Good news and bad news

I can read newspapers from different parts of the world every day on my smartphone! I jump from city to city with a few taps to find out what’s moving and shaking, what’s being interpreted and what’s making headlines.



I can read my Bible the same way. The version of good King James is 400 years old, took seven years to translate and is now downloadable in seconds. The labour intensity behind any translation of the Bible is lost on us as we scroll swiftly.  



So now, ironically, I have ancient good news and contemporary bad news in hand simultaneously.



Theologian Karl Barth warned against slumbering through our handling of the Scripture and at the same time being dead to the world regarding the realities of the day. Where this is the case, we see the Bible as drudgingly irrelevant and the news as entertainment. This indifference and sleepy missing of the point must be avoided if the followers of Jesus are to speak with any clarity and authority into the cultural milieu.



The Bible is revelation and the newspaper is revealing. In the Scriptures we hear the voice of God, the Deus dixit, as Barth called it. God has spoken, someone captured it and centuries of wide-awake people have accepted the unquenchable authority in the collection we call God’s Word.



This is a phenomenal claim. What is interesting of both testaments is that the Deus dixit is heard loudly as the subplot as the news of the day is unfolding. The faith of Abraham emerges in the midst of tribal tensions. The deliverance of the Hebrews is the victory of the underdog in the face of a superpower. The courage of Esther is revelation amidst ethnic cleansing. Israel’s royal politics is more sordid than sponsorship or robocall scandals.



The early church emerges in a time of Rome’s dominance. The bad news and the good news are happening simultaneously, hand in hand. That which has been received as the Word of God and ultimately as the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ was revealed in time and circumstance, but not everyone noticed or even cared.



Yet all these years later we know the name of a fisherman named Peter because his life became part of God’s speech, while the guy who would have been front page news and pundit-fodder, Pontius Pilate, received only enough press to ground the Deus dixit in real history and to reveal the cross as the treasonous act of the ages perpetrated against God’s Word by both Jew and Gentile.



The Bible is revelation and the newspaper is revealing. The danger comes when we treat the newspaper as revelation—some final word about what is ultimate truth—and the Bible as merely revealing information about times past.



So scroll through The Globe and Mail, La Presse or Lakeshore Advance, but scroll the Scriptures with it. God still speaks and redefines headlines. As those who look to Jesus as the Word made flesh, the Bible must be received as revelation by which we interpret the headlines, while pointing beyond them. “The world is speaking,” that’s what the newspapers reveal. And into this current reality God has spoken; that’s the word of hope we boldly proclaim.



Phil Wagler (phil_wagler@yahoo.ca) is the author of Kingdom Culture and a pastor who loves that holy moment when good news and bad news collide.