This reflection sits in the theme of the “World we live in” which made me ask: do we all live in the same world? In one sense, of course we do, but in another... We all perceive things differently, we were all created unique, and since we drew our first breaths our experience of the world around us is different.
There is a scholarly debate about who first wrote (or said): we do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.
However, Dale Carnegie wrote the idea in this verse:
Two men looked out from prison bars,
One saw the mud, the other saw stars.
Around this time of year, the passage from Luke 24 about the road to Emmaus is often preached on. Two weary and dispirited people are trudging home from Jerusalem having seen their Rabbi (and possibly relative) put to death in the most shameful way. A stranger asks why they are so downcast. They ask, curiously, if he is the only person who has been in Jerusalem who doesn’t know what was going on. I suspect over half the people in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover that year had no idea that a man was being crucified under the sign: King of the Jews.
However, the stranger begins to unpack the Scriptures, from Moses to the prophets and he demonstrated how all of them pointed to the event that had just taken place – it was spelt out repeatedly in Scripture. This is known as the Christological hermeneutic – that the whole Bible needs to be read and examined through the lens of Jesus, his death and resurrection.
Desert Island Discs still offers its participants a copy of the Bible to take with them to their desert island. Some, notably David Walliams have refused, but Philip Pullman, the novelist, although an atheist said he would take the Bible as it contained a lot of good stories. Steve Cox, from the Church and Media network said: “Whether you are a Christian or not, the Bible is an amazing book that gives accounts of life, love ... redemption and hope”.
But the Bible as literature or as a good book just doesn’t cut it for me. Without that lens of Jesus and Easter, the good stories are merely fairy tales from a civilisation long ago and far away. The redemption and hope are only there for those who believe, not for those who are bored by sunning themselves and are looking for a distraction. When Gideon Bibles were placed in hotels and public places, they included, at the front, a list of reasons why people might have picked the book up and pointed them in the direction of specific help.
The couple trudging the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus, skipped the seven miles back to Jerusalem when the Good News had been explained to them. The important thing about the best-selling book in the world is that it needs to be read in a certain way – with the triune God as our guide.
Elaine Kinchin
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