Who the Bible is about.

My life tends to run in cycles. Right now, I seem to be really hungry for reading. Theological reading to be more exact. So I have been using some projects I have been working on as an excuse to thumb my way through some Eugene Peterson books, an NT Wright book, and I was on a quest to find a good Lenten devotional by a contemporary theologian I wanted to read (Miroslav Volf, Tom Wright). I ended up picking up the Stanley Hauerwas book pictured above, called The Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Last Words of Christ. As I read it the book seemed to bring everything together.

The first meditation in the book was about the phrase "Forgive them for they know not what they do." Hauerwas pointed out, as my reading of The Last Word by N.T. (Tom) Wrightreiterated to me in its own way, that I run to the WHAT of the Bible to quickly.

Hauerwas pointed out that we often move in this passage too quickly to our need for forgiveness, when the words of Jesus, at that moment, are much more descriptive of who Jesus is. The Last Words of Jesus are much more about who he is, what his heart is like, and what his mission is than it is about me. Lots of times, Hauerwas seems to say, we make it all about us. We rush to make it about our lives, when the gospels were about the life and character of Jesus. And this rush to self-centeredness and practicality, Hauerwas says, keeps us from being formed by being with Christ, getting to know Christ. We make EVEN THE PASSION a to-do list and all about our life issues.

As I got to thinking, I think this is true of our life in general. We rush past the story to get to the "point". When the "point" is getting to know Jesus enough to be his apprentice and friend with our whole heart, whole mind, and whole soul.