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The Word.

John 1:1 - In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Over
the last few years my eyes have begun to be opened to the true Word of
God or to God himself through the printed word on the pages of the
Bible. It may not sound significant, but an enormous transformation has
taken place in the manner in which I approach the text and view its
place in my understanding of the Christian faith. As I continue to
study and reexamine my understanding of Christianity I have been forced
to reevaluate the way in which I interpret the text of the Bible.

Traditionally,
whether consciously or not, I have presumed that the text had
mysterious, almost magical origins. I seemingly imagined the authors'
hands being guided mystically by God himself. I asked the text to move
me and to change me as if it alone had some divine power. In some odd
sense, my faith was based on the printed words and not on the
reliability and reality of the actual events recorded. As I have begun
to look at the text more closely, I have begun to transform my
understanding.

At first I was dissappointed that my magical
text bubble had seemingly been burst, but it now seems that a more true
and powerful world has been opened up. Conceptually, the Bible has
become a window through which I can see Jesus' life and the Christian
faith as it was (very Jewish, un-American, non-white etc.). It is no
longer the words themselves that have the power, but God and his cast
of characters behind the words who I connect with.

The text
itself is no longer miraculous, but it conveys the miraculous to me. I
do not believe in Christ's sacrifice because it is in the text, but I
believe because I trust that the text is a reliable account of the
truth which I have experienced.

A good example would be the miracle stories in the Gospels. I have
never seen water turn to wine etc. In actuality, such a transformation
contradicts what it is that I usually see water do.  I believe
in the miracles, though, because I believe in the Gospel writers'
validity. I believe that their accounts were directly conveyed to them
by eyewitnesses. If the Gospel writers had made those types of things
up, people would have refuted the accounts. Such timely refutations do
not exist. Many witnesses to Jesus' life would have still been living
when the Gospels were written and thus would have contested the Gospel
writers' accounts.

I have learned to connect not merely with the written words, but with the true Word mentioned in John 1:1.