How Not To Read The Bible

A semi-imagined conversation

-- Right.  Bible reading.  Here we go - Speak Lord, your servant is listening.  Ok, Matthew 11:28.  Jesus said "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest."  Ok, good verse.  Well said Lord.  Now let's get down to business.  What's this verse really saying...  Well of course "rest" is theologically loaded.  Right from the seventh day of creation we see eschatological perfection modelled in Sabbath....

-- Glen!

-- Speak Lord, your servant is listening.

-- You've already said that.  And I've already spoken...

-- ... Oh indeed you have Lord and now I'm allowing your word to inform and shape my theological precommitments that I might be transformed by the renewing... Well you know how the verse goes.  Anyway I find it fascinating that you say v28 right after v27 when you declare the trinitarian, christocentric dynamic of all revel...

-- Glen!

-- Speak Lord, your servant is listening

-- Are you?

-- Well trying to.  That's why I'm deploying all the hermeneutical tools in my considerable arsenal.  It allows my whole theology to be shaped by these concepts...

-- Concepts?  Glen, have you actually come to me for rest today?

-- Well...  My plan is to get a properly nuanced theology of rest in place.  And once I have this understanding I imagine the experience of rest will sort of, I don't know, umm....

-- Glen?

-- Speak Lord your servant is listening

-- Maybe later...