The Bible (and reading it)

John 1: 1-5

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

            What?

            I have been attempting, without success, to write a post about the importance of God’s Word not only as the center of worship, but also as a daily exercise in devotion and practice of the Christian faith.  If I am going to suggest such a thing, it should then come with a recommendation of where to begin.  I would recommend the Gospel of John as a starting point.

            The Gospels are good places to begin, all about Jesus.  And here is John.  For Christian groups that seek to share the Word of God, it is usually the Gospel of John that is printed and handed out on its own.

            To distill the objections to reading Scripture, they boil down to two.  The first is that it is incomprehensible.  The second is that it is boring. 

            And John 1:1 could be argued to fulfill both arguments.  Word…Word…Word…same word three times in one sentence.

          In the beginning was the Word.  I called the Bible the Word of God.  Is that what John is talking about?  The Word was in the beginning, was with God, was God?  The ‘experienced’ Christian might reply “no silly, the Word is Jesus”.  For the new reader, it is an honest question to ask why He (Jesus) is not mentioned by name until verse 17. 

            So, the ‘experienced’ Christian might counter that saying "Word" three times is not the thing to lead off with.  It is “In the Beginning…”, the actual starting words.  Because this parallels the Creation story in Genesis 1, where it says, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…”

            So…if that is the..."beginning beginning", the 'real' beginning', why start in John and not in Genesis?  Well, says the ‘experienced’ Christian, it is because the New Testament interprets the Old Testament.  What?

            Okay.  The ‘experienced’ Christian, hopefully, begins to see how it sounds rather arrogant simply to tell Christians to just ‘go read their Bible’.  It presumes so much.  It presumes knowledge of the Bible so there is a common frame of reference in understanding it.  It presumes that the ‘stories’ are known, like how the ‘experienced’ Christian might have learned them in Sunday School.

            To say “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” and to understand what it means presupposes the following:

1.   1.     “The Word” is a title and a role for Jesus.

2.  2.      “In the beginning” is a direct parallel to Genesis 1, where the story of Creation is told.

3.  3.      That “Word” is a word that is going to have different meanings if this Word is Jesus in the Word of God, because translating the "Word of God" into the "Jesus of God" just sounds silly.  

So what John is telling us is that at creation there was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus WAS God.  It is a progressive understanding.  Jesus was at creation.  More than that, Jesus was at creation with God.  More than that, Jesus was (and is) God.

So, Jesus is a guy, yet Jesus is God.  Not two gods, God.  And guy and God.

Verse 2 seems to summarize, “He was in the beginning with God.”  Well, not just to summarize.  But that is something for the next round.