Understanding the New Testament

During our last Jesus of Nazareth class session my professor handed me back a quote along with my graded homework. Most of the papers I turned in over the semester bordered on a Liberal Christian "let's-not-interpret-the-scriptures-literally" view and I think this quote is his subtle final response to my work over the semester.

"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament." by Søren Kierkegaard.

Yes, I agree that the minute we understand (to grok!) the New Testament we will act accordingly although not because we feel we are obliged but because the Spirit of the New Testament moves us to act accordingly. It is not the obligation to follow the New Testament blindly to the letter but to incorporate the Spirit of the New Testament into our being. (I have yet to read any of Kierkegaard's work so forgive me if he touches on this topic.) We are caught in a lifelong struggle to incorporate what I believe to be the core of Christianity, unconditional love for your fellow man. Unconditional Love is, or at least should be, at the heart of Christianity and yet we (the church) have replaced that core with doctrine, beliefs, and theology about the man who is an earthly expression of Unconditional Love. My personal issue with the Bible is not that it is too constricting to follow (although the Old Testament Laws may be a bit difficult to follow to the letter) and might hinder my personal life, but that it should be read as a guide book to becoming Love Incarnate and not a rule book since it is a product of man. Being alone with the Spirit of the New Testament, or with scripture from any faith, is to admit that we need to transform ourselves from broken and fallible creatures to beings of Love.

Yet, I would go one step further and say it is dreadful to be alone with God! For to move into the presence of the Divine is more dreadful than embracing the structures, beliefs, thoughts, morals, and philosophies of man for it is our interaction and communion with the eternal that reveals to us the significance of living and loving every moment of our short lives. When we peak through the curtain that divides the mortal from the immortal we return with a fragment of love beaming from our faces. When we pray and commune with the Divine, help and walk justly with our fellow man, when we as a community come together we share our fragments of light and bask in its tremendous, eternal, and warm beauty. It is this light of love which humanity seeks in a dark and troubled world, and when we share it, God is found.