The things I carry

or, All that you can’t leave behind.

I used to know my Bible a lot better.

Probably a function of my obsessiveness, or legalism, or just general mental disturbedness, but I knew my Bible, chapter and verse, like a freak. (I still remember my college roommate joking early in our acquaintance that I knew the entire New Testament, cover to cover and verse to verse. That wasn’t as much a joke as I think he thought!)

I’ve noticed recently more of that inner voice saying, ‘that’s Biblical, but I just don’t know where…’.

That’s a little disturbing.

But maybe, to turn things around, it shouldn’t be.

Very early in my seminary career I started wrapping my mind around a shift, of sorts, in nomenclature as concerned Christians interacting with their world. Dear Dr. Krieder forever rocked my socks by describing certain musicians (knowing him, they were probably U2) not as “Christian musicians” but as “Christians who do music”.

That has proven no small distinction. Stick with me and I’ll show you why.

It seems that the final, highest goal in formal Christian education (it certainly is at the school where I teach) is that teachers teach from a fundamental Christian worldview. This is a pretty tough thing to think through, but it basically boils down to this: your Christian faith should so inform your perspective on the world and how you interact with it that it just sort of comes out, and lives in, the way you handle ideas. Think of your fundamental Christian perspectives (keep your finger right here; you’re gonna want to come back to this page) functioning sort of like glasses, or contacts, or even the very corneas of your eyes, so much that you can’t consciously separate it from how you process new information on your world. And then, because of that, distinctly Christian “fingerprints” are all over everything you do.

Put even simpler: your Christian faith isn’t something you have to just “turn on” or “turn off” or “revisit,” and how developed your faith is one way or the other shows up in everything about your life.

Hence my spin on forgetting Bible verses.

I think that perhaps some progress I’ve made in my maturity as a Christian could be found in that. Now of course, I’m not trying to say that there never is and never was any value in memorizing Scripture… But the whole point of our time together is to wonder this: which is of more value, learning more Scripture by rote and being able to adroitly unfurl it from the depths of your intellectual satchel, or being so changed by it that it lives inside you and nourishes you even unconsciously because you’ve already digested it so well?

So then, all that said, take a look at the things I carry:

Art and beauty: All things done well and excellently are things the Scriptures encourage us to harvest for clues about God that will encourage us further toward a life of grateful reflection upon Him. Because I am a Christian I understand this world as a place where God’s handiwork is on display anywhere I look and thus I appreciate beauty far more deeply. This is a scriptural idea, so attested that some list of Bible verses plucked from context defeats that very point.

Dignity of human life: I take great offense, because I am a Christian, at any devaluing of human lives or people made in the image of God due to their station in life. The poor, a janitor, a prostitute or a some greedy old tycoon are all of equal worth in the eyes of God to that of even His Son. This is a scriptural idea, so attested that some list of Bible verses plucked from context defeats that very point.

Lordship of Christ: Because I am a Christian, I believe that He is in control-regardless of human machinations otherwise, my own weak faith, or hostility toward my our values. This is a scriptural idea, so attested that some list of Bible verses plucked from context defeats that very point.

Truth: Since I am a Christian, I believe that all truth is God’s truth and that anything I can find that I know to be true should be a cherished nugget pointing me back toward Him. I am not quick to stamp things as “true,” but once I realize such a sighting, I rejoice. This is a scriptural idea, so attested that some list of Bible verses plucked from context defeats that very point.

I’m not really sure which Dixon I’d prefer to have in my crew, the one writing today or the one with the biggest, thickest Bible keychain.

Actually, I think I do know now.

If we can’t say that we’ve wisened as the calendar pages have ticked onward, I’m not sure we should want to be around ourselves. (I feel like that too is a scriptural idea, by the way.)

Yup, you got me there, I said it: sometimes forgetting Bible verses is a good thing.

Maybe that is because if they really are what we say of them, then in fact they truly are… all that we can’t leave behind.