Lessons from a microscope

I was driving my son to school the other day, asking him about what they were studying in Biology.  "The microscope"  he replied, "and it's pretty cool."  Being the pseudo philosopher that I am, we began to discuss the amazing discovery of all things when you can reduce them to their smallest parts.  We also talked about what science must have been like before the microscope and how the it has shaped our way of approaching the study of any object.  All you need is a scalpel, some slides, and a microscope, you can cut up just about any living thing,
place it on a slide, see it in minute detail, classify it, find out what's wrong with it, even manipulate its form to make it serve your needs.

Then it occurred to us, for a few hundred years now we have approaced the Bible in this same way.

Before the printing press five hundred years ago most people weren't able to read the scriptures because they didn't know the language of the scriptures.  With the advent of the technology of the printed word (along with a few other major social factors such as the Reformation/Enlightenment) the people began to be empowered with the message of God's redemptive story. 

But something else happened over time.  With the advent of the Modern age and the rise of Scientism, the way in which we approached knowledge and thought was largely shaped by these powerful forces.  What was intended to be an amazing collection of inspired literature, history and communal letters became another species to be cut up, reduced, categorized and applied in whatever cultural story was handy at the time (colonialism being the most predominant of the Pre-Modern era, Consumerism and Domination seems to be the current North American fascination, with its pet-passages and all). 

This experience has a lot to say about how we handle the story of our lives in light of following Jesus. For too long in my life I tried to cut and paste pieces of the Bible as morsels of blessing or morsels of promise in an effort to try to live by its code. It's also amazing to see how we tend to focus on the morsels that promise us blessing and a happy life (which often doesn't work) or religious guilt/code we can't live up to. Read, re-read, memorize, claim it, speak it, get it right, try to conform to it.

Words on a page. Dry. Dead. Frustrating. Guilt ridden. Never enough.

I am seeing a wonderful resurgence and re-discovery of this amazing story we live in.  Thousands of tired Christ followers all over the planet are taking a fresh look at this amazing, inspired writ, and I humbly join this generation of folk who are attempting to take the scriptures out of the proverbial formaldehyde, pull it off the periodic table of elements, and recover it for what is meant to be.

Have you experienced this shift in your understanding?