I must have been only seven or eight years old when my grandmother, who had become a Christian a few years earlier, told me in a very serious fashion that the Bible is not effective if it is closed. The Bible only works if it is kept open, she said.
In hindsight, giving my granny the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she meant that the Bible needs to be read. Perhaps. But this was not my takeaway from the conversation. Instead, I took her words quite literally. For a few years I held onto a habit of leaving the Bible always open on my bedside table.
As a grownup, I do not attach much significance to the physical position in which the Bible is being held. What matters is its content, the message, in whatever form it is conveyed – be it stone tablets, scrolls of parchment, a paper book, a mobile app, or oral transmission. The Bible matters to us because of what its message means. Over the years, I’ve thought more and more about how we engage with this meaning. How do we interact with the content of the Bible, this Word of God?
In my experience, in Western European cultures we mostly engage with God’s Word either by reading it on our own, or by listening to someone else reading and teaching it. This is surely a good thing! However, both reading the Bible and listening to a sermon can be relatively passive experiences. It is quite possible to both read and listen without actually interacting with the text.
Of course the opposite can also be true: Being an active reader or listener can initiate an internal process in us – engaging our intellect and our emotions with the text. In this case, we begin finding connections between God’s Word and our real everyday lives. This is what we mean when we say that the Bible speaks to us.
If we asked our pastor, I am sure he would like us to be a Church where each member personally engages with the Bible and where we are all active readers and listeners. But even if this was a reality, would we not be lacking something as a community if this was the only way we interacted with God’s Word?
Churches in Bamunka
Eighteen years ago, I lived among the Bamunka people in Cameroon. As I visited many churches, I discovered three different Christian approaches towards the wider Bamunka culture.
In some churches, Christianity had become an add-on to the traditional Bamunka religion. On Sunday, one would take bread and wine in church. On Mbimbi – the day of rest according to the traditional eight-day week – one would sacrifice a chicken to the ancestors. When Sunday and Mbimbi coincided, one would do both. For these churchgoers, Jesus had become a member of the Bamunka pantheon, a new god among many old ones. My description may be a crude simplification, but I believe that it is fair to say that in these churches faith in Jesus did not seem to interfere too much with the accustomed way of life.
In other churches, Christians took the opposite approach, renouncing all old traditions and adopting new seemingly Christian customs. Indigenous musical instruments were exchanged for guitars. Participation in community feasts and rituals was avoided at all cost as Christians wanted to make a clean break with “the World”. Some believers moved away from their ancestral land into cities to escape the pagan environment. The extreme form of such Christian isolationism included parents not speaking their mother tongue to their children. Instead of the “pagan language” they opted for (often rudimentary) English.
It was fascinating to observe “mission history” happening before my eyes. I remember wondering to what extent the situation in Mediaeval Europe had been comparable during the first generations of Christian contact. (Bishop Boniface would have surely picked up his axe had he seen the holy trees in Bamunka). The situation in mediaeval Europe must have been varied and complex, just as it has been across Africa in the last couple of hundred years, but the Middle Ages came to mind because that’s when the relationship between Christianity and old European worldviews was settled, wasn’t it?
Or perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps every generation needs to grapple anew with how our Christian faith and the surrounding culture interact. While our current Western European cultures and environments are vastly different from those of Bamunka, do we not struggle with the same dilemma: How much should we adapt to the wider culture? How much should we set ourselves apart from it?
In Finland, where I currently live, many Christians express a concern, perhaps for good reason, that churches are adapting too much, trying to please everybody while ignoring what “the Bible says”. On the other hand, some Christians worry, perhaps for good reason, that churches – feeling threatened by the changing society – increasingly live in their own Christian bubble.
Both are legitimate concerns. In the first case, our faith can become contained in the “Christian domain of life” from which it cannot “disturb” our lives too much. In the latter case, our faith forms a set of Christian customs and behaviours which may have little relevance to people around us, or even to our own worldview and values which are mostly subconscious and intuitive. In both cases, faith in Christ lacks a profound connection with real life, its struggles and unanswered questions. If this is the case, are our churches then so different from those I encountered in Bamunka?
But there was a third approach to culture and society among Bamunka Christians. In my neighbourhood church, there was a local pastor who preached in his mother tongue. (At the time, this was quite rare in Bamunka churches. Denominations often posted their ministers to different parts of the country regardless of whether they spoke the local language or not. In this country of some 300 languages, they often did not.) The Bible was read in English since the Bamunka translation was still to be completed. The pastor, and a few others who knew English well, then explained the text in Bamunka. After the sermon the congregation discussed together how they understood the text and what it meant to them.
