The quick rise of loud music provoked me to seek its source. Three teenage boys quickly passed through and entered the next car. As the door closed behind them and their large boom box, the various other noises returned to compete for dominance. Continually rising above the drone of normal conversation were the children. One seated somewhere behind cried loudly for attention. Another, head bobbing from side to side, curiously asked his mother about everything he was observing. While some cried and some talked endlessly, others bounced around darting through the aisle of the train car. Young men carrying large plastic bags stepped around these children as they passed through calling out their products: cookies, snacks, and tissues.
The cabin was almost entirely Africans. Darker skinned Africans likely from the Sahara. Lighter skinned Africans going south from the Mediterranean. And in the middle of the car, four white Americans. The commotion of the train car was steady and continuous, loud stereos, restless children, and a constant stream of venders. Everyone was busy with something or someone. But in the entire cabin I counted four books. Four Americans and four books. And where were the four Americans going? A conference on orality, of course.
I love to read. I read philosophy, theology, fiction, sermons, anything I can. And I read the Bible. The inerrant, inspired Word of God. But what is inerrant and inspired? The words or the meaning? Does inspiration flow through the pen of the apostle? Does inspiration flow as the words are read by each individual reader as Karl Barth would say? Or does inspiration flow through the meaning ordained by God from the foundation of the world? Is it enough to get the stories from the Bible into people's hearts and minds, or must we also get the actual words into their hands?
No decent scholar can claim the Bible is divinely perfect in every jot and tittle, but neither can any decent scholar deny that the Bible is the most accurate, well-documented ancient text we know. The book I carry right now has about a .5-1% difference from the original. Now none of this error changes meaning, but it is enough for the book I carry to not be 100% perfect, inerrant.
So is inspiration found in the actual written words or in the meaning? What is the meaning? A savior, Jesus Christ, was promised, lived a perfect life, laid it down, and picked it back up. What then is perfect and inerrant? Scripture tells us the Word of God. John tells us that is Jesus. He is the divine Word. He is the perfection, the fulfillment of the law. He is the very meaning behind the words which may only be as good, in the end, as faith and hope.
Faith leads to a point of trusting, loving, and obeying Christ. But it falls short of perfection as our imperfect takes on the perfect. Hope, in the same way, leads to a point of stability and surety giving the believer confidence as he expects the reward to come. As mortality is swallowed up in the immortal, faith and hope fall short and are no longer necessary. Being imperfect in themselves, faith and hope get us to the perfect where love and Jesus takes over. Perhaps the Holy Book to which we cling is the same. It takes us as far as perfection where it cedes to the actual presence, words, and love of Christ in perfection.
Is it possible that God, to protect us from even more idolatry (Calvin said the human heart is an idol factory), disallowed Christians to have a completely perfect, in the jots and tittles, Book? Jesus' words are immortal, but what we have left behind, like everything on earth, is corrupted. It groans and waits for the return when glory reigns. Yet between the lines is the message God wants the world to know. It is the message we must get to them by whatever means necessary. Through orality and literacy alike.
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