Selling Water by the River (2): No One Comes to the Bible without a Lens

In the second chapter of the book, Selling Water by the River, Hipps talks about the lenses through which we read scripture and life:

"No one comes to the Bible or life without a lens...A lens can be a set of assumptions or beliefs that we have...When it comes to the Bible, religious authorities usually tell us which lenses we should use. We learn what to believe about the Bible as a way to help us understand how to read it. We are also taught what to be afraid of or angry about..."

The author goes ahead to list the first set of biblical lenses he was given, which included such things as: 

*The Bible is flat; no teaching or doctrine in the Bible is privileged above another...

*The Bible is unified in its message...

*God doesn't speak outside the Bible...

(Authority figures also taught him what lenses he should NOT look through at the Bible.)

"Our lenses - our assumptions, our way of seeing the world - shape the way we interpret the Bible and how we relate to God and those in the world around us...When we see our lenses, we can evaluate them consciously...An examination of our lenses is not a process of changing the Bible, the world, or truth; it is a process of changing ourselves. 

     "The most limited Bible interpreter is one who claims to have no lens." 

        "Even Jesus, the Son of God, made deliberate use of a lens..." 

Hipps goes on to illustrate this by showing how Jesus elevated certain scriptures over others. The Pharisees tried to trick him by asking which was the greatest commandment, believing that the only correct answer could be that all of the commandments are the greatest. But Jesus didn't hesitate to respond in a way that shows his understanding that some commandments carry more weight than others and that all of them should be understood in the light of the two commandments to love God and our neighbor.

"The implications of what Jesus says here are enormous and often overlooked. He is actually showing us that he has a lens - a set of assumptions. He doesn't see the Bible as flat...

"We all have lenses, but not all lenses are created equal. Some help us see more, some cause us to see less...Perhaps this Jesus-centered lens is one we should adopt. One that elevates love of God, and love of neighbor and self as the interpretive keys to the Bible."

Selling Water by the River

In the coming weeks I will share quotes from parts of Shane Hipps' book, Selling Water by the River, "a book about the life Jesus promised and the religion that gets in the way".

This book had a significant influence on my early years of unlearning and relearning and reworking much of what I was raised to believe about God and Jesus and Christianity. 

The summary on the book jacket says of this book: "Work, sex, ice cream, religion - they all promise fulfillment. But what they deliver is fleeting...We want something that lasts, that doesn't rise and fall with the fate of the stock market. Jesus understood this quest. He came to show us that peace is possible in this life, not just the next one. Yet Christianity, the very religion that claims Jesus as its own, has often built the biggest barriers to him and the life he promised."

In this book Hipps shows how available the water of life is; it's a river available to all, but we have built our institutions next to the river to sell the water. In so doing, we often create hindrances for people to get directly to the river of life - Jesus.

"...problematic are the beliefs we are taught to adopt that truncate our imagination of God...Then there is...fear. Fear is one of the great barriers to this river...Ironically, religious Christianity is often the purveyor of the very beliefs and fears that get in the way of the water.

"...What we believe matters, but not for the reasons we may assume. Our beliefs (or lack of beliefs) do not qualify or disqualify us from the river. Instead, they determine how clearly we will see the river...Some beliefs clear the way and give us high visibility, while others create a thick fog..."