In conversation with Randy Woodley in the Essentials of Engaged Contemplation course, CAC faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher shares her relationship with Scripture. Get new perspectives and practices delivered to your inbox. Sign up for free daily, weekly, or monthly email meditations.
Scripture can be many things to many people. We have the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in the Christian tradition, and Jesus had the Tanakh [1] and quoted from its Torah, Prophets, and Psalms, with special love for Isaiah and the Psalms. We have nature. We have other scriptures from other faiths and wisdom traditions. I always like to stay really open when we use the word scripture and not assume that I know what it might mean for someone else.
For me, Scripture was first the Hebrew Bible and then the New Testament—and in my childhood, I experienced it as mostly learning about what it said so I could pass some imaginary test on being good that some imaginary policeman installed in me. But eventually, Scripture for me became about transformation, about finding out who I am and how I can be more loving and self-aware.
The Christian Scriptures are an anthology written by human beings. They contain the good, the bad, and the ugly. We should wrestle with them. In the end, what I’m supposed to walk away with from reading the Christian Scriptures is a sense of astonishment about God’s love. If they’re not coming across as astonishing, then I need to take another run at it…. My hope always, for my own path of growth and transformation, is to try to read the Scriptures as Jesus did.
CAC affiliate faculty member Randy Woodley shares his perspective that written Scriptures are a “late arrival” to the broader story of creation:
There are a lot of Indigenous perspectives, but I believe the written Scriptures are a late arrival. What Creator first gave us is creation. It’s amazing that when the written Scripture does come along it wonders at, and is in awe of, all of creation and what it has to teach us, including what the animals and the ants have to teach us. Jesus did the same thing. He reveled in the flowers and trees, the seeds and the soil. In a way, Scripture verifies creation as Creator’s first story.
The other thing we have, besides creation, is our conscience. Human beings have always had their own hearts to go by. In a way, Scripture reflects that as well. It tells us stories about how we should and shouldn’t act. We learn those things from the stories….
Scripture is one of the tools we have to understand the right way to live. I appreciate it, not as a rule book, but as stories that align with creation. The teachings and creation align with our hearts and align with good solid communities whose values are soaked in love and caring. When I see something in Scripture that looks like the opposite of that, then I have to say, “Well, I’m supposed to learn something about that. I’m supposed to learn how not to do that or not to act that way.”
References:
[1] Tanakh is the Hebrew name for the Hebrew Scriptures.
Adapted from “Expanding Our Understanding of Scripture with Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Randy Woodley, and Brian McLaren,” CAC’s Living School: Essentials of Engaged Contemplation, Center for Action and Contemplation, February, 2024.
Image credit and inspiration: Taylor Heery, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Dynamic movement requires balance and respect, guided by ever-shifting balance points—like riding a tricycle—through a process of constant learning and continual growth.
Story from Our Community:
My husband and I sit very close to the front pew at Mass. After we receive communion, I sometimes offer a prayer of thanksgiving by observing fellow attendees walk up the aisle to receive Christ in the Eucharist. I feel inspired by the reverence and devotion I see in people’s faces. I feel accompanied in my faith when I see my sisters and brothers showing up in faith. It reminds me that there is grace for all in these turbulent and uncertain times.
—Gaelen B.
