[easyazon_image add_to_cart=”default” align=”left” asin=”1455578827″ cloaking=”default” height=”160″ localization=”default” locale=”US” nofollow=”default” new_window=”default” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511XDPsznbL._SL160_.jpg” tag=”douloschristo-20″ width=”106″]Page 2: Disquiet Time – Review
Lurking behind each essay in Disquiet Time is the question, “What happens when the word of God contradicts lived experience?” (thus forming the tricky bits). And truly, this is a question that each person who claims to follow Christ must ask at some point. What happens when people who are supposed to bear the fruit of the Spirit are anything but loving, joyful, peace-making, patient…? How do we react when we see “the prosperity of the wicked” (Psalm 73) without the corresponding placement of their feet on slippery ground? How do we reconcile “God is love” with coercive hellfire and brimstone sermons?
When the Bible doesn’t match our experiences and expectations, one of the two has to yield. Either we profess the truth of the Bible despite experience to the contrary (trusting it as a “truth-telling thing,” in G. K. Chesterton’s parlance), or we double-down on our experience, trusting it until proved otherwise. Circumstances are bound to bring us to this point of discordance with Scripture (faith is tested no other way), but this dissonance is much harder to bear when we see people who profess belief in the Bible fail to live according to its principles, and especially so when their failure wounds us.
Perhaps the greatest service Disquiet Time provides to the church is a reminder that the way we read and interpret the Bible matters, especially in the way we live our lives and extend (and receive) grace. In an age when authenticity is prized, it behooves believers to remember that just as the Word became flesh in Jesus, the word of God continues to become flesh in each of our lives as we live it out—and this witness, in turn, affects the way that others experience the word of God. Eugene Peterson (who provided Disquiet Time’s foreword) writes of exactly this kind of enfleshment in Eat This Book: “In order to read the Scriptures adequately and accurately, it is necessary at the same time to live them. . . . Readers become what they read. If Holy Scripture is to be something other than mere gossip about God, it must be internalized.” Reading and living are inseparable.
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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