Whose Agenda

When people are confirmed or join a Covenant church, they are asked three essential questions:

• “Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior and promise to follow him as Lord?”
  
• “Do you accept the Holy Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments, as the word of God and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct?”
  
• Do you intend to live among God's faithful people, to hear God's word and share in the Lord's Supper, to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, and to strive for peace and justice throughout the earth?"
  

The implication of these questions is clear--we submit our lives to Christ, his authority, and his agenda.

It's the very opposite of what the Revealer calls "Scipturalism"--"a pattern of mediation that represents texts as ahistorical and uses them to legitimize a specific regime of practices and beliefs."

For a Scripturalist, the Bible is a tool or weapon we use to further our own agenda. For a Christian, the Bible is the tool God uses to conform our lives to his image and to his kingdom.

The early Covenanters asked a question in their debates over issues theological and social--"Where is it written?" The question focused attention on the Scriptures.

It's a good question to ask when talking about "moral values." Look up homosexuality in a concordance. Look up abortion (or infanticide). Then look up "the poor" or "justice" and see which seems higher on God's priorities.

Too many Evangelicals are becoming biblically illiterate while at the same time practicing Scripturalism or bibli-olarty. That is, we make an idol of the Bible and worship our ideas about it while ignoring what it says.