CrossTalk: Where Life and Scripture Meet by Mike Emlet
OK, another book from CCEF that cracks my top 10 all time books. I'm going to have to make it officially a top 20 books just to keep some other authors visible ...
To sum up a response to this book, I say “Wow !" I wish I had read this book years ago, but I doubt I was ready for it – in any case, the Lord is sovereign and I have read this book (and it has been published) in His timing, which is perfect. I have lived as a perfectionist, as someone who functionally based my justification on my supposed sanctification, and I have lived in a community where the Bible is always reduced to “rules.” It has been difficult to realize that I am always looking for the “call” on someone’s life – mine or a friend’s – and that much of my personal ministry was looking for “corrective verses” instead of the “whole-istic” view of ministry presented in Scripture. It was like being in a band where on the flat notes could be struck, and thinking that this was the only kind of music there was.
I have struggled even in my own reading of scripture not to turn everything into a demand, into a rule that needed to be followed in order for “approval” to be had. The first chapter continued to whet my appetite for more – something that CCEF resources have been doing for a couple of years now. The imagery of ditches and canyons struck home – I wanted everything to be a ditch, and I felt inadequate for anything wider than a few inches. Saying to me that the Bible is NOT primarily a book of do’s and don’ts has felt like making the Bible a foreign book – if THAT was not what it was for, how do I understand it? But then to go even further and say that the Bible is not primarily a book of timeless principles for the problems of life – well, statements like that will get you labeled with the “L” word. And yet, there is something that rings true, something that warms my heart, something that creates longing in me when I see what is meant by the proper use of Scripture in ministry. As I am learning in my Prolegomena class, it is improper for me to sit in and judge Scripture, and so I must confess that my feeling of “rightness” has no impact on the actual rightness or wrongness of any method, and yet I do want to affirm that this approach seems to be more in line with the Jesus I see ministering to others rather than the people I see around and including me.
The idea of meta-narratives, of seeing myself and others within a story that is part of a larger story seems quite revolutionary to me – and yet, by transferring my gaze off of my own little world, I gain an others-centered perspective that keeps me from spiraling in on myself. By explicitly focusing on the saint-sufferer-sinner model, it prevents me from falling back into old habits – of merely attacking the points of sin. I am reminded to see people as God’s beloved children, being redeemed, who suffer due to their own sin and the sin of others – and not just as projects who need fixing. I love the concrete examples that are given of using a passage from the Old and New Testament in a ministry setting – and not just “easy application” passages. This again seems to resonate in my heart with a “I knew there was something better out there but couldn’t find it” response.
I find myself longing for the time to re-read this book and to sit down and think through specific ministry situations with the framework it presents. Quite frankly, at this stage of my life - I find that I have little time for anything. And yet, I am smack in the middle of ministry – so much so that I desperately need to make time for this. Most of all, I want time to go through Scripture and change my view from a “rule-search” or a “principle-search” to a search for Christ. It really is He that I want most of all, and yet so much gets in the way – including myself. I think this book will get worn out from my use – at least I hope so – and I want to be able to incorporate it into the “second-nature” of my thinking.
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