One of the phrases I remember growing up in church was “We are a people of the Book.” Proudly proclaimed and worn as a badge of honor, one demonstration of the truthfulness of our claim was the ability to quote passages on demand in order to prove our correctness and defeat any who thought differently. As long as they were in agreement with our interpretation, we were “united”. If there was not agreement the conclusion was that the other party just had it wrong and, of course, were not “people of the book”. Perhaps, that is not so much the case today, but Eugene Peterson in “Eat This Book” describes an equally damaging perversion of what it means to be “a people of the book”.
“Eat this book” is my metaphor of choice for focusing attention on what is involved in reading our Holy Scriptures formatively, that is, in such a way that the Holy Spirit uses them to form Christ in us. We are not interested in knowing more but in becoming more.
The task is urgent. It is clear that we live in an age in which the authority of Scripture in our lives has been replaced by the authority of the self: we are encouraged on all sides to take charge of our lives and live our own experience as the authoritative text by which to live.
The alarming thing is how extensively this spirit has invaded the church. I more or less expect the unbaptized world to attempt to live autonomously. But not those of us who confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. I am not the only one to notice that we are in the odd and embarrassing position of being a church in which many among us believe ardently in the authority of the Bible but, instead of submitting to it, use it, apply it, take charge of it endlessly, using our own experience as the authority for how and where and when we will use it.
One of the most urgent tasks facing the Christian community today is to counter this self-sovereignty by reasserting what it means to live these Holy Scriptures from the inside out, instead of using them for our sincere and devout but still self-sovereign purposes.