Theology For Dummies: Family Edition

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who read a book once, and feel they’ve squeezed all the juice out of it; and those who hang onto a book as you’d hang onto an old friend. Not that I’d suggest keeping all your friends lined up on a shelf – although, come to think of it, that would be more convenient than trying to reach someone on the phone, and synchronize schedules, and….

I have heard a rumor that there is a third kind of person: the kind who regards a book as an unwelcome reminder of an uncomfortable experience of Compulsory Education. I choose to disregard that rumor, since that’s not the kind of world I’d want to live in.

I have already noted in this space which camp I fall into; rest assured that the books I singled out in that entry are old, familiar friends. I also mentioned that my response to the cliché “books for a desert island” question would have to include both the Baseball Encyclopedia and the Bible.

If you are a person for whom baseball exceeds a pastime and approaches mental illness – quick test: will baseball be mentioned in your obituary? – you might see the appeal of the former volume. Not only is it immense, and virtually impervious to being read cover-to-cover, but all those names and numbers are like videotape to those of my ilk.

The Bible is similar in a way. When I read the stories of Scripture, I recognize a lot of people I know – selfish, cowardly, a little slow on the uptake, or any number of other common human characteristics. OK, full disclosure: a lot of those “people I know” are people I actually recognize from seeing them in the mirror.

It is, of course, quite possible to read the Bible cover-to-cover. Still, it probably supports re-reading better than most other books you can name, and that is because how you read it and understand it changes as you change.

I’ve read the whole thing through, but I still find things I would be almost sure I’ve never seen before, because I see something I wasn’t in a position to see the first time. One excellent example of this is Eph. 1:4-6 --

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

I never really understood what adoption was all about until my wife & I adopted our son in 1999. I understood the part about a child coming to live with you; you take care of him and you come to love him. What came as a surprise to me was that a child who’s not “yours” can become yours, even instantaneously. We don’t have any biological children, but I can’t imagine feeling any stronger about one. Or, as I’m fond of saying, I couldn’t love him (or my daughter either) any more if I’d given birth to them myself.

It sheds a new light on my relationship with God. I don’t have any particularly strong claim on being part of His family. God knows ;-) the family resemblance is often not very strong. And yet for some reason it pleases Him to treat me as a son, and to love me as much as if He’d given birth to me. Now I understand this doesn’t mean I’m a second-class member of the family… being a child of God represents not just a legal status but a place in the center of God’s heart.

It also means I need to keep reading; who knows what else I’ll turn up?