One recurring issue for the church was their approach to traditional festivals and rites. These traditions, many of which were deeply religious, bound the Bamunka society together. Should Christians participate? Should they abstain? In order to make these decisions, the church sought guidance from the Bible. As a result, some feasts were deemed to be compatible with their faith, and the church decided to participate. Sometimes the core purpose of the whole event was in such conflict with the Gospel that they had to stay away. Sometimes the Christians participated as a group but abstained from certain aspects of the traditions. And sometimes old traditions were given a new Christian meaning.
No outsider could have told the Bamunka church what the Christian response to any given cultural practice should be. Only the local church themselves, with a deep understanding of their own culture, could work this out in dialogue with God’s Word. (So yes, I believe Bishop Boniface would have made a grave mistake with his axe.)
Such “third approach” churches were in a constant communal conversation with the message of the Bible. This was no theoretical or academic discussion, but a process with imminent practical applications and potentially dramatic consequences for the lives of the believers. Through such a dialogue, I witnessed these churches answer important real-life questions that the Christians – and in many cases the wider community – were grappling with.
The Church in the West
I have come to believe that a continuing communal dialogue with God’s Word is the only sustainable way forward for us in the West as well – that is, if we want to remain faithful to God and maintain a meaningful connection with the world around us. We need to ask ourselves how God’s Word leads us to engage with culture and society. What solutions does the Bible suggest for our very real problems and struggles today? Moreover, many of our questions, worries and problems are not unique to us but are shared by our non-Christian neighbours. Could the church be a place where honest and respectful conversations about issues touching people’s lives could happen?
I have been trying to promote such a culture of communal dialogue in our Finnish home church. One practical application has been an open invitation to discuss the Bible reading and the sermon over coffee after the Sunday service. I’ve been facilitating these discussions, challenging people to voice their thoughts and gently guiding the conversation back to the topic when necessary. The key question is always: What does today’s text and sermon speak to you as a Christian and to us as church? The key principle: There are no right or wrong answers, but be prepared that your views may be politely debated. The fundamental basis: This is a conversation among the redeemed. You will not be judged for your thoughts, opinions, or experiences.
It has been inspiring to hear different people voice their thoughts and questions. At the same time, I have realised how inexperienced we are in such conversation and how it will take an intentional culture shift to get there. On the one hand, we are heirs to the Reformation, believing that everyone can read and understand the Bible for themselves. On the other hand, somewhat paradoxically, few of us are readily able to express how we understand any given text and how we apply it in our everyday lives.
I am convinced that an open conversation is also hindered, at least subconsciously, by fear. We may be afraid to say what we think. What will the others think about me? What if I come across as lacking faith, or too liberal/conservative/high church/charismatic/_____ (fill in your own fear here)? Would it be safer to stick to the usual phrases and standard answers?
We may be afraid to voice our most genuine questions because we think we are supposed to have the answers. If our view of a good Christian is one who does not doubt or hesitate, why shatter the image by admitting that I have unresolved questions?
A while ago, I listened to a podcast in which a Jewish guest was asked why he thought Jewish people are better than Christians at debating the Scriptures. I found his answer deeply moving: Judaism is not merely a religion but also an ethno-cultural community. Two Jews may fundamentally disagree on their interpretation of the Scriptures but after the debate both remain Jewish. Christian communities, on the other hand, tend to be held together by shared beliefs. One joins a church based on what one believes. Disagreement therefore always carries at least an implicit threat of ending up outside the community.
Yes, the church is fundamentally a community of believers. As a church we are bound together by our faith in the risen Christ. But isn’t there also something saddening in this analysis? In the worst case, is the church held together by a shared fear of not having the wrong views or saying the wrong things?
What Would Jesus Do?
Could the church be a community of Jesus-followers bound together by our common desire to engage with God’s Word, with one another, and with the wider community? Could we be a church where our questions do not have to match predetermined answers? Could we be fostering a culture in which we can have an open dialogue with the Bible, a culture in which we can even debate and disagree without a fear of breaking our unity?
After all, isn’t this precisely what Jesus did? In many instances recorded in the New Testament, he debated the Scriptures with teachers of the Law, with Pharisees and with his disciples. Perhaps we can grow more into His likeness in this regard as well.
By Hannu Sorsamo
