{"id":7847,"date":"2024-02-01T16:05:41","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T10:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/01\/apparently-2020-is-the-year-of-the-bible\/"},"modified":"2024-02-01T16:05:41","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T10:35:41","slug":"apparently-2020-is-the-year-of-the-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/01\/apparently-2020-is-the-year-of-the-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"Apparently 2020 is the Year of the Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>2020 has the honor of being \u201cThe Year of the Bible,\u201d at least according to Bible 2020, a global Evangelical organization, including the National Association of Evangelicals, World Evangelical Alliance, and the International Bible Society.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Some of us may remember the last time we had such a year, in 1983 under Ronald Reagan.\u00a0 He believed there was a national \u201cneed to study and apply the teachings of Holy Scripture,\u201d for \u201cin its pages lie all the answers to all the problems that man has ever known.\u201d Channeling that energy, Bible 2020 feels it is time once again to place the Bible in the center of a national conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They aim to call Christians across the globe \u201cback to the Bible,\u201d by which they mean \u201cto rally more people to greater Scripture engagement\u201d in the face of rather shocking decline in biblical literacy in recent decades among Christians. \u00a0As a Christian college professor I can attest to this fact firsthand, and I have dedicated my life to addressing the decline in biblical literacy and amping up serious Bible <em>engagement<\/em> in the church\u2014or as I tell my students, <a href=\"https:\/\/peteenns.com\/5-ways-to-see-the-bible-as-an-adult-but-let-me-explain-before-you-jump-down-my-throat\/\">to engage the Bible as adults.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In that sense, my goal overlaps with that of BIBLE 2020. Having said that . . . <\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">I suspect that what they mean by serious Bible engagement and what I mean is not the same thing. <\/h2>\n<p>Live and let live, I suppose\u2014we do not all have to engage the Bible in the same way, and I do think that doing something is better than nothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, over the years I\u2019ve had more than my share of helping Evangelicals recover spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually from the <em>type<\/em> of \u201cengagement\u201d I suspect will rear its head in this campaign, which is:\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The assumption that in the Bible God speaks to us today directly, plainly, and clearly, yielding moral and scientific certitudes;\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>That engaging Scripture means finding the <em>answers <\/em>to our questions rather than challenging our preconditioned thinking;<\/li>\n<li>That expressions of doubt, disagreement, or even intellectual curiosity are out of place, signs of a weak faith rather than a faith that is growing;\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>That God\u2019s communication is fundamentally on the level of \u201cBible verses\u201d that can safely be isolated from their historical, literary, and theological context;<\/li>\n<li>That the Bible\u2019s main purpose is as an evangelistic tool, namely to provide information so that we can be \u201csaved\u201d from eternal conscious torment in hell.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Evangelicalism is a paradox when it comes to the Bible: a passionate love for Scripture while at the same time handling it in ways that sell it short. I am concerned that Bible 2020 is heavily tilted toward an Evangelical understanding of what the Bible is, how it functions in the life of the church, and what it means to read it well.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I am putting the pieces together as best as I can from the <a href=\"https:\/\/yearofthebible.com\">Year of the Bible website<\/a>\u2014I\u2019d have a better sense if I were on the inside, but for some reason the organizers did not think to bring \u201cthe only God-ordained podcast on the internet \u2122\u201d into their inner circle &lt;\/sarcasm&gt;. And so I suppose I could be wrong about my misgivings, and I further suppose that my comments here could be even be seen as cynicism. <\/p>\n<p>But my desire, rather, is that the Bible is given its due respect as<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a book that <em><strong>invites<\/strong><\/em> Christians to experience <a href=\"https:\/\/peteenns.com\/if-there-is-such-a-god-a-quick-lesson-in-respecting-mystery\/\">the mystery of God <\/a>in Christ; <\/li>\n<li>a book that <em><strong>encourages<\/strong><\/em> Christians, not by promising answers to every question that plagues us, but by modeling for us trust in our Creator when those answer are not apparent\u2014or when they never come; <\/li>\n<li>a book whose main purpose is to <strong><em>cultivate<\/em><\/strong> mature faith in followers of Jesus over time along life\u2019s journey.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Bible has captivated some of the greatest minds of more than 2,000 years of history. It is indeed worthy of engagement\u2014serious engagement. The question is, what does that engagement look like?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/thebiblefornormalpeople.com\/apparently-2020-is-the-year-of-the-bible\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=apparently-2020-is-the-year-of-the-bible\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2020 has the honor of being \u201cThe Year of the Bible,\u201d at least according to Bible 2020, a global Evangelical organization, including the National Association of Evangelicals, World Evangelical Alliance, and the International Bible Society.\u00a0\u00a0 Some of us may remember the last time we had such a year, in 1983 under Ronald Reagan.\u00a0 He believed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[]},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}