Essential Skills for the Journey with Jesus
Reading the Bible Well (Pt. 4)
“The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.”
-Harper Lee, author of “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Many times, when we read the Bible, the passage surprises us. Either it’s difficult to understand, its reference points are unfamiliar, or it draws an unexpected conclusion. Thus the third lesson in reading the Bible well is learning how to embrace the “dissonance” between the Bible and the world we live in today.
“Dissonance” means “a lack of harmony among musical notes.” If you’ve listened to dissonant music you know the melodic clash that disturbs the listener. This isn’t a mistake. Composers use dissonance for a specific purpose. Jazz and classical musicians often incorporate variations in harmonic tension to produce strong emotions in the listener. It is an intentional way to draw the person into the music through urgency creating a deep and moving piece of music.
Bible stories are also filled with dissonance. Jesus, for example, was known to use hyperbole to make an important point.
“And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’”1
Passages like this one have discouraged some potential Bible readers. Others misunderstand hyperbole and argue that faithful people must believe such passages to be literally true. Still others have used the dissonance of the Bible to discredit the Scriptures. Nevertheless, the dissonance of the Bible is not a mistake. It should not be wished away. We need to embrace the tension between what we are reading and what we are thinking by allowing it to take us further on our journey with Jesus.
The book of Jonah is a great place to begin practicing the skill of embracing dissonance. For example, Jonah is another tight, well-written story you can read or listen to in less than ten minutes. It is a kind of "bizarro” story of a prophet of God. Unlike Isaiah, Jeremiah or Ezekiel, the prophet Jonah does everything he can to stop God from sharing his compassion. The dissonance is increased when the non-Hebrews are more God-fearing than Jonah. Read Jonah, enjoy, and even laugh as the dissonance of the story unfolds.
