Recovering Faithful Participation in a Therapeutic Age – Series Page
Phase 2: How We Learned to Read Scripture This Way
What happens when covenant becomes personal and privatized?
The God Who Makes Promises
If there’s one phrase that quietly echoes from Genesis to Revelation, it’s this:
“I will be your God, and you will be my people.” (Hebrews 8:10)
At first glance, this might read like religious language. However, I wonder if this simple statement reveals the heart of Scripture. About a biblical covenant rather than transactional faith.
For much of my Christian life, just under the skin of my awareness, I read the Bible with a bias toward transactional thinking.
- God commands… I obey.
- God blesses… I’ll try harder.
Naturally, the question became: “What should I do?”
There’s certainly a place for that question yet increasingly, I’m more mindful of how Scripture starts somewhere different – with God.
- Before Abraham trusted…
- Before Israel obeyed…
- Before the Church even existed…
Neither Abraham nor Israel were looking for a God before God chose and called them. He took the initiative to speak, promise and remain consistently committed. God’s covenant never depended upon human reliability. It rested upon God’s. I suspect that’s why every biblical covenant ultimately survives the failure of God’s people. The only guarantee has always been God’s faithfulness.
An Upside-Down Covenant
What intrigues me is that compared to the concept of covenant in the surrounding ancient world, God’s idea was already upside down.
Ancient Near Eastern kings made treaties to secure power. The stronger party dictated the terms. The weaker party pledged loyalty because they had little choice. Faithfulness was expected primarily from the bottom up. Feels familiar eh?
Then Israel tells a radically different story. The King binds Himself to His people:
- He makes promises.
- He remains faithful when His people repeatedly are not.
The initiative belongs to Him. Faithfulness belongs to Him. The future belongs to Him.
That was a mind-boggling concept in the Bronze Age. I think that idea sounds similarly strange in twenty-first century Canada.
Our Transactional Imagination
Today, our minds are shaped by consumer culture, personalization, self-management, and individual choice. Yet our instinct remains surprisingly similar. We still approach God transactionally.
- What do I have to do?
- How do I stay on God’s good side?
- What does Christianity offer me?
- How can faith improve my life?
These are understandable questions that we ask the Bible to answer but they’re not questions Scripture answers first. Instead, Scripture asks something different.
Since God has already proven faithful, what kind of people are we becoming in response?
That question changes the centre of gravity. Instead of asking what I owe God… I start by asking how God’s faithfulness is reshaping the lives of His people.
From Individuals to a People
I think one of the subtle surprises that awaits modern readers is just how rarely Scripture speaks only to isolated individuals. Notice:
- God calls Abraham to become a family.
- Israel becomes a nation.
- Jesus gathers disciples.
- Paul writes almost exclusively to communities.
- Peter calls believers “a chosen people.”
A contract can be drawn between individuals – like buying a used car from a private seller, renting an apartment from a landlord, or hiring a photographer for family portraits. But God’s covenant always creates a people. Of course it doesn’t erase our personal relationship with God but it does place that relationship inside something much larger.
While modern faith easily becomes personalized, biblical faith is profoundly personal. It’s never just private.
The difference matters.
When I speak of God’s people, I don’t mean only those gathered in a particular congregation or identified with a particular organization. Our covenant identity comes before our organizational identity. Local churches are important expressions of the people of God, but they’re not the whole of that people. The New Testament describes communities of believers living out their shared identity within very different historical, cultural and social circumstances. What remains consistent isn’t a particular church model and organizational form, but it’s the life of a people whose Lord and Saviour is Jesus Christ.
I find the image of a seed helpful here. The life within the seed remains the same, but the plant that grows from it takes its shape from the soil and environment in which it grows. In much the same way, the New Testament gives us a witness to the life of God’s people rather than a single organizational blueprint to reproduce in every age and culture. We remain the people of God, the Church of which Christ is head. However, the ways individuals participate as members of that one body may rightly differ according to the soil in which that life takes root.
Currently, my soil is in a digital pasture as a retired pastor. Weekly, I write to a silent audience in ways that may help them live out God’s faithful presence in the soil in which they’re grounded. I say “silent” because I rarely receive reflective responses to my writing. However, I know something about digital algorithms and comment culture; especially to long-form writing like this. That helps me keep perspective on the silence.
