Houston, “We Have a Problem…”

by on July 16, 2018
➡ Average Reading Time: 2 minutes

Where Are We Going!

God's <abbr>EPIC</abbr> AdventureOver the next few articles we are going to cover three areas:

  1. The Western world’s penchant for minutia and the breaking of the Story into fragments.
  2. How Story is an antidote for this fragmentation.
  3. The concept of the Kingdom of God as a prism through which we can understand the Story of God.

Houston, “We Have a Problem…”

One of America’s finest hours in space flight came when an oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13. The quote “Houston, we have a problem” is actually a misquote. I know, Tom Hanks delivered the line flawlessly in the movie. The actual quote is “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” This was a major problem for those on board the Odyssey. The crew in space and the crew in Houston had to put their minds together to solve this problem and bring the three astronauts back to earth safely.

It is natural when a problem occurs to try to find a solution. But, what happens when we don’t even realize that we don’t even know that we have a problem? This is the situation with millions of readers of Scripture. We have a problem when we read Scripture and we may not even know it. I remember sitting with a friend having breakfast. He had read something that week that I had written and wondered out loud. I don’t think that I have a problem reading Scripture. On one level, he was correct. If you can pronounce the words, you are reading. But, the intent of what I had written was the very point he was making. He thought that because he could read the words, he was reading the text with complete understanding. He was completely clueless that he had a “reading problem.” He didn’t realize that the very format that he was reading the text in was itself the problem.

Snippet Reading

The little known but very large problem in Scripture reading is the fragmentized way in which we have come to read it: A little snippet here and a little snippet there, a Bible bit here and a Bible bit there. So, if it is a problem, and it really is, what do we do about it?

We shall continue…

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Jesus Followers

 

There are many synonyms to use for the word believer, which is the most common word for a person who has "converted" to follow Jesus. I have chosen "Jesus follower(s) or follower(s) of Jesus instead of the word believer in these presentations to allow the reader an opportunity to move away from the idea of believer which conjures up the possible thought of "ascent" to a set of doctrines that have been assembled by different groups over the centuries and show up in this day and age as a set of statements posted on web sites and other written material. These sets of beliefs are suggested by many as the ones that one should ascent to so that upon death the one who assents can go to heaven, i.e., just believe and you are good to go. Jesus followers/followers of Jesus suggest an action that one should take. Remember, Jesus told his disciples to follow him. Yes, belief is important, but one must move beyond belief to action.

 

(See "Discipleship" Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. 182-188.)