Don't Change The Instructions

As seen in the HEARTbeat and the Village Voice

“Don’t Change the Instructions”

            Do you remember walking through the Sears, Roebuck, & Company stores?  You could buy just about anything in that store.  And the catalog was a huge event in our house.  My brother and I would spend hours going through it, especially if it was the Christmas catalog.  Did you know you could even buy a house through the catalog?  Of course, some assembly was required with this purchase.  But almost everything else that came from the store was pre-assembled.

            Contrast a stroll through Sears with a walk through a big-box store today, like Home Depot or Lowes.  Walk through the outdoor grill area or the lawn and garden area.  You can buy a grill, but it’s not the floor model.  You have to get someone with a forklift to get the big box off of a rack.  Same thing with a lawn mower.  You get it home, open the box, and the first thing you’d better look for is the instructions.  It will tell you step by step assembly instructions for every bolt, nut, washer, shaft, wheel and all the other parts of your purchase.

            When we have to go through an ordeal like I’ve explained above, do we critique the instructions?  I mean, do we try to change some of the words to fit our own thoughts of how these many pieces laying before us should go together?  Even though they may have been written by someone whose English is a second language, we follow each step, each picture meticulously lest we have too many parts left over at the end of the assembly, which I have done!

            The Bible was originally written in languages not many of us could understand.  The Old Testament was originally written in Aramaic and Hebrew, while the New Testament was written in Greek.  We have the luxury of having a translation of the entire Bible for our enjoyment and study.  Like the instructions for putting together a barbeque grill, the Bible gives us meticulous instructions of how to live, work, pray, and worship.  It was written by men and women who were inspired by the Holy Spirit.  It is also a record of God-spoken instructions as well as Jesus’s instructions.

            With that said, why do we treat the instructions in the Bible less accurate than we do assembly instructions for a huge grill?  We follow the grill instructions but society seems like they’re trying to rewrite the Bible to suit them, or when they don’t agree with a passage or premise.  Huge discussions and dare I say arguments have recently risen in the church because of disagreements of the inerrancy of God’s Holy Word.

            The Bible says what it says.  While some scripture is hard to understand, some are extremely straight forward.  “Do not murder,” is pretty understandable.  Why is the church looking to society for an interpretation of scripture rather than through the revelation of the Holy Spirit?

            I won’t quote it, but I invite you to read Revelation 22, verse 18 and following.  It’s a warning to those who want to rewrite the Bible to suit their desires.  The outcome for those individuals will be part left over after assembly, or should I say left behind!