Wisdom Wednesday: Augustine on Love and the Bible
How should Christians approach the Bible?
What is the aim of hearing the preached Word as well as reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating upon the Scriptures? For many it is to find a proof text for what we already believe about God, morality, or politics. That’s a mistake. Instead, we need to come to the Bible in humility, allowing God to do his work in us through it.
For a long time, I would have said the aim of studying the Scriptures is to know the truth. I wanted (and still want) to know God. God is truth. Knowing what is true is a good thing, often an essential thing, but it is not the ultimate thing. Why? Because truth can be put to all kinds of uses that fail to reflect Christ and his kingdom. We are to speak the truth in love, but too many of us believe that speaking the truth is love (more on this distinction in a future post).
This brings us to something Augustine wrote, something that has been on my mind a lot in recent days:
"So if it seems to you that you have understood the divine scriptures...in such a way that by this understanding you do not build up this twin love of God and neighbor, then you have not yet understood them."
We seek understanding for the sake of love. We seek truth for the sake of love. We come to the Bible for the sake of love. We want to understand it, but this requires allowing God to use it to cultivate the virtue of love in us. If our engagement with the Bible does not ultimately yield the fruit of love, something is amiss. A course correction is needed. Perhaps a serious one.
What do we desire more than love of God and others? We must answer this for ourselves. Whatever it is, we must cast it away, and move towards the God who is love.
Further up and further in.