I wrote this post three months ago and thought about it again as I’ve been reading through John Frye’s new book, “Out of Print” (Which, by the way, is proving to be fantastic; what a great storyteller, John is!). I thought I would re-post it as a precursor to my review of his book over the weekend. It deals with some of the same themes as John’s book, particularly what IS the Word of God. Enjoy, and go get your own copy of John’s new book!

I’ve been thinking recently about the whole “Word of God” concept. I’ve decided I don’t like it.

I mean I like the Scriptures, I like it that God has communicated to us and I like Jesus’ teachings (though they are a real pain in the ass sometimes!). That’s not the problem. What I don’t particularly care for is how the Scriptures are referred to as “the word.”

I don’t know if it’s an evangelical thing or broader, but people constantly refer to the Scriptures as THE WORD, almost like it’s an object to be worshiped or something.

Now I know you’ve heard people talk like this:

“Hey man, I can’t get together tonight. I need to get into…the word.”
“Hey Susie, how’s your time in…the word?”
“I just LUV Pastor Sheets. He really preaches…the word!”

Am I crazy or does this phrasing just seem off to anyone else?

Maybe I’m reading something into nothing, but I think something happens here: it seems like the whole of Jesus’ teachings, letters of the early Church, ancient prophetic words, Israel’s story of rebellion and exile, and God’s communication to humanity are reduced to something to do on a Friday night, an obligation, a task to check off, and yardstick by which to measure someone else, and distracts from the REAL Word.

There are a few places in the Bible where “the word” is mentioned: the prophets frequently received a “word from the Lord,” Paul wished that the “word of Christ dwell in you richly” (as in the collective teachings of Jesus), and I guess “the word of God” is referenced to as a piece of the Armor of God.

But then there is another place where “the word” is given definition: The Book of John. The Greek word used here is LOGOS, which is NOT a word that means “word” in a grammatical sense; that is LEXIS. Word, here, in both the Jewish and Christian spirituality sense is defined as a Creative Reality; LOGOS is both the originator and definer of all that has, is, and will exist throughout eternity. I guess you could say LOGOS is a Being of Meaning.

So in John, it is revealed that this Creative Reality has existed from the beginning of beginnings, from the point where time has flowed from eternity past. This Creative Reality has eternally existed with God, the Creator and is in fact God. But then this Creative Reality invades the earth and is enfleshed as Jesus, the God-with-us-God. LOGOS, the Creative Reality of the universe, is revealed as a Person; LOGOS is not an idea or a doctrine or a piece of parchment, rather LOGOS is a relational flesh-and-blood Being.

Maybe I am being way to semantical, parsing words and meaning of words that shouldn’t be parsed. But I do wonder what reducing God’s efforts at communicating to humans and the teachings of Jesus to an object does to those words from God. And I do have some ideas about how it started and what it does…

This is the thing: Are we following “the word” or are we following “the Person?” Is our allegiance to an idea or a text, or to the Creative Reality who breathed us into being AND breaths meaning into us? God came to give us himself not a text or a scroll or a teaching. Yes, ultimately, being in relationship with this Creative Reality begs a following of a teaching, but it is more about leaning into a way of being, rather than simply embracing an idea.

While it sounds odd to say it, I really have a problem with the idea of worshiping or idolizing or objectifying God’s words to humanity. Yes we are to follow them and live them out and obey them, but worship and objectify them? I prefer to speak of the Bible as the Words of God or the Scriptures or Jesus’ words or God’s words. Rather than objectifying or idolizing them, I think phrasings like these avoid the prostration that occurs before God’s communication.

So skip a night on the town if you must, but please, please do so to get with the God-with-us-God, not “the word.”