Neighborhood Church

Galileo

Everyone who reads the Bible does so with a set of assumptions about what the Bible is and how it's supposed to work.

COMMON ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE BIBLE
It's a rule book.
It's primarily ancient history.
It's a self-help guide.

What lens are you using when you read the Bible?
Some lenses are better than others.

Lenses That Distort Scripture
#1 The Literalism Lens: The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it

Nobody reads the entire Bible literally.

The question is: what's guiding the choosing?

Literalism is not faithfulness. It's using “cherry-picked” Bible passages to give my preferences the weight of God's authority.

Lenses That Distort Scripture
#2 The End-Time Lens: It’s All Going To Burn Anyway

Lenses That Distort Scripture
#3 The Moralism Lens: Well, that’s not biblical.

The Moralism Lens:
Every story becomes an example of what you should or shouldn't do.

The moralism lens turns the Bible into a burden instead of good news.

The Bible isn't primarily about flawed people who got it right and how you should be like them. It's about flawed people who couldn't get it right and the God who rescued them anyway.

The Jesus-Centered Lens

Christians spend so much time arguing about what is “biblical” and “unbiblical” when we really should be distinguishing between what is Jesus like and what is un-Jesus-like.

The Bible isn't a flat book where every verse carries the same weight. It's a story. And that story is moving somewhere. It's moving toward Jesus.

Jesus transforms our understanding of Scripture. Not the other way around. Scripture does not transform our understanding of Jesus.

Jesus isn't just in the Old Testament. He's what the Old Testament is about.

Jesus didn't come to extend the old. He came to fulfill it and establish something brand new.

Jesus is the final word.

The Jesus-Centered Lens

The Jesus-Centered lens doesn't add anything to Scripture. It just reveals what's been there all along.