Therefore, the question I ask from this quiet pasture isn’t simply what a local church should look like. Rather, what does the life of God’s people look like here?
Whether gathered in a traditional congregation, sitting across a table with a friend, or bearing another’s burden in daily life, we’re learning that we don’t walk this covenant journey alone.
What Kind of Response?
The big idea behind this reflection is: “God’s faithfulness secures the covenant.”
So from that perspective, what kind of response does Scripture actually describe? Interestingly, not repayment.
Participation.
The Bible repeatedly describes people who… remember, trust, walk, abide, wait, hope, love, bear fruit, welcome strangers, share meals, carry burdens, worship together, and more.
Notice something.
Very few of these are transactions. Almost all of them are relational postures. See them as ways of living; ways of participating in the life of the God who has already acted.
Maybe this is why Scripture often feels so descriptive. It doesn’t merely give us religious rules and requirements. Instead, it shows us what covenant life looks like when God’s faithfulness becomes the centre of gravity for a people. These are some ways we experience God’s faithfulness on the ground.
Remembering Whose Story We Live In
One of the Hebrew words that has deeply shaped my own reading is zakar – to remember. Biblical remembering is a lot more than recalling information. It’s learning to live into God’s story again.
- Passover.
- Communion.
- Prayer.
- Gathering.
- Scripture.
These aren’t simply religious activities we reserve for a weekly worship service. Whether practiced together as a gathered community or woven quietly into our individual daily lives – over a morning coffee or lunch with another, in honest conversation with a friend at a play group, traveling in a car pool, or in quiet solitude – they’re practices that patiently cultivate a covenantal way of understanding. That’s what I mean when you see me use the word “imagination.” I’m not talking about fantasy or make believe. These practices are a tangible way of understanding God and our relationship with Him and one another. They slowly redirect our desires, our attention, our memory, and ultimately our lives toward the God who first remembered us.
I think this is why our digital age presents such an unusual challenge to our faith formation and church community relationships. We’re slowly shaped by personalized experiences.
- Customized feeds.
- Curated content.
- Individual preferences.
Even faith itself can become another personalized experience designed to meet my spiritual needs. Then, without realizing it, covenant practices slowly become religious goods and services. They still look familiar but they no longer form the same way of thinking.
What We Get To Do
Gradually, I stopped asking “What should I do?”
Obviously obedience matters. I have additional thoughts about this in Part 6B of my next reflection. For now consider this idea. What if obedience is less about following rules and more about invitations to accept?
I’m becoming more interested in another question: “What kind of people are we becoming in light of God’s faithfulness?”
That changes an obligation to obey commandments to participating in the life of Christ.
- Sabbath becomes an invitation to trust.
- Hospitality becomes participation in God’s welcome.
- Generosity becomes participation in God’s generosity.
- Forgiveness becomes participation in God’s mercy.
Can you smell what the Pastor From the Pasture is cooking? From this perspective, obedience becomes less about earning God’s favour and more about learning to inhabit God’s life.
Imagine if the Bible has never primarily been a book of do’s and don’ts. What if it’s always been about describing the kind of life that grows wherever people learn to trust the God who says, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”
The ancient seed still carries its own life. Our response has never been a transaction.
It’s always been about participation.
Looking Ahead
If that’s true, another question naturally follows. If God’s covenant, extended anew by Jesus Christ, invites participation rather than transaction, then how did so much of Christian discipleship gradually become another project of personal optimization?
When did following Jesus start to look like managing my Christian life more than participating in God’s? That question leads us to our next reflection.
In article 2, “When God Becomes a Therapist” I set the diagnostic table, the next part in this series explores the mechanics. Self-optimization is so deeply wired into our modern habits, it requires a deeper look into how we keep slipping back into the driver’s seat. That inevitably takes more ground to cover which is why we’ll spread out our discovery over Part 6A and 6B.
I’m not saying self-improvement is entirely wrong but Jesus came to invite us into the life of the Kingdom. Please join me next time.