the power of His Spirit, to convince you that He’s in control, and that He’ll draw you to a closer relationship with Him.

Hopefully, over the next few months, together we’ll learn a great deal about ourselves, about God, and about His love for us exhibited in His Word. I also hope that by the end of this series, reading and studying the Bible no longer seems like a chore or futile exercise, but instead becomes very rich. Perhaps, like Miller, we’ll find that the Bible makes “sense out of my deepest emotions, quirks, and sense of brokenness” and also gives us hope, answers, and above all, points us to Him.

Want to talk about it? I’m on Facebook. Robert O. Browning in the Memphis network.

Exercise:

Get a Bible and look up the following passages one by one and answer the following questions for each. If it’s helpful, get a journal or notebook and write out your answers.

1. What does the passage assert about the book I hold in my hands?
2. What does the passage tell me about the relevance of the Bible?
3. What does the passage tell me about the usefulness of the Bible?
4. How important is the Bible?

2 Timothy 3:16–17
2 Peter 1:20, 21
1 Corinthians 2:10–13
1 Thessalonians 2:13
John 17:17

Further Consideration:

1. Whom in your life do you find yourself listening to the most? Best friend, parent, sibling, teacher, etc.?
2. When faced with difficult circumstances or situations, do you:
   a. Look at what’s going on, think about it, and make a decision on what to do
   b. Go to someone or a group of people your age and ask advice
   c. Go to someone or a group of people older and ask advice
3. What speaks to you or connects with you? Music, movies, books, friends?
   
   (Chances are, how you answer these questions helps pinpoint who or what the “authorities” are in your life, who or what controls you.)
4. Was the Bible, and therefore God, anywhere in this list?

Rev. Robert Browning is Senior Pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church in Olive Branch, Mississippi.

1. Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What (Nelson: 2004) 38.
2. Miller, 41.